Entrepreneur across tech and entertainment. Built and sold companies in creative services and consumer products, led product & design at Amazon Video, co-founded a subscription business with Gary Vee, and launched creator-driven projects with various talent.
Pitch the audience.Get funded.
Introducing Watrfall for creators and our Inaugural Slate.
$100K
In development funds committed. Up to $5M in public funds.
Audience built-in on the Watrfall distribution platform.
8x
Keep 8x more in revenue compared to Hollywood.
Pitch Oscar-winning, Golden Globe-winning producers.
Apply as a creator
We read every pitch and respond within 8–12 weeks.
$100,000+
In development funds available to the top-voted projects of the first slate.
+ up to $5M in public funds towards development and production of the slate.
Watrfall First Slate: Kids Content- amount
- $100,000+
- target
- 5 projects
- genre
- Kids
All genres accepted now. Second and third slates are coming soon with more genres covered.
The platform
Built-in audience.
Watrfall’s global Watch platform launches Q3 2026. Projects on Watrfall are greenlit by the audience that will watch them, so distribution is built-in by the time you wrap. No theatrical bidding wars or studio gatekeepers. The viewers are already on the other side of the screen.
The math
Keep control. Keep the upside.
Earn 8x more.
The studio model hides the math. We’re showing ours. Watrfall’s revenue flow is fully transparent, giving creators a clear view of how each share is distributed.
The old way
Hollywood
Every hand takes a cut before the creator sees a dollar.
You keep
~$0.03
per dollar
50%
15%
12%
13%
7%
3%
Theaters 50%
Distribution fee 15%
P&A recoupment 12%
Production recoup 13%
Studio overhead 7%
Creator 3%
The Watrfall way
Revenue splits automatically between you and the backers who funded you.
You keep
~$0.25
per dollar
10%
5%
60%
25%
Platform fee 10%
Distribution & ops 5%
Backers (co-owners) 60%
Creator 25%
The difference
You take home ~8× more per dollar.
Methodology & citationsStephen Follows · Entertainment Partners · Guerrilla Rep Media · Wikipedia
Hollywood figures model a mid-budget studio feature’s theatrical waterfall, anchored to the $30M budget / $75M gross worked example documented by Stephen Follows. Exhibitors keep 43–49% of box office per his survey of 1,000+ film professionals. Distribution fees run ~30% of the studio’s rental share (~15% of gross). Remaining percentages cover P&A recoupment, production recoup, and studio overhead; bucket sizes vary significantly per film. The ~3% creator share is conservative relative to Follows’ example, where a $75M gross returned ~$1.8M to the production company (~2.4%). The same waterfall structure is corroborated by Entertainment Partners (distribution fees 10–30%, sales commissions 10–15% of license fees) and Guerrilla Rep Media (sales agent commissions 20–35% for independent productions).
And that 3% is often zero on paper. See Hollywood accounting for famous cases where nine-figure box office produced reported losses on paper: Return of the Jedi ($475M gross, Lucasfilm claimed the film never turned a profit), Forrest Gump (the author’s 3% net points were converted to a net loss through studio accounting), and My Big Fat Greek Wedding ($350M+ gross on under $6M, studio reported a $20M loss).
The outcome stats in the “Before / After” reveal later on this page come from a separate Stephen Follows study of 37,472 US feature films released 1999–2018: only 3.4% were profitable investments for their backers, and only ~10% reached a US theatrical release.
Watrfall splits are subject to final confirmation before launch.
The process
How
works.
Five steps from the idea in your head to revenue in your account. No studio notes. No back-end accounting games.
Submit
Pitch
Upload a short pitch. No studio redtape. Just you and the idea you want to make. No more development purgatory: you pitch, you wait, no-one responds. Once a slate opens for submissions, expect a response within 8–12 weeks.
Our first slate(s) will spotlight kids' content. We're still reading pitches across every genre, and they shape future slates.
Validate
Get Votes
Two stages decide what gets greenlit.
- Expert panel reviews and selects the strongest pitches.
- Audience votes on the shortlist to decide what gets made.
Greenlight
Get Funded
Once your submission has passed the vote of the expert panel and the audience, your project has the opportunity for the budget to be funded. No Hollywood accounting.
Produce
Create
Shoot with full creative control. Your team, your cut, your final say. We stay out of the edit bay and out of your inbox.
Distribute
Distribute & Earn
Your film ships and revenue flows. The fans who funded you earn alongside you as co-owners. Every dollar splits automatically. Every transaction accounted for.
The team reading your pitch.
A leading producer behind some of the most beloved kids programming. Founded, ran, and sold one of the world's most successful animation studios. Oversaw Teletubbies, Inspector Gadget, Caillou, Peanuts, and Strawberry Shortcake.
Golden Globe-winner and Emmy-nominated actor/producer with over 40 years in film and television. He's known for standout roles in Hellboy, Beauty and the Beast, and Sons of Anarchy, as well as extensive work in voice acting.
Academy-Award-winning producer (Bowling for Columbine). Former Chairman & CEO of WildBrain (market cap of $1.5B CAD in '17). Named Canada's Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017.
Watrfall vs
Traditional Hollywood
Ideation
Pitch your idea and let real audiences tell you if it works. You find your viewers before you shoot a frame.
Traditional Hollywood
Pitch meetings with a handful of executives whose taste you have to guess at. Most projects die in development.
Funding
Funding unlocks when you hit your target. Every dollar tracked on-chain. No back-end accounting games.
Traditional Hollywood
Studio cheques come with notes, reshoots, and final-cut clauses. Independent money comes with clawbacks.
Royalties
You keep your share of revenue from day one. Backers earn alongside you as co-owners, with every transaction accounted for.
Traditional Hollywood
Net points after distribution fees, marketing recoup, studio overhead, and holdbacks. Most creators see roughly three cents on the dollar.
Watch Platform
Release directly on the Watrfall Watch platform. Your fans already know the project. They were in on it from the start.
Traditional Hollywood
License to a streamer, hope for a slot, hand over the audience data, and hope the algorithm finds them.
A dedicated funding ecosystem designed to bridge the gap between script and screen
Ship your film.
Get paid.
Keep control.
Pitch directly to Watrfall and the audiences who will fund you.
No studio gatekeepers, no Hollywood math.