Many fast-food chains and restaurants will now allow you to buy a meal with Bitcoin. There is a cryptocurrency for Trump supporters and a cryptocurrency that’s certified kosher for Jewish people. There’s a video game from Dapper Labs that allows you to earn CryptoKitties during gameplay.
It was only a matter of time before crypto got its first film.
Mogul Productions, a new film production company launched in February 2021, has announced that the first ever “crypto movie” is in post-production and will be released soon solely to users of the Mogul app.
Confused? Let’s back up.
A self-described DeFiFi platform, or decentralized film financing platform, Mogul Productions has created an app that allows users to interact with its movies and products by purchasing and spending Ethereum-based STARS Tokens, which are the app’s proprietary currency.
The first movie produced by Mogul is “Bonded,” described on the website as “the story of a Mexican teenager whose dreams of becoming a soccer star are derailed when his mother dies. He is smuggled across the border with the promise of a better life but instead ends up being sold to a sweatshop in downtown Los Angeles.”
The script for “Bonded” was selected by Mogul Productions through its app. Mogul says it wants film lovers, aspiring filmmakers and cryptocurrency fans to work with one another to create a new kind of financing for motion pictures.
Mogul wants its app to become a one-stop-shop for both sides of the filmmaking process: the production and the response from fans.
The company encourages its users to submit screenplays on the app. Those submissions can then be voted on by the app’s users through spending the Ethereum-based tokens. The tokens are used not only to vote on preferred scripts, but to purchase NFT products related to Mogul films and redeem rewards for those films like exclusive screenings.
As for “Bonded,” Mogul’s first film, the story was inspired by a Pakistani child activist of the 1980s named Iqbal Masih. He was a child labourer who broke free, became a spokesperson for the Bonded Labour Liberation Front, which fought the Pakistani government to change labor laws, came to America to receive awards and met politicians, and was then murdered upon his return to his home country.
Writer and director Mohit Ramchandi said that he wrote the script back in 2011, and had to change the setting from India and Pakistan after he was told by a producer that the success of “Slumdog Millionaire” meant he had to “find something else.”
That’s when Ramchandi sent the script to Pierce Brosnan’s production company in LA. During that process, he learned from Brosnan that the LA fashion industry uses child slaves as well.
Ramchandi did his research and learned that 160,000 Latin Americans are used as slaves in underground sweatshops in Los Angeles.
“Nobody cares about the issue,” Ramchandi said in an interview. “Most people don’t care. They are so involved in their own lives, and that really affected me a lot because my only motivation for making this film was that I wanted to shed light on this issue in America.
Though it hasn’t been released yet, “Bonded” is unlikely to be the last movie made by Mogul. On the app, users can now vote for the next movie to be produced by Mogul. It’s the first time users will have the opportunity to actually weigh in on what gets made by Mogul.
They can vote for three choices: bayou horror movie “Devilreaux,” spy thriller “MR-9,” or action movie “Terminal Station.”
Learn more about Mogul and how you can get involved on their website.