It seems every few years we hear the same narrative: Movies are dead, television is dead, the entertainment industry is dying. It’s true less studio movies are being made and that tv streaming has disrupted traditional broadcast television, but to say the industry as a whole is dying is to mischaracterize it. “The business” as we know it is simply evolving.

As traditional Hollywood continues its metamorphic adaptation to new technologies and new types of creators, one company—Adim— is incorporating both blockchain and fandom to power a new wave of content creation.

The creator-driven platform co-founded by It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia multihyphenate Rob McElhenney is building a "writer's room for the future,” one the company believes will help break down barriers of traditional Hollywood and alleviate the boundaries of ageism, finances, and the stale system of "paying your dues." Instead, the platform offers a space for casual collaboration on projects that can potentially grow into larger studio projects—all by utilizing the power of blockchain for security and ownership.

“We’re really focused on building out tools and technology to allow creators to launch, manage and monetize projects together—essentially co-creating new IP—and we provide tools that allow fans to participate in that creative journey,” Melissa Kaspers, CEO and Co-Founder of Adim said to me in a recent interview. “The concept was originally inspired by the traditional writer’s room—a group of people coming together to ideate and co-develop a tv show—though in our case, it can be any creative project.”

The platform allows creators to tokenize intellectual property (IP), which unlocks distributed royalties for co-creators and facilitates licensing infrastructure, payment rails to distribute royalties, and on-chain attribution of project and story contributions.

Adim also implements a reputation system which tracks and attributes points for creator and fan contributions that drive content development.

“Our hope is that our model unlocks creative innovation because people have easier access to build onto IP,” Kaspers said. “You see now a lot of people reposting, remixing and resharing on social media platforms but the original creators are rarely attributed back seamlessly, making the flow of funds back to those original creators extremely difficult.”

But with Adim, creators of projects are established as the creators and they have complete control over their IP.

“That’s a really important piece of it,” Kaspers said. “Suppose you have a project that’s finished and you don’t need any collaborators  but you need marketing support. You could come onto Adim and give away a small share of the project for marketing support, strategic support, distribution—whatever it might be—and we help enable the onboarding of those people to the project.”

If creators then want to expand the universe around their project, they can do that too.

“It very much has the rails of a GitHub for IP,” Kaspers said. “People can build off of and license your work for commercial or noncommercial use, or people can collaborate and contribute directly to your project. You’re deciding if a contributor’s work is going to become part of your official story and then rewarding contributors in a way that you see fit.”

Like with an open source project—where developers can come on and add their own iterations upon existing code, with the project lead having final say—so too will creators have final say if they wish to incorporate any creative additions from others to their project.

“We’re seeing a lot of interest in early NFT projects that had art and community and are now looking to build out a narrative universe,” Kaspers said. “We have a really interesting creator in Nyla Hayes, who’s building out a pre-school series—similar to Bluey—based on her Long Neckie Ladies. We’ve also had a really cool creator—Jah Reynolds—who’s a traditional filmmaker using AI to develop his Helmet City project. What we’re seeing is traction amongst these really innovative, next generation storytellers who are coming in with a certain set of skills and looking to enhance and augment with their community.”

The platform also launched Cammy and Mike, an original idea conceived in the early days of the company from one of its first creator rooms. The eight minute short provides an example of how community and creators can build upon a universe in exchange for ownership and royalties in the IP.

“Web3 studios have the potential for success by leveraging blockchain technology's unique advantages like decentralized decision-making and innovative funding models like tokenized projects and revenue sharing,” Reynolds said to me over email. “By partnering with theater chains, web3 studios can modernize ticketing through tokenized systems, introduce exclusive digital collectibles linked to movie releases, and accurately track box office sales, ensuring fair revenue distribution.” 

But how the metrics of ownership and royalties exchanged for creative input manifests is completely up to the creator of a specific project, and it remains to be seen if fractionalizing creative equity is enough of a motivator to sustain quality artistic participation in platforms like Adim for the long haul.

For its part, the company remains optimistic that its early traction will translate to a burgeoning creative ecosystem.

“What we’re hoping with Adim is to create a new framework and paradigm where the early supporters and ambassadors of a project can lift up new projects to get them seen and get past the point of a cold start because they’re invested in that project and believe in it,” Kaspers said. “In a world with AI and TikTok and all of these different platforms, there’s going to be more and more content but how do you pick out the ‘good’ content?  How do you find the gems? Ultimately, community and fandom will be the factors that separate it.”