The economics of filmjust changed.A new frontier is open.

For a hundred years, the budget decided which stories got told. Now a small team can put real actors inside any world it can imagine, for a fraction of what it used to cost. Powderhorn Films is a new studio built for that frontier: contained sci-fi and horror, small casts, unlimited worlds, and a library of original films we intend to own.

For investors

Our plan

Build a library of original films.

We intend to make films, own them, and let each one add to the last. This is what we plan to build.

01 · ProduceOriginal films at a fraction of the cost.

Real actors, small crews and an AI-native pipeline, directed by filmmakers. Stories that budgets used to rule out.

02 · Own the libraryEvery film would be an asset.

Each title would join the Powderhorn Films content library, to be licensed and distributed, and to keep earning after it is made.

03 · Back filmmakersA pipeline of outside stories.

Filmmakers submit projects. We plan to select, develop and produce them with the filmmaker in the director's chair.

04 · Build the systemA platform, not just a slate.

The production system behind our films, which we intend to open to other filmmakers.

Read the investor case

Writers and filmmakers

That screenplay that never got made. Send it to us.

Films

Contained stories. Unlimited worlds.

We plan to make sci-fi and horror features with small casts of real actors, set in worlds built with AI. Our first films are in development. Announcements will appear here.

What we plan to make

Sci-fiOne ship. One survivor. A whole galaxy.

Stories that once needed a hundred-million-dollar budget to put on screen.

HorrorFear is cheap. Atmosphere is everything.

Contained, character-driven horror in places that should not exist.

HowReal actors. AI-built worlds.

Performances filmed. Everything around them designed, and we will say so.

First films in development. Slate to be announced.

For filmmakers

That screenplay that never got made. Send it to us.

Every writer has one. The script that was too expensive, too strange, or too small-cast for anyone to finance. Contained sci-fi and horror with a few real actors is what we plan to make, and the world around them is no longer the problem. Budgets decided which stories got told. Now the story does.

Bring us

An ideaA screenplayA short storyA storyboardExisting footageA proof of concept

Selected projects could receive

Development support
AI production resources
Mentorship
Financing
Production
Distribution support
A studio partnership

How it works

Step 1You submit.A logline, a synopsis and whatever you have in writing. Pages, frames, footage. You keep every right to your work, and our submission terms explain how we handle it.

Step 2We read. Properly.People who love films review every submission. If it's right for us, we'll reach out to talk.

Step 3We build it together.Selected projects move into development on our pipeline, with the filmmaker directing.

Submit a project

Show us your world.

Take your time with this. Tell us what the film is, where it stands and why it has to exist.

Technology

The filmmaker on top. Everything else serves the picture.

AI models improve every few months, and each one is good at different things. We built a production system that uses the best available model for each job and keeps what matters when those models change.

ContinuityThe same face, costume and light from the first shot to the last, across every model.

Creative intelligenceTools that understand story, coverage and performance, not just prompts.

Production knowledgeEvery film we make would teach the system how to make the next one better.

The pipeline

Fifteen stages. One director.

Human creative direction at every stage

What we're building

This is a roadmap, not a product list. These tools aren't available on this site yet. We'll open them to filmmakers as they prove themselves on real productions.

Planned · in development

About

It started with a film no one would pay for.

For a hundred years, wanting to make a feature film has meant the same thing. Raise millions of dollars. Find a way into an industry that is very hard to enter. Wait for someone to say yes. Most stories never get past that point. Not because they aren't good, but because they're expensive.

Then generative AI started to change the equation. Images that took an effects house months began to take days. A world that needed a location scout and a permit could be built. A small team could attempt what used to need hundreds of people.

Powderhorn Films was founded on that change. We intend to make contained sci-fi and horror films with small casts of real actors, in worlds that no longer have to be built or found. The first films are in development.

The question we were founded on

What happens when making an extraordinary movie no longer requires permission from Hollywood?

We think a lot happens. More films get made. Stranger ones. Personal ones. Films from places and people the industry never had a reason to visit. Some of them will be great.

That's why [STUDIO NAME] is being built as a studio first. We intend to make films, so our tools will be shaped by the work. We intend to back filmmakers, because the filmmaker is the reason any of this matters. And we're building for the long run, because the change is only beginning.

Founder

Glenn LaFaye

A technology has arrived that is changing the economics of film. The cost of putting a world on screen has collapsed, and with it the number of people a film needs. That is a large opportunity, and it is why Glenn is building Powderhorn Films. The other reason is simpler: he has always wanted to make films.

He studied directing at Queens College, trained as an actor, and has given notes on other writers' scripts. He has sat with writers and watched the same conversation happen every time: you can't put that in, it's too expensive; don't set it in that period, it's too expensive. The budget starts writing the script instead of the writer. Who gets to make a film, and what it becomes, is decided by a small number of people with access to money. Talent was never the problem. Permission was.

So he built his career elsewhere, and it has run on pattern recognition. He built it in equity trading, where he was successful. He applied it at the poker table, with appearances on national television. When generative AI became useful, he recognized it early and used it to build and ship software products. He also holds a patent pending in defense drone technology, and he has managed sports teams across New York City, where he was born and raised.

He has watched the same pattern play out in markets and in software: a new technology arrives, the cost of entry collapses, and the people who move first build what comes next. It is happening in film now, and this time the door is open. Powderhorn Films will make contained sci-fi and horror films with small casts, in worlds built with AI, where the writer and director decide what the world looks like, not the budget. There is nothing like a great film, and he intends to make more of them.

He lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut, with his wife and two children.

Team to be announced.

Investors

The economics of filmmaking are changing.

Investor inquiries

Why now

The studios are already doing this. Quietly.

Netflix · 2025Generative AI in a released series.

Netflix said a building-collapse sequence in The Eternaut was completed ten times faster than with traditional effects, and called the technology "an incredible opportunity to make films and series better, not just cheaper." Source

Lionsgate · 2024A studio model trained on 20,000 titles.

Lionsgate gave Runway its catalog to build a custom AI model for "capital efficient content creation." Source

The windowLibraries built now are the ones that get bought.

The majors will use these tools to cut costs on films that still cost tens of millions. Few are building a studio from the ground up around what the tools make possible: contained films, tiny casts, unlimited worlds, owned outright. That window is open now, and it will not stay open.

Every year the tools get better and cheaper, and the gap between what a small studio can make and what a large one can make gets smaller. The advantage goes to whoever owns a library of films before that gap closes.

The opportunity

The market has never been bigger. The cost to enter just collapsed.

Buyers spend a quarter of a trillion dollars a year on content. Audiences are watching more genre film than ever. And the price of putting a world on screen has fallen by an order of magnitude. That gap is the opportunity.

$248BSpent on content worldwide in 2025, with streamers the largest buyers at $95BAmpere Analysis

$33.6BGlobal box office in 2025, up from $30B in 2024Gower Street

12.1%Horror's share of U.S. ticket sales in 2025, up from 9.8% the year before and near its all-time recordSherwood, Comscore data

110MMonthly viewers on Tubi alone, the free streamer built on independent genre films, with 13 billion hours watched in a yearAdvanced Television, Aug 2026

Why contained genre

Small casts have always won. They were just stuck in the woods.

The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity were made with a handful of actors for a few thousand to a few hundred thousand dollars, and each earned hundreds to thousands of times its cost. They proved that story and atmosphere beat spectacle. But they were cheap because they had no world: a forest, a bedroom, whatever the camera could reach for free. What changes now is where that same two-actor story can take place. A dying starship. A plague city in 1665. A planet with two suns. The economics of Blair Witch, with no limit on the setting.

Market figures are from the sources linked above. Film grosses are public, approximate, and not a prediction of our results.

Historically

High production costs limited experimentation.When a film costs millions, only safe bets get made.

High capital requirements created gatekeepers.Access to money decided who got to direct.

Only a tiny share of scripts became films.Most good stories never reached a screen.

What a film costs

Cost first. Then the technology.

Every film starts with a budget. This is where the money goes in a traditional production, and what changes when we use AI tools.

Where the money goesTraditional productionAI-native production

Crew and equipmentLarge crew, cameras, lighting and rentals.A small team. Shots are generated and directed.

Locations and setsTravel, permits, construction and dressing.Environments built digitally.

CastActors on set for every shoot day.Real actors for key performances. AI extends the scene.

Effects and stuntsSpecialist crews and long schedules.Generated and composited, then checked by people.

RetakesA retake costs a crew day.A retake costs credits and minutes.

Post-productionEditing, color and sound.Same craft, faster rounds. Editing and sound stay human.

Where we compete

Big-budget looks. Small-studio cost.

Sets, costumes and effects are what make big films expensive. They are also what these tools do best. That is where we aim to compete, in the genres that have always needed the most money on screen.

Sci-fiWhole worlds, designed, not built.

Traditionally: built sets, practical creatures and effects houses.
For us: alien cities, ships and landscapes that hold the same look in every shot.

HorrorFear needs atmosphere, not a fortune.

Traditionally: creature builds, makeup effects and location dressing.
For us: monsters and haunted places at scale, where darkness and mood work in our favor.

PeriodAnother century, on a small budget.

Traditionally: sets, costumes, vehicles and crowds for places that no longer exist.
For us: streets, palaces and costumes designed digitally, with real actors in the lead.

Real actors and human direction carry the story. The technology builds the world around them.

Our goal, to be shown by our first test scene. We have not released a film yet.

How genre changes the price

Genre decides which costs dominate, and where AI helps most.

GenreTraditional cost pressureAI-native effect

Drama, dialogue-drivenLower. Few locations, cast is the main cost.Smallest savings. Performance and consistency are hardest, so real actors and more takes matter.

Horror and thrillerLower. Contained stories, small casts.Good fit. Mood and darkness are forgiving, and casts are small.

ComedyLower. Mostly people in rooms.Timing depends on performance, so real actors matter most.

ActionHigh. Stunts, vehicles and locations.Large savings on spectacle. Keeping motion consistent is the risk.

Sci-fi and fantasyHigh. Sets, creatures and effects.Largest savings. Whole worlds are built, not shot.

Period and historicalHigh. Costumes, sets and locations.Large savings on environments. Accuracy work stays human.

AnimationMedium to high. Labor-heavy.Natural fit for the tools.

Our view, not measured. We will publish our actual budget next to an independent traditional estimate when our first film is complete.

How we decide

Test-run a film before we commit.

Before we greenlight a film, we plan to make one scene of it: see whether the look, the performance and the story work, measure what it really cost, and then decide whether to go forward.

01 · Pick

A film we might want to make.

02 · Shoot one scene

One scene, made the way we would make the whole film.

03 · Judge the vibe

Does it look right? Does it feel right? Would we watch the rest?

04 · Decide

Go, change course, or stop. Nothing more is spent until the answer is yes.

A small spend on each idea, so we only scale the ones that work.

Our thesis

As production costs fall, the number of films worth making can rise dramatically.

Conceptual, not measured. We don't publish market figures we can't stand behind.

Generative AI can sharply reduce what it costs to make a film and expand what a small team can do. When the break-even point for a film drops, stories that were never fundable become viable. We intend to be a studio built for that shift from day one, not one adapting to it.

Three engines, one system

StudioMakes films and owns IP.Each production proves the pipeline and builds the library.

→

PlatformTurns the pipeline into a product.Filmmakers work on it. Every film makes the system smarter.

→

IncubatorFinds the next films and filmmakers.Deal flow for the studio. Users for the platform.

How we intend to participate

Studio-owned IPStudio
Production technologyPlatform
Filmmaker servicesPlatform
Production partnershipsStudio
Distribution economicsStudio
Global localizationPlatform

Let's talk

Investor inquiries.

We share materials with qualified investors directly.

What we can walk you through

The deckOn request
First-film budget, actual vs traditionalWhen complete
Platform roadmapOn request
Use of fundsOn request

The economics of filmjust changed.A new frontier is open.

Build a library of original films.

That screenplay that never got made. Send it to us.

Submission terms

Fifteen stages. One director.

What we're building

Glenn LaFaye

The studios are already doing this. Quietly.

The market has never been bigger. The cost to enter just collapsed.

Small casts have always won. They were just stuck in the woods.

Cost first. Then the technology.

Big-budget looks. Small-studio cost.

How genre changes the price

Test-run a film before we commit.

Investor inquiries.