Palantir insiders aim to make Hollywood great again

A group of Palantir insiders close to co-founder Peter Thiel are raising funds for a new film studio — one that aims to reawaken the bolder, more unapologetically American spirit of Hollywood classics like “The Searchers” and “First Blood.”

The privately circulated pitch deck for Founders Films — led by Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, Palantir employee Ryan Podolsky, and investor Christian Garrett — states the problem bluntly. After years of cultural drift, “movies have become ideological, more cautious, and less entertaining.”

First, rebuild what he calls the American Cinematic Universe, a category that includes ‘Red Dawn,’ ‘Rocky IV,’ ‘Top Gun,’ and ‘The Hunt for Red October.’

Couldn’t agree more.

The American Cinematic Universe

So far, those involved are all playing it close to the chest. But we can surmise a few things from Sankar’s public remarks to date.

Founders Films has a twofold strategy: First, rebuild what Sankar calls the American Cinematic Universe, a category that includes “Red Dawn,” “Rocky IV,” “Top Gun,” and “The Hunt for Red October.” Solid list.

Step Two: Take Hollywood back altogether — from foreign influence; from heavy-handed, overtly divisive progressive ideology; and perhaps, if he pulls it off and if we’re lucky, from the sort of suffocating, entirely numbers-driven decision-making that for too long has hamstrung real filmmakers and pushed millions away from cinema altogether.

Very interesting indeed, then, that from the otherwise confidential slides of the circulating pitch deck, we get this bit, which sounds like a promise: “Back artists unconditionally, take risk on novel IP.”

Now you’re talking. America needs to back artists. Period.

The return of fun

Of course, not every last American is going to care deeply about every one of Founders Films’ potential projects, but that’s the case with every movie house and every movie! American filmgoers and cinephiles have for almost two decades lived in an ever-shrinking box populated only with childish drivel, rehashed/remixed IP, and (face it) corporate progressive propaganda.

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Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

With luck, Founders Films garners investment, takes its shot, and succeeds. And you should want this, even if you don’t find yourself on the so-called tech right or have any interest in Palantirian sorts of worldviews, for the following reason: The pendulum must swing for any real cinema to flourish again. Set aside high-minded cinema for a moment: When was the last time you saw a fun (or funny, for that matter) movie in a theater?

Founders Films, operating like a depth charge, may be just the thing to shake everyone out of their tedium and agitate the medium. Progressive narratives have dominated long enough that the entire exercise, even for progressives, has been emptied of vital spark.

Vision first

Hollywood needs the proverbial shot in the arm, even if it hurts: a genuine quasi-ideological counterweight, placing the director’s or writer’s vision behind the wheel. Lefties have fought for this exact treatment since the 1970s.

That kind of shake-up may be the absolute best thing that can happen to Hollywood, regardless of politics. A plurality of voices apolitical, political, etc., should have a shot at prying open the death grip of progressive control over the arts. That alone may change the entirety of the game.

Milius-pilled

We don’t know much at this point. There are rumors that Elon Musk is the shadows of the project. A variety of military-based or -adjacent projects have been floated, and Sankar, writing at Substack, has hailed the work of legendary director/writer John Milius. If that’s the direction Founders intends, cinema could heat up fast.

Can we assume the incredible technological power running under the Palantir umbrella is reapplied into film? Likely so. If (wisely) they bring in organic, human-oriented leavening agents in the form of true artists (less so the compliant, meek striver) to offset the use of AI, the impact on the industry and creatives nationwide could be powerful.

While there’s a baked-in audience for defiant right-coded material and Founders should serve them, with luck, Founders Films will consider the whole of the American film ecosystem and take a broad, long-term approach — launching propaganda-geared works designed to counter ideological opposites, sure, but also backing art “unconditionally” to open up the whole creative spectrum.

Let everyone take a shot. Allow non-ideological cinema a chance to flourish again: indies, new IP from dangerous artists, edgy comedy, the works. This was the ’80s, the zeitgeist behind all those right-coded classics. Bring it back.