Auteur-friendly billionaire patronage weakens independent film infrastructure despite good intentions.

Evidence

But Megan Ellison is the more interesting sibling here, since she was anointed by Variety as “patron of the auteur,” including filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, 2012; Detroit, 2017), P. T. Anderson (The Master, 2012; Phantom Thread, 2017), Spike Jonze (Her, 2013), David O. Russell (American Hustle, 2013; Joy, 2015), Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk, 2018), and others. … Having inherited $2 billion on her twenty-fifth birthday, Megan established Annapurna in 2011 with a mission that “isn’t looking for fame, but is simply motivated to support talented filmmakers.” Even if Ellison did have the best of intentions upon starting this company, the long-term result has been the weakening of the overall infrastructure for independent film as it becomes ever more closely linked to the whims of the wealthy and the vagaries of finance. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 274

Categorization

• QUESTION: The causal mechanism is asserted (patronage weaker than infrastructure) but not demonstrated with evidence about specific films’ forms — worth testing against the reader’s causation-vs-correlation standard.
• XREF: Connects to the general thesis of ownership structure shaping artistic output; Annapurna’s auteur run is a concrete case of capital determining what films get made.