Underexposed is a weekly ad-free film publication celebrating great underseen cinema and moviegoing culture. Paid subscribers get exclusive essays, videos, and more - while supporting the future of movie culture.
Dear Stakeholders,
As I mark the 101st edition of Underexposed, I am proud to report twenty-two consecutive months of transformational growth.
While legacy film media companies remain constrained by outdated metrics such as profitability and market demand, Underexposed is taking a page from Silicon Valley, and focusing on what truly matters: vibes-adjusted enterprise value.
Accordingly, I am proud to announce an estimated valuation of $47 billion.
How did I arrive at this figure, you ask, when the global market is worth only $112 billion? The same way every big tech company has: by aggressively projecting exponential growth into verticals that do not yet exist - but inevitably will.
The core product will remain unchanged. Every Friday, I’ll recommend movies that deserve more attention, and deliver essays and sometimes interviews with notable filmmakers. For premium subscribers, there will be Guest Picks, Off The Shelf recs, and other shareholder-exclusive benefits.
At present, the market values these offerings at approximately the price of a gas-station coffee. This is wildly underpriced. Only as the surrounding culture collapses will the true value of this enterprise emerge.
So, what’s ahead for Underexposed? Here’s the roadmap:
Phase One: Slopocalypse Now
Over the next few years, tech companies will slither deeper into the film industry, as with this week’s AI deal between A24 and Google. To compete, legacy studios will merge into mega-corps, which will release fewer movies, take fewer risks, and slurp their stagnant pools of IP dry. Adult dramas, offbeat comedies, and other popular genres will be deemed unviable, even as tentpoles and retreads continue to tank. Meanwhile, movies that are critical of our “free speech absolutist” tech lords will be snuffed out - as with Amazon dropping Luca Guadagnino’s nearly-completed Sam Altman biopic, and Tim Cook reportedly shutting down Cord Jefferson’s Gawker series.
But none of this will matter - not here, anyway. Underexposed will remain a small, stubborn garden of human-to-human curation. Increasingly, the films featured here will emerge outside traditional systems, from artists who own their audiences and distribute it directly. From this, new film companies will be born, and an Underexposed-branded micro studio may very well be among them.
Phase Two: Market Capture
It’s hard to fathom, but the institutions we venerate today won’t necessarily be here tomorrow. Brought low by arrogance, ballooning overhead, and withering value propositions, many may soon be butchered by private equity and sold for parts. Universities will continue to slash their faculty as enrollment dwindles, while once-beloved media companies will replace human talent with AI, only to face skyrocketing token costs that exceed employee salaries. Gradually or precipitously, they will crumble.
The digital platforms that replace them will fare little better. After years of algorithmic manipulation, extraction, and enshittification, we will soon find ourselves unable to deny it: the internet isn’t fun anymore, and in fact, it has ruined our lives.
For many, it will be too late. While they drown in a sea of slop, the survivors will crawl onto the warm, sandy shores of a few remaining islands - Underexposed being one of them - where human artistry and dignity are still valued. And this, my friends, is when things will get fun again.
Phase III: Global Conquest
Once the media landscape has been thoroughly scorched, investors will have no choice but to come knocking, and by 2033, Underexposed will complete its evolution from Substack newsletter to vertically integrated cultural conglomerate.
Our offerings will include:
The Underexposed Ambassador Program. At Underexposed, community has always been our greatest competitive advantage. Members will earn prestige points by introducing overlooked films to friends, who introduce overlooked films to more friends, creating a decentralized, community-powered discovery engine that our attorneys assure us is not a pyramid scheme.
Underexposed Academies. The teachings I’ve handed down to you these past hundred weeks will serve as the core curriculum. Students will ponder the power of the “pillow shot.” They will investigate the great mysteries, like the vanishing of Ron Howard’s Cocoon and who killed the erotic thriller. Most of the time, they’ll just shut up and shoot something.
Underexposed Cinematic Wellness Center. Modern life has left millions spiritually exhausted. Imagine a holistic retreat where guests heal their frazzled dopamine receptors through guided screenings and discussions. Resident spiritual advisors might include filmmakers like Susan Seidelman, Carson Lund, Nina Conti, Kent Jones and more. (Wish to enroll in a sneak preview? Subscribe to our YouTube channel.)
Underexposed Cruises. Luxury voyages where cinema lovers watch their favorite movies together, and reenact them. Our maiden voyage will be James Cameron’s Titanic: The Experience. Guests choose from a variety of accommodations - Steerage Economy to First-Class Aristocrat Suites - as they relive the doomed voyage, complete with iceberg encounter, set to the lilting croon of Celine Dion. For travelers seeking a more pretentious excursion, our Fitzcarraldo Expedition begins with a leisurely steamship voyage up the Amazon before guests disembark to heft the boat over a mountain.
Underexposed Theme Parks. Why should the big popcorn movies have all the rides? Our guests will buckle into a rickety Repo Man roller coaster, brave a hallucinogenic, non-narrative Naked Lunch dark ride, and languidly ascend the My Dinner with Andre Drop Tower.
This is only the beginning.
Cinema stands at an inflection point. Next gen film culture will not be built by conglomerates optimizing engagement metrics. It will be built by thousands of communities, each organized around genuine enthusiasm. And Underexposed will be the connective tissue.
Critics will note these $47 billion ambitions exceed the company’s current annual revenue by several orders of magnitude. But the value of Underexposed has never resided in its balance sheet, and maybe never will.
Or will it?
Thank you for believing before the analysts did.
Respectfully submitted,
Alex Rollins Berg
Founder, CEO, and Acting Director of Global Synergies
News Reel
Hollywood is still telling stories based on assumptions about society that are increasingly outdated, writes : “The larger a studio becomes, the more layers of decision-making get added between a creative idea and the audience. By the time a movie reaches theaters, it often feels like it’s responding to a version of culture that no longer exists.”
88% of moviegoers identify their local independent cinemas as their community’s cultural hub, reveals a survey of over 27,000 U.S. moviegoers conducted by . But what’s this about only 12 percent of them getting movie recs from Substack?
“To condemn an artist for having risked the wrong morality is to believe that the point of the art is to brainwash its audience into accepting whatever’s stated there, as simple fact. It presupposes that the audience isn’t capable of encountering something transgressive, or immoral, without being swept along by it, converted to its statements as if to a malevolent political program.” - on the need for a counter-culture.
This week’s Underexposed Movie Pick:
Trouble in Paradise (1931, Ernst Lubitsch)
A charming master thief operates in Venice, where he meets his match in Lily, a plucky pickpocket with loose morals. The two fall in love, team up to infiltrate the house of a wealthy perfume heiress, and rob her blind.
I had the rare pleasure of first watching Trouble in Paradise with a roaring audience, packed in a movie theater, some 90 years after its release. The film’s acid, cheeky, pre-Code charm holds up remarkably well. Lubitsch called it his best work - and to think, we almost lost this picture for good. After the Production Code started being enforced in 1935, Trouble in Paradise was pulled from circulation for decades. Today, you can watch it on Apple TV and elsewhere.
Off The Shelf
Nicholas (Blu-)Ray! Initially dismissed by audiences and critics, Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life has come to be recognized as one of the defining American films of the 1950s.
Thank you for reading Underexposed. Please share it with all of the movie lovers in your life, and consider a paid subscription to support these efforts. Or maybe make my day by buying me a 101st edition coffee.
See you next Friday,
Alex
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