AGC Studios chairman and CEO Stuart Ford is warning that the debate around the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is overlooking a major corner of the entertainment business: independent film and international television.
In a guest column, Ford says he read all 38 pages of the states’ antitrust complaint against the merger and found detailed attention to theater chains, streaming and cable distributors, including HHI calculations and box office concentration ratios. What he did not find, he argues, was a meaningful reckoning with how consolidation among major buyers could affect the independent sector.
Ford, a longtime independent film executive who trained as a lawyer before working for Miramax and later running IM Global and AGC, frames the omission as both a policy problem and a commercial one. His central contention is that the complaint examines what happens when the number of negotiating counterparties drops from five to four for exhibitors and distributors, but does not confront what that same reduction could mean for independent producers, financiers and international television suppliers.
“I read all 38 pages looking for my own sectors — independent film and international television production — and found mostly their absence,” Ford writes, arguing that the risk-takers who put creative and financial capital into projects before larger companies step in are largely missing from the legal analysis.
Ford Says the Indie Sector Is Being Left Out
According to Ford, the antitrust complaint is built around theater chains, streaming and cable distribution. Independent film, he says, “barely registers” as a category, while international television does not appear at all. He is careful not to blame the lawyers for pursuing the case they believe they can win, but argues that the resulting framework misses systemic issues facing two areas he describes as vital to the entertainment ecosystem.
Ford lays out two connected areas of concern: one economic and one creative. On the economic side, he points to the erosion of Pay-1 license fees for films and the reduced leverage independent television sellers have with U.S. streamers. Ford describes Pay-1 as the arrangement that allows a streamer to air a film after its theatrical window, and says it was once a reliable revenue stream that independent financiers and distributors could factor into project economics.
In Ford’s view, fewer studios means weaker Pay-1 arrangements. He also argues that the international film business feels the pressure because fewer major U.S. feature buyers reduce the validation signals that overseas broadcasters use when persuading local exhibitors to support a project. That, he says, chills the foreign presale market and the capital it can generate.
For television, Ford describes the challenge as a decline in licensing appetite from U.S. streamers. He argues that this has led to lower minimum guarantees from overseas distributors, which he says have historically played a structurally important role in deficit financing shows.
The Creative Pipeline Argument
Ford’s second concern is creative. He argues that independent film and international television have served as forums for original storytelling and new voices, outside the demands of franchise-driven studio slates.
To illustrate the point, Ford cites Christopher Nolan shooting Following for a few thousand pounds before he could get near a studio. He also points to Phoebe Waller-Bridge writing Fleabag for BBC Three before she was rewriting a Bond film. In Ford’s framing, those examples show how independent and internationally rooted systems can function as career on-ramps.
He also describes international television as structurally similar to independent film, with projects often built as co-productions anchored by one or two commissioning overseas broadcasters and a deficit-financing distributor willing to act as a financial counterparty.
Ford argues that this matters not only to independent companies, but also to the larger studio system itself. He says a significant amount of what becomes “studio content” is first developed and packaged by independent producers and financiers. In his description, independent producers may identify source material, attach a director, assemble a financing plan and bring a project to a studio or streamer once it looks viable and less risky.
Ford also notes that companies such as his own commit mid-to-high eight-figure sums to film and television productions. His argument is that if the economics for those companies are squeezed, the major studios and streamers may be weakening their own supply chain by reducing the number of places where new projects and talent can emerge.
A Warning About Talent Moving Elsewhere
Ford also identifies another potential beneficiary if Hollywood does not continue supporting independent film and international television: platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. He argues that if the industry lets the indie sector wither as a place for outside investment and talent development, those platforms can become the “farm system” for talent and audiences.
Despite the warning, Ford’s column ends on a more hopeful note. He says audiences, particularly younger viewers, remain hungry for authentic storytelling from independent and overseas markets, even as the landscape becomes more crowded with algorithmic feeds and AI-generated material.
His conclusion is that as the studio environment changes, Hollywood needs strategic planning that empowers independent film and television systems. For Ford, the path forward depends on keeping independent risk-takers creatively and financially incentivized to remain inside the entertainment ecosystem.
Ford is chairman and CEO of AGC Studios, which has a slate of film and television projects.