The blockchain arrives in Hollywood with the Coppola brothers

The most influential family in Hollywood is among the first to have understood the potential, long highlighted by experts, of blockchain for the film industry. This fall, the non-profit Decentralized Pictures, founded by Roman Coppola together with Leo Matchett and Michael Musante, both veterans of the industry, will become operational and which has sister Sofia and niece Gia on the board. The mission of the new company is to discover and support new talents through a blockchain-based web platform. “In practice it is a fund for cinema with a democratic selection” explain the founders “instead of a board that makes decisions, the process starts from the bottom through the community”. The platform will also have its own crypto token which will be used as a trading currency. The creatives will pay a fee at the entrance using the platform’s cryptocurrency and will be able to register their ideas in the various categories. Community members, in exchange, will receive tokens for their participation in the selection process. In this way the authors will not be forced to pay their fee in cash, but will be able to participate first as voters, and accumulate the credits necessary to register. Up for grabs funding for the production of the films, from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but also non-cash prizes, such as consultancy and mentorship.The process of selection and financing of the works takes place through the vote of a community registered on the blockchain and smart contracts financed in part by the registration fee of the content creators and in part by external funds. The voting rounds will take into account the artistic value, creativity, but also the social impact of the submitted works. Community members during the selection process will be able to view scripts, preliminary videos, and interact with creatives. The platform is currently being tested with projects from the Ghetto Film School and the USC School of Cinematic Arts, but it will soon be open to anyone both to submit projects and to become part of the community and participate in the selection. underlying, explain the founders of the platform, has fallen on the blockchain mainly for a transparency factor. “We will be giving away substantial sums of money, so it is essential that the community has confidence in the voting process, whose transparency will be guaranteed thanks to the validation of each vote via blockchain, making everything verifiable and immutable”. However, the voting system will be weighted based on the track record of the individual voter. Initially, the votes of those who already have a successful past in the industry will have a higher value, but also the “common” members will be able to rise in the ranking if they give their support to projects that later prove to be successful.