A New Coalition Wants Studios to Spend Half Their Original-Content Budgets on Indies

A group of talent agencies and producers has formed the American Entertainment Alliance to promote U.S. independent production, Deadline reports. The coalition's aim is legislative: it will push for a requirement that major studios and streamers allocate half of their original content budgets to indie production. Founding members include CAA, WME, UTA, Anonymous Content and Blumhouse. That is an ambitious ask — half of a studio's original-content spending is a structural change to how the largest buyers commission work, not a tax credit or a carve-out. Whether the coalition can move it is the open question; having the big agencies in the room at least means the people who package talent and the people who finance it are pushing in the same direction.