We are a Writers’ Motion Picture Studio. Our primary goal is to produce engaging and compelling screenplays that will attract Canadian and international audiences. From the early days of movie production, studios went out of their way to create an environment that would attract writers and nurture their work. The studio system and the power behind the movies changed often. When Irving Thalberg (aged 20) daringly fired Erich von Stroheim (of all people!) during the production of "Foolish Wives", MGM became the producers studio. Other studios followed suit. As the industry developed, United Artists, founded by film stars, was for a time an actors studio, and Paramount later became known as a directors studio. Everyone yearned for product, and many studios built writers blocks to have the writers on site. Within this environment (but not exclusively, of course) Hollywood created a legacy of cinema with every kind of budget from “Ben-Hur” to “Blue Velvet”. All capable of being viable financially, and each capable of reaching a wide audience. None of that exists today. Perhaps the decline began when the industry was run by Hollywood agents, when during the late 60s, studio heads were being offered 'packages' which they either accepted or rejected, when their personal futures and the futures of the studios depended on the judgment of other entities outside of their control, and with a different profit motive. But there was another major factor. Following the considerable success of “Star Wars” (1977) and “ET” (1982), Hollywood has had an all-empowering obsession with the winner-takes-all dynamic that has created a bleak-looking landscape for the movie goer. The journey has been to make mega-budget movies which make more and more money, that fewer and fewer people watch. Now it would seem that Independent Cinema throughout the world has been decimated. And worse still, though many national and regional governments support indigenous production there is no infrastructure for writers to create commercially viable independent films. Casablanca seeks to create a new environment for writers that will nurture independent cinema in Canada and throughout the world, resourcing without doubt, the ever-increasing new sources of finance.