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Show Notes
Films Not Made — the show where filmmakers exhume the projects they were desperate to make. Each conversation traces the spark, the pitch-room war stories, the "wait — they almost cast who?" reveals, and the very real reasons it all fell apart. Then we run the original materials — scripts, lookbooks, casting boards, notes that aged like milk — through our AI pipeline to generate a fresh deck, a speculative trailer, and the occasional beautifully wrong hallucination that sparks new insight (or quiet panic).
In our trailer, hosts Amy Hobby and Avi Zev Weider preview the vibe: candid, funny, and oddly therapeutic. They jump from Kool Moe Dee pitches and brutal Hollywood notes to a meta argument about apocalyptic tech — capped with drop-in feedback from their own AI "Creative Executives," who don't run the show but never miss an opportunity to weigh in. Through it all, the same irresistible question keeps surfacing: Could it be made now — or are we just giving these ghosts a little closure?
Show Transcript
Films Not Made
Trailer
Amy Hobby: Hi, I'm Amy Hobby.
Avi Weider: And I'm Avi Zev Weider. And this is Films Not Made, where we invite directors, producers, and writers and talk about their favorite projects that were developed and never went into production.
Michael Tully: We did go to Kool Moe Dee with the pitch.
Amy Hobby: No way!
Loren Hammonds: I want to hear that story.
Amy Hobby: There was also a great book called My Lead Dog is a Lesbian that we really liked and considered optioning that.
Anne Hubbell: Yes.
Robert Edwards: I remember my agent saying, "The writing is great," which I realized is not a compliment in Hollywood.
Dan Mirvish: "Just change the margins." I was like, this is my big Hollywood agent's advice?
Anne Hubbell: We're just going to sell this and sit back and take a check and watch everybody else do it.
Kent Osborne: I would love to have an executive blow me off that much. I can't even get that far. Sounds amazing.
Avi Weider: And then we take their original materials, we put it through our own AI pipeline, and we create a new deck and trailer.
Amy Hobby: And it has a new tagline, "Rocky meets Moonlight."
Michael Tully: I feel like this should be on an episode of The Studio now.
"How to Tame a Fox" Trailer Audio: "Several biology textbooks will be withdrawn and destroyed."
Heidi Ewing: That's a hard fucking pass right there.
Amy Hobby: Thank God for humans.
Robert Edwards: Can I just point out the irony of using one apocalyptic humanity-destroying technology to describe a previous humanity-destroying technology.
Avi Weider: It's meta ironic.
Avi Weider: Then to round it out, we have a quick conversation with our own Creative AI Executive.
Oliva: Just a heads up, he does have a hard out today.
Finn: I'm tracking how the new deck pivots the tone and keeps the story anchored to endurance.
Meredith: Honestly, I'd say six figures is ambitious for a contained indie.
Joe Maggio: I think you're talking about a different screenplay.
Tom Hall: This is too realistic. I can't handle it.
Amy Hobby: Could this project be made now? Should it have been made back then? Or are we just giving our guests a little closure?
Natalie Weiss: You're like, "I just need to talk to my ex for some closure." And we're like, "Yeah, right."
Avi Weider: Welcome to Films Not Made.