What Happens When Every Movie Has to Carry the Whole Studio

Or the case for Slate Funding

One Battle After Another and the Case for Slate Funding

Let me first start off by saying that this will not be a review of One Battle After Another. Although I did find the movie to be quite incredible. A movie like that deserves to exist even if it doesn’t make money. But I did notice something with the headlines and conversation around the PTA film. The conversation wasn’t about how much money it needed to make to break even. There wasn’t the usual round of articles calculating production costs, P&A, and “the number it needs to hit to turn a profit.”

Instead, most headlines centered around Paul Thomas Anderson himself: the ambition, the performances, the cultural significance of a studio giving him that kind of freedom. The question wasn’t “Can it make its money back?” but “What does this film mean for Warner Bros?”

For the first time in a while, a major studio movie is being allowed to fail quietly. And maybe that actually could be progress in the right direction.

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The Shift in the Conversation

Not long ago, every studio release was followed by a numbers postmortem. We measured success by opening weekends, second-weekend drops, and whether it could cross a mythical break-even threshold. When The Flash underperformed, the entire discourse was about loss and embarrassment. When Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny stumbled, people wrote obituaries for “legacy cinema.”

The fixation on box office metrics became cultural sport. Everyone was a financial analyst, every movie a startup. Somewhere along the way, the art of conversation about movies turned into the accounting of them.

But with One Battle After Another, there’s been a subtle shift. The tone of the coverage feels more measured. Fewer spreadsheets, more curiosity. Critics and fans alike are talking about what the film says, not what it earns. It’s as if, at least for this one film, the public and press agreed to value intent over return.

Maybe it’s because people sense that Warner Bros made this film knowing exactly what it was: a creative swing, not a commercial calculation. Or maybe it’s because Paul Thomas Anderson has reached a place where his failures are still culturally valuable.

Either way, the shift signals something important: the industry conversation might finally be maturing.

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The PTA Exception

Paul Thomas Anderson occupies rare real estate in Hollywood. He’s one of the last directors who can walk into a studio, pitch something abstract and expensive, and still get a “yes.” His brand of filmmaking carries prestige weight. His name still moves actors, not audiences, but that’s exactly why studios keep him around.

When Warner Bros releases a PTA film, they’re not betting on a hit. They’re buying credibility. The film’s existence signals to talent, filmmakers, and critics that Warner Bros still supports cinema in its purest form. It’s an investment in identity, proof that the studio hasn’t fully surrendered to IP logic.

But here’s the thing: not every filmmaker gets to fail this gracefully.

When Ryan Coogler’s Sinners came out, every headline was about profitability. Every conversation circled around budget and box office. Would it make its money back? Did he overreach? There was little space left to discuss what the movie was trying to do artistically.

That’s the double standard. One director is allowed to swing and miss because his brand is “auteur.” Another, a Black filmmaker operating at the same scale, is treated like he should have known better. The discourse around Sinners wasn’t about ambition; it was about cost.

This is what happens when creative freedom becomes selective. The protection we extend to a Paul Thomas Anderson should apply to every director willing to take a creative risk. Because when we only allow a few to fail safely, we reinforce the same hierarchies that keep the industry creatively stagnant.

If we truly believe in filmmaking as art, we can’t only protect the auteurs we already canonized. We have to protect the ones still earning their place in the canon.

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The One-Film Economy Is Broken

The way studios greenlight movies today is fundamentally flawed. They treat each project as a stand-alone investment that must perform on its own terms. Every film has to justify its existence in isolation.

That approach might make sense for venture capital, but not for storytelling.

You can’t build culture on quarterly returns.

This one-film-at-a-time logic creates an ecosystem of fear. Executives are pressured to pick “winners,” and anything that looks risky dies in development. That’s why most studio slates today feel the same: sequels, IP extensions, and safe biopics.

Even the mid-budget space, once the heartbeat of Hollywood, has been squeezed out. When every movie has to be a guaranteed hit, you lose the middle ground that builds audiences and careers.

It’s like running a record label where you only release singles, never albums. You might get a few hits, but you’ll never build an artist.

The real solution isn’t to find the next billion-dollar movie. It’s to fix the economics underneath how movies get made.

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The Case for Slate Funding

Let’s be honest. The best argument you can make for Joker: Folie à Deux is that Joker earned it the right to exist. The first film cost around $55 million and made over a billion dollars worldwide. It was lightning in a bottle. The sequel, on the other hand, ballooned to nearly $200 million, was torn apart by critics, and became one of the year’s biggest box office flops.

Now, that swing might not have been justified. But it’s also proof of something: when a film hits big enough, it creates permission. Joker bought Warner Bros the freedom to take another wild swing. Whether or not that swing connects is beside the point. The system is built around the idea that one win can bankroll a few experiments.

That’s essentially the logic of slate funding, just applied unevenly. Instead of each movie living or dying by its own math, you design a portfolio where the success of one allows others to breathe.

Taylor Lewis

has been championing this for a long time.

And what’s fascinating is that Warner Bros’ 2025 lineup already looks like the perfect example of what an eclectic, balanced slate could be. You’ve got Superman anchoring the tentpole side, Sinners as Ryan Coogler’s bold original statement, The Conjuring: Last Rites in the dependable franchise lane, F1 delivering glossy spectacle, Weapons holding down the elevated genre space, Mickey 17 as the prestige sci-fi gamble, and One Battle After Another as the auteur-driven artistic entry.

That’s the shape of a healthy slate if the studio treated it as one. But each of those movies is being judged in isolation. Superman has to justify its $225 million budget on its own. Sinners is expected to be both prestige and profitable. Mickey 17’s shortfall is seen as a standalone failure. And OBAA, despite being one of the best films of the year, is still being discussed in terms of whether it can “make its money back.”

That’s the flaw in the system. Each film is carrying its own burden when, in reality, they should be carrying each other. If Superman overperforms, it should buy room for OBAA to exist. If Sinners holds strong theatrically and thrives on streaming, that success should offset a creative risk like Mickey 17. The goal isn’t to make every movie profitable. It’s to make the slate sustainable.

Because when you invest in quality, the returns show up in different ways. They show up in filmmaker loyalty, in licensing and long-tail value, and in the cultural equity that reminds audiences what a studio stands for. OBAA may not be a financial hit, but it’s a creative one, and that matters.

If we’re being honest, maybe the world would be better off without Joker 2. But the reason it exists is the same reason OBAA should: one film’s success should fund another’s freedom. That’s what a real slate does. It spreads the risk, amplifies the reward, and keeps the ecosystem alive.

So yes, maybe the current version of Joker 2 shouldn’t exist. But I’m not the one greenlighting movies. (Yet.)

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Rethinking Success

Our current metrics for success are painfully outdated. A film’s value shouldn’t be measured solely by its opening weekend.

Think about how long a movie’s life actually lasts now. Licensing, VOD, streaming, awards, catalog sales, merchandising, educational use—these all add up over years. And that’s before accounting for cultural value: talent development, artistic influence, or brand halo.

Warner Bros didn’t just overspend on Mad Max: Fury Road. They created a cultural landmark that redefined action filmmaking. It didn’t dominate the box office on release, but its afterlife in awards, reputation, and eventual sequel greenlight proved that artistic ambition has value beyond a weekend gross. Likewise, they didn’t just “spend” on One Battle After Another. They reaffirmed their identity as the studio that still takes artistic swings.

If we can accept that Barbie and Dune subsidize the rest of the slate, then we can also accept that a film like One Battle After Another doesn’t need to hit a specific number to matter. Its purpose is reputational and long-term.

Maybe the goal isn’t to stop caring about box office, but to contextualize it within a broader timeline. Movies are not quarterly assets. They’re long-tail investments in culture.

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The Work Ahead

Hollywood doesn’t need more miracles. It needs better math.

If more of us at the NonDe level embraced slate logic, the whole system could breathe again. Greenlights could be guided by balance instead of fear. A flop would no longer be career enders; it would simply be part of the equation.

Filmmakers could take creative risks knowing their success or failure wouldn’t define an entire fiscal year. Investors could see predictable returns without sacrificing artistic diversity. And audiences could rediscover surprise again—the joy of walking into something that wasn’t built to be a hit but became one anyway.

It’s time to stop treating art like a stock pick. The future of cinema depends on how we structure its risk.

One battle after another is fine, as long as they’re part of a war worth fighting.

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Try This

If you’re a NonDe producer or filmmaker, start practicing slate logic now.

Instead of pitching one project, pitch three. Make one commercial, one personal, one strategic. Group them in a single deck and show how they balance each other. Investors will see you as less of an artist asking for a shot and more of a builder with a plan.

Or, if you’re building a collective or company, start tracking the “portfolio” of your creative output. Which projects make money, which build audience, which build reputation? The goal isn’t perfection. It’s consistency.

Because the future belongs to those who know how to manage risk without losing heart.

It’s time NonDe learns the same lesson.