Life is busy. Labubus and general hellishness abound (coincidence?!?!). It can be tough to stay up-to-date on film industry news, profiles, analysis, and advice. That’s why we’ve curated some essential reads you may have missed over the past month. So take some time to catch up with this month’s good reads!
This Month’s Good Reads (August 2025)
Meet Hollywood’s Sober, Christian, Pro-Wrestling Secret Weapon (via John Jurgensen for The Wall Street Journal)
The King of Summer Movie Season 2025 is… Tom Cruise Brad Pitt Paul Walter Hauser!
Why Most Indie Filmmakers Fail After Their First Feature (and How to Be the Exception) (via Elliot Grove for Raindance)
How to avoid the sophomore slump.
How Two Songwriters From K-Pop and Musical Theater Built This Summer’s Surprise Chart Smash (via CT Jones for Rolling Stone)
KPop Demon Hunters (and its soundtrack) take over the world.
I Was a Movie Editor. Fighting for Workers’ Rights Made Me Quit the Industry and Go to Law School. (via Jacob Shamsian for Insider)
One documentary editor’s unionization efforts go the extra mile.
Weapons Continues the Wild Comeback of the Most Unexpected Horror Subgenre (via Bill Bria for /Film)
Hagsploitation is back, baby!
What Types of Films Thrive on Low Budgets But Struggle with More Money? (via Stephen Fellows)
Is your genre low-budget-friendly?
He Sold His Likeness. Now His Avatar Is Shilling Supplements on TikTok. (via Sapna Maheshwari for The New York Times)
The (AI) actor’s dilemma.
A Famed Director Tried to Build a Fan Base for His Movie. It Was Awkward. (via Shirley Li for The Atlantic)
Can a lecture tour help Francis Ford Coppola turn Megalopolis into a cult classic?
Quick! If You Make Short Films, Try These 9 Tips for Your Next Festival Submission (via Alison Foreman for IndieWire)
Advice from the artistic director of Salute Your Shorts.
Why I Made a 45-Second Movie — and You Should Too (via Emily Goss for MovieMaker Magazine)
From micro-budget to micro-runtime.
SAG-AFTRA Confronts a Fran-less Future (via Katie Kilkenny for The Hollywood Reporter)
The battles that await the union’s next president.
The Bubble That Could Save Cinema (via Ellis J. Sutton for Notes from the Studio)
Substack, risk-taking, and thinking outside the box.
A24’s Empire of Auteurs (via Alex Barasch for The New Yorker)
The indie film stalwart is getting bigger.
The Role(s) of a Lifetime (via Alan Siegel for The Ringer)
How struggling actress Naomi Watts became Betty (and Diane) in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
How the ‘Unreleasable’ Toxic Avenger Finally Made It to Theaters (via Roxana Hadadi for Vulture)
Filmmaker Macon Blair on the shelving (and unshelving) of his Troma Studios reboot.
In case you were ignoring us (aka blatant self-promotion)
Filmmaker Interview: Kate Beecroft, writer/director/producer of East of Wall
The docu-fiction filmmaker on making a feature with professional and non-professional actors.
Videos worth watching
Everything you wanted to know about dog acting (via Alex Boucher)
How ’bout you? Read anything good this month?
——
If you’re an independent filmmaker or know of an independent film-related topic we should write about, email blogadmin@sagindie.org for consideration.