Welcome To The Garden

This is our mission

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Social media is devouring legacy media. We’ve all seen the data. Its scary for me. Because I am an incumbent.

And yet I’m hopeful. Eyes wide open. Watching it all change in real time. But hopeful.

Today, I’m launching a Substack called Open Gardens. This space will explore the impact, influence, and potential convergence of social media and legacy media— all through the eyes of a seasoned producer stepping into new media territory with fresh curiosity.

Just as there are countless creators flooding YouTube with videos, there’s no shortage of Substacks dissecting social media. But Open Gardens isn’t for the algorithm-chasing masses—it’s for legacy media filmmakers and executives staring down the industry’s shifting landscape, trying to make sense of where they fit, how they can evolve, and where the real opportunities lie.

And I’ll be discovering these opportunities right alongside you.

There are two ways to look at the changes in the traditional entertainment industry—through the lens of fear or the lens of opportunity. Fear comes from the Innovator’s Dilemma, the classic trap where success breeds complacency.

Companies get so locked into what worked in the past that they fail to see the train barreling toward them.

For legacy media, it’s obvious. Studios and networks built their empires on blockbusters, big ratings, and linear dominance.

Then streaming showed up—scrappy, lean, and hungry—and started eating their lunch.

Now, as the content landscape shifts toward platform-agnostic creators and community-first strategies, it’s happening all over again.

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@lafilmschoolDo you agree? ✨

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When the greatest filmmaker of our time tells young storytellers to embrace the future—let go of theatrical, abandon old forms, and create with the tools of today—you know the game has changed.

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If you’re too busy chasing The Here & Now and refusing to pivot, you’re going to get outpaced by someone nimbler and way less precious about the rules.

As a producer, I’d spend two years developing and producing a TV show—crafting the story, assembling the team, pouring everything into it. If we were lucky and our instincts were right, it would find an audience.

And then, after ten weeks on a streamer, it was gone. Just like that. That audience? Gone too.

One of my shows—an exec from the streaming platform told me off the record—lost all of its audience after the first season and had to rebuild from scratch the next.

It’s like opening a restaurant: finding the perfect chef, designing the menu, building out a beautiful space, launching with a full house for ten amazing weeks… and then shutting it down.

A year later, you rebuild it from the ground up and hope for the same success.

Until recently, I ignored social media as a creative force. I disdained it, belittled it, and wrote it off as a marketing tool for our big fancy shows. That all changed in one defining moment.

I was wrapping up a year-long certificate course at Berkeley, which culminated in three days on campus. In one class, a professor asked us to share our greatest fears about how AI could disrupt our industries. Entrepreneurs from FinTech, EdTech, and beyond raised their hands, and one by one, he reassured them, showing how AI could transform their businesses.

Then I raised my hand. I explained I was a film and TV producer and laid it out: AI, with its ability to accelerate content creation, is going to supercharge creators—what we used to call influencers—allowing them to pipe more and more content directly to consumers. And as a result, it’s going to accelerate the erosion of attention away from Hollywood’s walled gardens.

The professor nodded and said, “We’ve seen this throughout history: when the walled garden is breached, it falls. Taxis with Uber. Banks with FinTech. Telecom with cell phones. Walled gardens always come down.”

Then he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Yeah… you guys are f**ked.”

It hit me like a brick. Humiliating, sure, in front of the peers I’d connected with during the year of remote learning.

But it opened my eyes. I started to see signs of a middle ground between these two opposing forces. (And let’s be honest—with Goldman Sachs predicting the creator economy to reach a half-trillion dollars by 2027, one side is clearly bigger than the other.)

I’ve spent my whole career focused on U.S. Latino and Latin American communities, including running production for Pantelion, the then-existing Latino division of Lionsgate.

Ten years ago, I realized I needed a deeper focus—a lightning rod within that massive audience who could bring that disparate audience together. That’s when I approached Eugenio Derbez, an old friend and collaborator, to launch 3Pas.

As a TV and movie star, director and producer, Eugenio had dominion over a large segment of both the U.S. and Latin America. With him, we could build a business that started with him as the star but eventually became a brand—one that kept feeding that audience.

In a sense, Eugenio was already a creator, building a community. We started with what he had and grew it through movies, TV, and his social media platforms. When we began, he had 4 million followers. Today, he has over 85 million.

We had already done this. We were thinking like a creator—finding a community and feeding it content. I just didn’t realize it at the time, because no one in Hollywood was looking at content this way.

Legacy studios have spent the past five years chasing trends instead of building communities. You don’t need another TikTok strategy; you need a reason for people to care.

When I first heard about ‘platform-agnostic’ entertainment, I thought it was just another buzzword.

But then I looked at what’s actually happening in the trenches—creators like Mr. Beast bypassing traditional studios to make content that travels from Instagram to Amazon to Shopify. That’s not a trend; that’s the future.

Social media platforms don’t care about preserving art, and studios are struggling to keep up. But somewhere in that chaos lies the potential for something incredible.

I’m confident there will always be large audiences craving the premium content Hollywood creates—the challenge is figuring out how to make it, monetize it and distribute it in new ways.

Hollywood has two key advantages: capital for content (for now) and the deep bench of talent to create premium content.

The real question is, how do we merge the agility and audience-building models of social media with the power to produce top-tier storytelling? And as we explore further— we will discuss how younger audiences aren’t focused on quality the way Hollywood is.

Its about the quality of the EMOTIONAL CONNECTION.

Timing is everything, and the road is littered with those who jumped in too early—none more infamous than Quibi. Yet, there are clear examples of success and an undeniable opportunity for legacy media to seize.

But the legacy machine has to move quickly—while its defining assets still present opportunity.

Here’s to breaking the old models—and maybe, just maybe, building something better.

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