Bitcoin Pioneer Nick Spanos, Zack Weiner & Joe Gallagher
Zack Weiner and Joe Gallagher launched Manhattan Movie Studio in 2021 with the goal of creating a decentralized system for making films. Their reason for this concept was frustration with the traditional structure of film studios, which they see as heavily bureaucratic and unfair to filmmakers in getting their movies financed and distributed.
Their grievances with the studio system are similar to those of the writers’ and actors’ unions, which were waging massive labor strikes at the time this article was written. The entertainment industry’s latest model, streaming services, are at the heart of the issue.
Weiner was thrilled when his 2016 horror film, Uncaged, was bought by Netflix. The filmmakers received upfront money; they also assumed they’d receive royalties and data on viewership, but that never happened. Their further dealings with streamers were no better. “We weren’t even asking for money most of the time, we were asking for data. They wouldn’t give that.”
Joe Gallagher was cast in Weiner’s 2019 movie, Pledge, which aired on Hulu with similar results. “It’s hard to really understand what impact the film’s having because there’s not that transparency,” Gallagher said. Frustrated with the industry, he left acting and went into data analytics, which gave him greater understanding. “Zack and I dreamt up an idea for a project that we could just pick up a camera and make ourselves. And that launched, for me, anyway, the ethos that I want to bring with the movie studio: Let’s just go and make it; we don’t need permission. Permission-less has become a theme of this and it’s something we’re going to continue to drive forward to the future.”
Decentralized Financing via Bitcoin: Everyone Can invest.
To help achieve their goal of democratizing the funding of movies, Manhattan Movie Studio partnered with Nick Spanos, founder of the Bitcoin Center, who came up with a revolutionary way to finance films through bitcoin. With this approach, Weiner and Gallagher aim to change the closed system in which only the wealthy and connected can provide funding and attach their names to movies. “Anyone with a phone can be a producer and get a legally binding contract to have your name featured in the credits.”
Spanos has developed a system in which you can invest in a film via your phone. Potential investors are invited to screenings of new movies or those that are in need of more money to finish and use the technology to invest in the film in a legally binding way. Those who invest get their bitcoin back, hopefully with profits, and they get credits in the movies.
Bitcoin Center: How it Works
An investor puts bitcoin into a digital vault which is given to a traditional bank as collateral and exchanged for dollars, which the filmmaker gets to finance his or her film. The banks accept bitcoin, which is a digital currency, unlike cryptocurrency, web 3.0, blockchain and other types which Spanos calls “dead-end detours” over the last three years. “The SEC green-lit Bitcoin and Bitcoin’s the only thing Hollywood people will touch,” he said.
Kyra Sedgwick & Method Man
“And it works. We’re getting money,” Weiner said. Bitcoin-financed projects they have coming out include Bad Shabbos, starring Kyra Sedgwick and Method Man, and Magic Money, about a multi-million-dollar Nike sneaker deal gone awry starring NBA player Evan Mobley. Another is the George Lopez holiday comedy “How the Gringo Stole Christmas”, due out in December.
Nick Spanos, Bitcoin pioneer
Spanos founded the Bitcoin Center in 2013 and located it 100 feet from the New York Stock Exchange, yet his path to that glittering corner of Manhattan was far from conventional.
Founder of the Bitcoin Center in 2013, the first physical bitcoin exchange, Nick
Growing up in a blue-collar immigrant family on Long Island, Spanos displayed technology wizardry from an early age, building his first computer at age 13. “Back then, you couldn’t buy a personal computer, so I built one from a kit with a solder iron,” he said. “And then I discovered girls and cars and Bill Gates,” he added, laughing. He later studied studied computer science and aeroSpace engineering at the New York Institute of Technology.
Spanos had a varied career, including an early-1990s stint as general manager of the legendary New York nightclub Webster Hall. He was a commercial fisherman, worked in real estate, and toiled in political campaign data for a long time. “I did all of Ron Paul’s data. I managed his phone banks. I had over 1,500 people on any one day on the phone banks and crunched the numbers with data scientists and we’d micro target.” This was before computers. He managed data for presidential candidates including Paul as well as Paul Tsongas, George W. Bush and others, and later wrote campaign management software and sold or rented it to politicians,
“I’ve done everything and mostly at the same time. I don’t sleep much.”
None of his candidates won their elections and by 2010 Spanos felt as though he’d thrown his life away, having spent 20 years working on losing political campaigns. Then he interacted with Bitcoin and decided that the currency should be his candidate. “They can’t destroy Bitcoin on election day; there is no election day. That’s why I opened the Bitcoin Center.”
Spanos was the subject of the 2016 Netflix documentary Banking on Bitcoin, chronicling the establishment of this new currency. He has also been featured on CNN, the BBC and other media outlets.
