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Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise Fighting: We’re Worried About the Wrong Thing
You Might Land on TV or in a Magazine If You Never Give Up!
Coffee & Content: The Smallest Details Can Make Your Story Feel Alive
Insider Intel: Let's Talk Mandates- What is the Town Looking for?
Coffee & Content: Your Voice Is Your Superpower, No Matter the Budget
Stage 32 + Cannes Film Festival Marche du Film present a Free Webinar on How to Navigate Cannes!
The Biggest TV Drama Screenwriting Contest in the World is Back!
What 50+ Hours of Suspense Taught Me About Modern Thriller Series
Insider Intel: Peak TV Is Dead. What Does That Mean for Your TV Pilot?
Dubai Is Not Just a Backdrop. It Is a Film Scene in the Making!
7 Tips for Self-Tape Audition Success
There’s no doubt about it—self-tape auditions are all the rage and certainly here to stay. And, with pilot season fast upon us, the timing is perfect for talking about what makes a self-audition submission likely to succeed. A quick Internet search will yield an abundance of self-tape how-to articles and videos, which is great, and I encourage you to watch and read them. But they mostly focus on the technical aspects of the process (cameras, lighting, sound, setup) and far l…
Dubai Is Not Just a Backdrop. It Is a Film Scene in the Making!
Dubai is often described in images before it is described in ideas. The skyline. The scale. The architecture. The speed. The polish. For many people outside the region, the city registers first as a visual spectacle, a place that looks expensive, futuristic, and immediately cinematic. What it is rarely known for, at least not yet, is narrative filmmaking. That gap between perception and reality is exactly what makes Dubai so interesting. Because beyond its image, beyond the obvio…
The Dawn of Narrative Liquidity
The traditional boundaries of the screen have begun to dissolve as the industry enters a period of narrative liquidity. For decades, the creative process followed a predictable, linear path where a writer drafted a script, a producer secured funding, and a director hoped for a box office miracle. In 2026, that straight line has curled into a sophisticated, self-sustaining circle. We are no longer in the business of merely selling movies or television series. We are in the business of arc…
Insider Intel: Commercial Films Are Going Indie. Where Does That Leave Arthouse Films?
I recently spoke with two successful indie producers, both with strong track records on the festival circuit, and they had identical mandates: rom-coms and horror under $15M. Anything above that threshold goes to the studios. That's a radical shift from what indie producers were reading even five years ago. The Oscars told the same story. This year's ceremony was notably light on traditional prestige drama. Instead, the films being rewarded were commercially driven, globally appealing, …
Eyes Like Cameras - Predicting Future Trends
CASE STUDIES IN DISGUISE Quietly in the background, decades of independent production has given me something of incredible value; project case studies and laser-focused insight. This cumulative past experience now reveals just how much consideration my films have had locked into them from the get-go. (Left to right) Sean O'Grady, Kim Michelle, and Kathleen Murtagh in a production still from Al Carretta's 2024 feature 'It Starts In This Room'. In Autumn 2024, I released my 23rd (Thir…
Stage 32 + Cannes Film Festival Marche du Film present a Free Webinar on How to Navigate Cannes!
Happy Monday, Creative Army! If you’ve ever dreamed of taking your film to the Croisette, shaking hands with global buyers, or simply navigating the incredible whirlwind that is the Cannes Film Festival and its Marché du Film, this is for you. I’m thrilled to announce that this upcoming Wednesday, April 1st, we’re hosting a completely FREE webinar with the Executive Director of the Marché du Film, Guillaume Esmiol, to help you prepare for Cannes—wh…
Coffee & Content: The Smallest Details Can Make Your Story Feel Alive
Happy Sunday, Creative Army! I hope your weekend has been a creative one so far. Whether you have been writing, filming, editing, or sketching out the next spark of an idea, I have something today that will give you a boost. So grab your coffee, and let’s dive in. This week’s featured video comes from Thomas Flight- Why Some Movies Feel More Alive What I like about this piece is that it takes something most viewers barely notice and shows how important it really is to the …
You Might Land on TV or in a Magazine If You Never Give Up!
In a past life, as they say, I worked in the Olympic Movement. I will wait while you drift off and think of only the glamorous side of that, because yes, I was a Chief Press Officer at two Summer Games. But let me take you behind the scenes. There’s a popular expression, “It takes a village.” And people are also quick to whip out phrases like, “It takes teamwork to make the dream work.” But the fact of the matter is, there honestly was really only one perso…
Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise Fighting: We’re Worried About the Wrong Thing
Long title… I know. Should have gotten AI to do it. Lol. You've probably seen it by now. A 15-second AI-generated video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise throwing punches on a rooftop, conjured by Oscar-nominated Irish director Ruairi Robinson using ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 tool. It looks polished. It looks cinematic. And it sent Hollywood into the kind of collective panic attack usually reserved for opening weekend box office disasters. Screenwriter Rhett Reese, co-writer of Deadpool …
By the Numbers: 40 Different Writers Have Met with Producers & Managers via Stage 32 Contests This Year (It's Only March)
You've written a screenplay. You've polished it. You've maybe even gotten some positive feedback from friends, writing groups, online communities, or Stage 32's industry readers or execs. You feel good about what you've written and you're confident in your writing. Now what? Most writers face the same impossible catch-22: You need industry validation to get meetings, but you need meetings to get industry validation. Our contests at Stage 32 exist to break that cycle. And we do thi…
Insider Intel: Hollywood Is Going Back to Safety: The Book Adaptation Boom
The New Gold Rush of Book Adaptations? Hollywood is going back to books and it's paying off. HAIL MARY, THE HOUSEMAID, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, VLADIMIR, PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION. The adaptations are coming fast and from every corner of the literary world. It would be easy to just assume studios are playing it safe, that they're leaning on proven IP, built-in fanbases, and the validation of an existing readership to reduce risk in an uncertain market. And there's truth in that. The numbers…
Stage 32 Now Certifying Mexico: A New Era for Mexican Film Talent
I am proud to share an exciting milestone for the film industry in Mexico: CANACINE, the National Chamber of the Film Industry, has entered into a strategic partnership with Stage 32 to open up Stage 32’s certification program to Mexican filmmakers. This collaboration represents a powerful step forward, not only for Mexico’s creative community, but also for the global audiovisual industry looking toward Mexico as a premier destination for film and television production. Mex…
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