How “Moonrise Kingdom” Co-Writer Roman Coppola Got into Bitcoin

The non-profit organization Decentralized Pictures is looking for change the face of the film industry using Web3 technology – but the founders’ journey into the crypto space started way back in 2013, and it started with Bitcoin.

At the time, DCP co-founder and CEO Leo Matchett worked with producer Roman Coppola at his production company The Director’s Bureau. “We had this soundstage that ended up empty due to a show being canceled and a long-term tenant having to leave,” Matchett said on the latest episode of Decrypthis gm podcast. “So we did this little experimental project and set up Bitcoin miners in there. And that was kind of ours main course into the blockchain.”

This experience, Matchett explained, taught them that crypto was not the “scammy kind of sketchy technology” it was painted by many media outlets at the time, and encouraged them to set up decentralized images.

The nonprofit is actually a film-making DAO, with members earning the project’s native FILMCredits token by participating in community activities such as reviewing scripts and movie trailers. They can then use their credits to submit a project for funding awards, which are voted on by the community (with a panel of judges having the final say). If a project funded by the DCP makes a profit, its share is reinvested in funding future awards.

“Our thesis is that a large diversified group should theoretically have better creative decision-making ability than a small non-diversified group that you would find in a boardroom, in a studio,” Matchett said Decrypt.

It’s a pretty model that has attracted some heavyweight Hollywood support; the platform’s board includes Roman, Gia and Sofia Coppola, while “Ocean’s Eleven” director Steven Soderbergh has donated $300,000 to a grant to award finishing funds to filmmakers on the platform.

“At the end of the day, we feel that people should have an opinion about what culture is,” Matchett said. “Not that we’re saying we’re going to reshape the world with this project, but there’s a very innate importance of people having an opinion and the resources to express it, through a democratic process.”

The expanding Film3 space – and the spectrum of SEC

Decentralized Pictures is one of a number of so-called “Film3” projects experimenting with Web3 financing and distribution models; Matchett namechecked Miguel Faus’ NFT funded “Calladita” and Kevin Smith’s “Killroy was here” as examples. (Disclosure: the author owns a Killroy NFT.)

One area Decentralized Pictures is yet to explore is the possibility of tokenized equity models for film financing.

“That was one of the first thoughts we had with this project was, Wow, we can microfinance movies through crypto and—oh, yeah, movie, that’s absolutely a security. How do we get around that? Okay, let’s rethink this, Matchett said.

Matchett pointed to some “interesting models that skirted it a little bit,” like the share-for-earn model, where a community member shares content or services using a unique referral link and gets a share of the revenue. “We’ll let the lawyers figure it out,” he said. “But there are definitely some super interesting, innovative ideas coming into the space, and I’m extremely excited about that. And it’s exciting to see the biggest studios, the media conglomerates in the world, starting to get involved as well.”

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