Is Cinema too afraid to fail?
16/September/2026
It might sound obvious, but nobody sets out to fund a film they think will fail. And it is getting easier for us to fund films with more certainty of success. We have growing audience data, existing IP, and increasingly sophisticated tools for predicting what people might watch. When we add recognisable actors and established filmmakers into the mix, it gives us a lot more certainty that one project may succeed over another. There is this very systematic and data-heavy approach, the right approach, when it comes to creating great cinema. By relying on this growing trend in film funding, are we risking a loss of an environment of uncertainty where some great creative pieces might come to light? After all, some of the greatest films have come about due to financial risk being taken. For example, the screenplay for Back to the Future, written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, was rejected over 40 times by every major studio in Hollywood, with executives routinely turning it down because they believed time travel movies were financial duds that simply did not have an audience at the box office.
In past articles, I have argued that independent filmmakers should be thinking more about audiences much earlier in the filmmaking process, and I still strongly believe that. It's vital that we have better audience research and stronger connections between films and people who might care about them. This infrastructure shouldn't forget independent films. Independent filmmakers should be front and centre in this development because we need better infrastructure to help independent films reach those people once they exist.
But I want to make one important distinction clear. Understanding who may care about a film is not the same as knowing whether that film will succeed. The first is about understanding your audience, and the latter is about certainty. Cinema has never been able to offer the latter. Because you can know who your film is for, you can research comparable titles, understand the market, build an audience before release, and create a thoughtful distribution strategy, but the film may still fail.
Equally, a film that looks incredibly difficult to finance on paper might suddenly connect with audiences in a way nobody predicted. I think part of that is due to how we all connect to films emotionally and personally, which is almost impossible to predict, as that connection comes from within the individual and their lived experiences.
But when it comes to financing, that uncertainty can be uncomfortable, particularly when significant amounts of money are involved. But I'm not convinced it is something we should be trying to remove entirely. The questions used to reduce that uncertainty are perfectly reasonable. Has something similar worked before? Or is there an existing audience? Or perhaps, does the genre travel internationally? These are all questions you would expect someone investing money into a film to ask. The difficulty comes when a lack of certainty starts becoming evidence against the project itself.
An unusual and truly new kind of film will naturally have fewer perfect comparisons. A new filmmaker will also have less evidence of previous success, if any. And a story aimed at an audience the industry has historically underserved may have less historical data demonstrating demand. But nonetheless, this does not mean that these aren't valid and important films to make. Because more often than not, in my opinion, they are the stories that need to be told. Because if everything needs proof that something similar has already worked, where does the first success come from?
This is where I think better audience infrastructure could become particularly valuable. It would be easy for us to assume that better audience data inevitably leads towards safer filmmaking, but I don't think it has to. Used differently, it could actually make creative risks easier to take. For example, imagine an independent British film that has an unusual subject, no obvious mainstream comparison, and a relatively unknown filmmaker. Traditional market data might make that project look difficult to fund and to build into a success. But better audience research might reveal something else. Because perhaps there are communities already engaged with the subject. Certain regional cinemas have successfully programmed similar work in the past, a group of festivals consistently attract audiences interested in this kind of storytelling, and there might even be charities, cultural organisations, universities, or other groups with a natural connection to what the film is exploring. Of course, none of that proves the film will succeed, but suddenly it reveals a clear route. That is a very different use of audience intelligence.
Rather than saying audiences prefer this, so change the film, it allows you to say the film is unusual and unique, but here are the people who might care about it, and here is how we could begin reaching them. For independent cinema, that could be incredibly valuable. Better audience infrastructure should not exist to tell filmmakers what to make, because at its best, it should help give more unusual films a credible route into the world. That is why I don't see audience development and creative risk as opposites. Done properly, one could help enable the other.
I want to make it clear that none of this is an argument for blindly financing films and hoping for the best. In reality, it's quite the opposite. Independent film needs better audience understanding. We need to see stronger distribution routes, and filmmakers should have access to better information about who their audiences might be and how they can reach them.
Projects should be given the strongest possible conditions in which to succeed, but perhaps that is where our expectations of certainty should stop. The goal of audience development shouldn't be to eliminate risk. It should be to help us take better-informed risks. Because as most people know, taking risks is a key part of the creative process.
There still needs to be room for a producer, investor, funder, or filmmaker to look at a project without a perfect comparable title or proven audience and say, 'We don't know whether this will work, but there is something here worth finding out.' Because uncertainty isn't necessarily evidence that an idea is bad. Sometimes it simply means nobody has ever tried it before. Finally, perhaps the question isn't how the film industry eliminates failure. It's how much failure we're willing to tolerate in order to discover something generally new and exciting. I believe that is something we should always strive to do if we are to continue creating films that push the boundaries and truly hold meaning within society.
