Pan America
There's only one American film out of 21 competition slots at this year's Cannes. The world's biggest film industry has never had a smaller footprint on the Croisette.
Hi everyone,
For the past few months we’ve been quietly working on something we’re really excited about.
It began with an idea: what if you could finish a shoot day, send Eddie your footage, and wake up to a rough cut?
Today, that idea is reality.
Eddie v3 is live.
The headline feature is Night Shift: text Eddie a link to your footage in Frame.io, Google Drive, or Dropbox - literally just send it to +1 650 444 9211 and by 8am the next morning you've got a rough cut, logs, and organized media ready to open in Premiere, Resolve, or Final Cut.
It also handles B-roll placement for docu-style projects now with interview soundbites, story structure, and B-roll sequences assembled automatically.
We built Night Shift because the best time to process footage is when nobody’s awake to watch the progress bar.
Get started by texting Eddie a hello: +1 650 444 9211
Or download Eddie AI > New Project > Show All Modes > Night Shift
If you’re at NAB next week, come find us at booth N1672 in the North Hall.
We’re also partnered with Reddit Post Pro for a Happy Hour on Monday evening - text NAB2026 to +1 650 444 9211 to receive the details.
Now, onto this week’s news.
— Shamir
This week:
Soderbergh defends using AI to visualize John Lennon’s last interview, a Samsung SSD tripled in price in 16 months, GoPro cut another 23% of its workforce, Sony Pictures lays off hundreds while pivoting to anime, and Spike Jonze dropped another brand film that makes you wonder why he won’t just make a movie.
Render Reel
Sony Pictures is laying off hundreds across film, TV, and corporate. The new CEO says it’s “strategic,” Pixomondo gets shuttered as part of the restructuring. The priorities: anime, game IP adaptations, YouTube-native content, and franchise extensions.
Alien 3: The Assembly Cut drops on HBO Max. The much longer, much better version of Fincher’s most troubled film. Two hours 25 minutes versus the theatrical’s hour 54. If you’ve only seen the theatrical cut, this is essentially a different movie.
Disney secretly owns an entire street in Burbank. Nearly every house on the east side of Keystone Street, directly adjacent to Walt Disney Studios, is Disney-owned property maintained to suburban perfection.
MUBI lost 200,000 subscribers after a Sequoia Capital backlash. Many subscribers and filmmakers objected to the investor’s ties to Israeli military startups. But MUBI rallied to a record 1.7 million subs in Q1 2026, has six films in Cannes, and just signed a co-financing pact with IPR.VC.
The Academy Museum is hosting a free Careers in Film Summit on April 18. Jessica Alba and Keke Palmer as guests, hands-on lighting workshops, professional headshots, voice acting with the current Porky Pig, and a career mixer with Academy members.
Netflix opened a 110,000-square-foot animation studio in Vancouver. Housing 450+ artists and expected to contribute $50 million CAD to BC’s GDP. Built on the Animal Logic acquisition, now fully absorbed into Netflix Animation Studios.
Cannes, sans America
The most notable thing about the Cannes lineup this year is what’s missing.
Out of 21 competition films, exactly one (1) was from an American director - Ira Sachs with The Man I Love, set in 1980s New York during the AIDS crisis.
That’s it.
The world’s largest film industry, represented at the largest film showcase on earth, by a single film about a crisis from 40 years ago.
The rest of the competition reads like a roll call of auteurs who’ve been competing for Palme d’Ors while Hollywood was making sequels: Almodóvar, Kore-eda, Hamaguchi, Mungiu, Farhadi, Pawlikowski, Nemes, Dhont. Three Japanese filmmakers. Three Spanish directors. Five French and an exiled Russian.
The put America’s exclusion into perspective, the last time Cannes had just one American film in competition was 2010. Last year there were six.
Cannes used to be where Hollywood directors proved they could be artists too with the likes of Coppola, Spielberg, Tarantino and the Coens all premiering major work on the Croisette.
Soderbergh is technically here too but in Special Screenings with a John Lennon documentary that might end up being the most talked-about American contribution to the festival which says everything about where American cinema sits at Cannes right now.
And Soderbergh, characteristically, isn’t apologising for any of it.
Soderbergh doubles down on AI use on John Lennon doc. He used generative AI to create surrealist imagery for the Lennon doc, saying it solved a creative problem traditional filming couldn’t. His response to backlash: “I found out from people looking at me like they’d seen my chest X-ray.”
GoPro is cutting another 23% of its workforce. 145 jobs gone, bringing the company down to roughly 486 people. Revenue fell 19% last year, stock has lost 93% of its value in five years and the founder even put $2 million of his own money in.
The team Bending Spoons fired now comes for Vimeo
Bending Spoons acquired StreamYard in 2024, fired most of the existing team and raised the prices.
Then they bought Vimeo and everyone braced for the same playbook but the former StreamYard crew decided to take matters into their own hands and build what comes next.
Introducing Livid…
A $10/month video hosting platform aimed squarely at the creators Vimeo is pricing out. Armed with 2TB cloud storage, password-protected sharing, and time-stamped review comments launching next week.
It’s backed by $10 million from StreamYard’s founders, so it’s not a weekend project that disappears in six months.
They built a one-click Vimeo exporter called LOVE that connects to your Vimeo account and migrates everything so you don’t even need a Livid account to use it.
Worth watching at livid.com, especially if your Vimeo renewal email has been giving you chest pains.
A Redditor built a free film financing waterfall calculator. No signup, no paywall, just plug in your numbers and see how returns flow through recoupment, profit splits, and investor positions. If you’ve ever stared at a waterfall spreadsheet and felt your soul leave your body, this might help.
Beeble launched an AI-powered rotoscoping tool. Supports 10-bit RGBA exports, PNG sequences, and batch processing up to 2,000 frames. Available now on the Beeble web app.
The storage crisis continues. A Samsung 4TB T9 portable SSD that cost $330 in December 2024 is now listed at $1,145 - a 3.5x increase in 16 months. Are we potentially entering an era where shooting on digital becomes as costly as film?
This week we’re watching:
Spike Jonze still hasn’t made a feature since Her in 2013, but brand films like last year’s Gucci The Tiger keep reminding us why we need one.
His latest is a three-minute short for On starring Zendaya. Featuring giant hands, and performers reshaping the set in real time in an all-white void.
It’s pure surrealist choreography and pure Jonze.
Retail Therapy: A watch for anyone still thinking about that Artemis footage
The AMIDA Digitrend NASA Tribute is a limited-edition watch inspired by Space Shuttle heat-shield design, which is a very specific aesthetic to build a timepiece around but somehow it works.
Only 100 of these watches exist, which means it’s less a watch and more a conversation starter for the person at the wrap party who definitely has opinions about the Artemis mission.
Available for $4420 here.