Founders Films, a new film company with ties to the tech and defense sectors, has launched with a mission to reignite patriotism in Hollywood through compelling, pro-American storytelling. The project, backed by veterans of the tech and defense industries, argues that there’s a growing demand among audiences for bold, patriotic narratives that celebrate American ingenuity, heroism, and values.
According to the company’s pitch to investors, the entertainment industry has become more ideological and cautious, with fewer films capturing the spirit of American greatness. This shift, the company says, has led to declining viewership and production costs soaring, leaving a gap in the market for content that resonates with both American and international audiences. The commercial success of films like ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ and series like ‘Yellowstone’ suggests that audiences are still hungry for these types of stories, the sources noted.
Founders Films plans to fill this gap by producing a range of content, including historical dramas and big-budget blockbusters, all centered around themes of American greatness, ingenuity, and heroism. The project has already attracted significant interest from investors and collaborators, with one project already sold to a major studio. The company aims to produce its own films, collaborate with other production companies, and finance the development of other projects that align with its mission.
Among the proposed project ideas are a film dramatizing the evacuation of the World Trade Center on 9/11, a movie about the ‘botched withdrawal from Afghanistan,’ and a multi-season spy thriller exposing ‘China’s plans to replace the United States as the dominant global power.’ The company’s leadership team includes Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer at Palantir, and Ryan Podolsky, a veteran and former Palantir employee.
Sankar, who immigrated to the U.S. as a child from Nigeria, has often expressed gratitude for the United States and has criticized Hollywood’s reluctance to confront its adversaries, particularly the Chinese Communist Party. He argued that the current state of Hollywood is compromised by Chinese influence and that a new wave of artists is needed to revitalize the American cinematic universe.
Founders Films asserts that its mission is not partisan, but rather focused on creating compelling content with broad appeal. The company’s vision is to return to the ‘American cinematic universe’ that shaped Sankar’s love for America, as he recounted in a blog post, where films like ‘Red Dawn,’ ‘Top Gun,’ ‘Rocky IV,’ and ‘The Hunt for Red October’ inspired a sense of national pride. The company believes that to break out of Hollywood’s current cultural malaise, the studios must embrace a new narrative that centers on America’s strength and values.