Are We Funding Familiarity?
19/August/2026
Audience data can tell us a lot about what people have watched, but can it really tell us what they might want to watch next, and in reality, should it? Every unexpected film success creates audience data that did not exist before the film succeeded. That sounds obvious, but I think it raises an interesting question about the way we increasingly understand audiences.
The film industry now has access to an extraordinary amount of information about us, what we watch, what we stop watching, and what we search for. It can delve into what genres perform well, which actors attract audiences, and what films people finish and recommend to their friends. For an industry built around enormous financial risk, it makes complete sense to use that information, as it creates security and predictability. If you've been reading my past blogs, you would know that better understanding our audiences is vital for the future of film. But there is something that data struggles to measure: what if audiences want something they haven't been given yet? Because there is something so special about discovering a film that you might not have chosen on your own. It might be a genre or a director, or even just embracing foreign language films. Discovering films we might not normally choose to watch is an exciting and important experience for every cinefile.
Film has always been risky; even relatively small productions require significant investment, and there is never a guarantee that an audience will turn up at the other end, especially in such a saturated market. For independent cinema in particular, where margins are smaller and finance is harder to secure, demonstrating that an audience exists can understandably make a project more attractive. Comparable films can help, and audience research can also help, along with previous box office and viewing behaviour. These are things I think should be used more! However, most of that information has one thing in common. It tells us about something that has already happened. If a particular genre performs well, then similar projects become easier to justify. If audiences respond to a certain type of story, the people commissioning films have evidence that more stories like this might work. That's a sensible approach, but it raises a problem as sensible decisions begin to create a loop. A loop that looks something like a film succeeds, and media demonstrates demand, leading to similar projects appearing safer. That means more of them are commissioned, and audiences are offered more of them. Their viewing behaviour then provides even more evidence that this is what audiences want. But eventually we have to ask, are we measuring audience taste, or are we partially creating it through the choices we give people? After all, an audience cannot choose a film that was never funded.
That creates a blind spot in every data set about what audiences supposedly want. Because if someone is offered ten crime thrillers and one unusual independent drama, their viewing behaviour can tell us what they selected from those 11 choices. But it cannot tell us how they might have responded to the twelfth film that nobody took the risk of making.
Some of my favourite experiences with cinema have come from films I would never have thought to search for. This is one of the reasons I'm an absolute sucker for Curzon Home and similar streaming platforms that share a more diverse and independent selection of films. There's something very special about watching a film while knowing almost nothing about it and, in doing so, discovering that it connects with you completely. Because there was no obvious demand beforehand, the film itself created that demand. I think this distinction matters because we sometimes talk about audiences as though everyone has a fixed set of tastes waiting to be identified. But the wonderful thing about being human is our tastes change. It develops through recommendations, experience, experimentation and exposure. A great critic can introduce you to a filmmaker you had never encountered. A cinema programmer can put something in front of you that an algorithm never would, and a festival can give an unusual film the context it needs to connect to an audience. Cinema does not simply respond to taste; it helps create it. That is where independent film becomes particularly important.
Independent cinema should be one of the places where we can take chances on stories for which there isn't particularly overwhelming evidence of demand. For example, it's a place where we, the audiences, can be introduced to new filmmakers or regional stories we may never have heard of before. The same applies to exploring unusual structures and experimentation. Different ways of telling stories all carry risk precisely because there may not be an obvious comparison. Of course some of those films will fail; that has always been a part of experimentation. But it's a risk worth taking, and one we should embrace. If every project increasingly needs evidence that something similar has already succeeded, we are going to create a strange contradiction. Because if everything needs a comparable success before it can be funded, where does the first success come from? This creates a dangerous loop where creativity within cinema risks becoming stagnant.
I have spent a lot of time recently arguing that independent film needs to get better at understanding audiences. This is something I still believe is vital. Filmmakers should be thinking about who might care about their work, where those people are, how they can discover the films, and how a relationship with them can begin before release. Because better audience intelligence could be enormously useful. But I think there is an important difference between using audience insight to connect a film with people and using audience data to decide whether a film should be made. Because the first can expand the possibilities for independent cinema, but the second could potentially narrow them.
This distinction may become even more important as AI gives us increasingly sophisticated ways of analysing audiences. Imagine being able to understand niche communities and identify connections between interests, analysing cultural conversations and predicting which audiences might respond to a particular project. For independent filmmakers struggling to demonstrate that an audience exists, that could be generally powerful. But predictions bring their own danger as the better we become at predicting what audiences are likely to watch, the more tempting it becomes to give them exactly that. Cinema needs room for something prediction cannot easily accommodate – surprise. It is vital that films surprise and challenge audiences if we are to keep them engaged and for cinema to have true meaning within the wider world.
None of this means abandoning data; it's quite the opposite. Better audience intelligence could help independent filmmakers build communities and strengthen funding proposals, as well as identify release opportunities, connecting films with people who might otherwise never discover them. I think the question is what we ask that data to do. I think perhaps the principle could be very simple. Use data to understand audiences, not to define their limits. There still needs to be space within film financing for judgement, instinct and risk. For a producer, a commissioner, a programmer or a filmmaker to look at something without the perfect, compatible title or proven audience and say, we do not know whether people want this yet, but I think they might. We must continue to use our human judgement and our willingness to take risks. That uncertainty can look uncomfortable on a spreadsheet, but it may also be where some of cinema's most interesting ideas begin. Because if we only fund films based on evidence and what audiences really like, how will we ever discover what they might love next?
