Molly Burnett Says: Stop Waiting for Hollywood to Give You a Chance

Sophia Leon S.

9 hours ago

9 min read

For a long time, Molly Burnett understood filmmaking through a fairly traditional lens. As an actor, it was: Get the audition. Get the role. Build the career. She grew up watching Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Halle Berry and imagining that kind of trajectory for herself. But as the entertainment industry shifted from films toward “content,” and the pandemic, strikes and changing economics accelerated that transition, Burnett began questioning how much of her career she wanted to leave in the hands of a system increasingly driven by business decisions.

Her answer was to stop waiting. Giant Void, her first producing project, became an opportunity to do exactly that. But producing the film was only part of the experiment. Burnett and the team built opportunities around it too, bringing students onto the set, creating a grant for future Colorado filmmakers and deliberately working with younger creatives. For Burnett, the question is no longer simply how to get a job in Hollywood. It is how to create the conditions for good work to exist in the first place.

We sat down with Burnett to talk about taking control, Hollywood’s growing aversion to risk, who gets the chance to become a star, and why the future of filmmaking might belong to the people willing to make their own opportunities.

SOPHIA: What made you want to stop waiting for the industry to give you the right opportunity and create one yourself?

MOLLY BURNETT: Hollywood historically has had a soft spot for disruptors, dating all the way back to Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford linking up to create United Artists because they wanted more control over their own work. So maybe I'm just following tradition, but I've always wanted to create, and I've always been a bit of a disruptor. But I only knew the linear path. I grew up wanting to be Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Halle Berry. That was the career that I thought was possible.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, it became less about film and more about content. Then came the pandemic, the strike, and Silicon Valley entering the streaming world. The whole business model of the entertainment industry got turned upside down.

I realized that I just didn't want to be solely beholden to people who are potentially making decisions because it's good business. And by the way, I can absolutely understand a business saying, "I want to put a certain person in this role because this will help with A, B, C, D, E." But I wonder if we're losing the ability to find new talent. Big chances are harder to take right now. And I just didn't want that deciding what I got to do next.

SOPHIA: You're not just acting in Giant Void, you're producing it. Did producing change the way you think about who gets opportunities in this industry?

MOLLY BURNETT: Absolutely. When the script came across my desk and I learned it was shooting in Colorado, where I'm from, I was immediately intrigued. Then I read it, fell in love with the story, and had an amazing conversation with the writer-director Michael Reisinger. It was a director-actor match made in heaven. The David Lynch to my Laura Dern, if you will. So I asked if I could be a producer.

I don’t think anybody expected me to actually produce because, one, I had no idea what the heck I was doing, and two, producing is hard! It’s not glamorous. It’s a lot of problem-solving, dot-connecting, putting out fires, and finding a way forward when there seemingly isn’t one. You’re basically fighting for your film’s life every day. Not to mention, we made this film for so little. The fact that it became what it became is kind of crazy. That's the magic of movies.

But producing also made me think about who gets to be in the room. Through Giant Void, our fellow producer Andrew Baird (who grew up down the street from me, and went to school with my brother) created a grant for future filmmakers in Colorado, so they can apply for money to film something there.

My team also approached film students at the University of Denver, offering them on set experience in exchange for college credit. Don't worry, the University was more than happy to oblige!

SOPHIA: Do you think Hollywood has become too focused on familiar faces rather than discovering people who could become the next generation of great actors?

MOLLY BURNETT: I think we're losing some of the ability to discover new talent. You can understand why a studio wants somebody more recognizable. It's still a business. If you know someone can help sell a film, of course you understand why that matters. But I think we've gone so far in that direction that we risk losing some of the discovery that makes this art form exciting in the first place. There is so much content being made, and casting directors might have thousands of tapes to go through. You can't even get frustrated because it’s gotta be exhausting.

But I do think something can get lost in that volume: the opportunity to really discover someone. And there's something beautiful about not knowing everybody in a movie. When you don't know the actors that well, it’s easier to get lost in the character. I think we're losing some of that.

SOPHIA: Hollywood is increasingly being shaped by tech companies and tech money. What do you think happens to filmmaking when the people financing it are thinking about data, algorithms and audiences rather than art?

MOLLY BURNETT: I won't put all the blame on the studios, because at the end of the day it's still just a business.

We understand the model. If you're putting somebody on a cover because you know they sell, that's a decision you can understand. But I wonder if we've gone so far in that direction that artistic integrity is starting to become collateral damage.

We're veering away from film being something you create, and toward film becoming something you acquire. Algorithms can tell us what people have already loved. But some of the greatest films gave audiences something they didn’t even know they wanted.

I’m constantly on the hunt for people who have the courage to go out there and make something out of nothing, because that level of risk taking is profoundly rare. Giant Void’s producing team, Michael Reisinger, Andrew Baird, and Adia Stark are some of the hardest working, most painfully talented, and creative artists you haven’t heard of yet. Well… now you have. And it’s just the beginning. The climb might be getting harder, but statistically speaking, the odds of breaking into this industry have always been almost impossible. So you just have to be a little delusional. You have to believe in it.

SOPHIA: When studios are trying to make the safest possible movie, what do you think gets lost?

MOLLY BURNETT: Risk. When a small film or show succeeds, instead of asking what made it connect, the instinct can be to identify the most marketable part of it: that particular person, that particular name, that particular circumstance. The Blair Witch Project came out, and suddenly everyone wanted to make sound footage horror films. I understand why that happens. This is an incredibly expensive business, and trying to make something from nothing is one of the hardest things in the world.

But when you’re only willing to invest in what’s already worked, you’re not just limiting the kinds of stories that get told. You’re limiting who gets the opportunity to tell them. Blair Witch is heavy on my mind because its co-creator Eduardo Sanchez has just joined Giant Void as an executive producer. We’re incredibly lucky to have him, and I think he recognizes something in our film that he understood with his own: the value of an original idea before anyone knows what to do with it.

And I think this conversation extends beyond the films themselves. The economics of being an actor have dramatically changed too. There used to be more of a middle class of working actors. You could do a couple of episodes of a show, maybe a commercial, make a made for TV movie, and actually build a life doing this.

That path has become much harder to sustain. And when fewer people can afford to stay in the business long enough to develop their craft, I wonder how much talent we’re losing before we even get a chance to discover it.

SOPHIA: What do you think makes a movie feel like art rather than a product?

MOLLY BURNETT: I think we're desperate for real things. Giant Void doesn't constantly rush to stimulate you. It’s just a real and beautiful film about loneliness and how we combat that, in a society desperate to keep us constantly stimulated and connected superficially. It's human beings having human feelings. Parts of life are monotonous. And that's okay. There’s beauty in it.

We're also living in a world where people are often watching something while looking at their phones. There’s an awareness across the industry now that audiences may be dividing their attention, and naturally, storytelling has adapted to that. But I think we’re craving something that allows us to actually get lost in it again. Michael, our director, wants to make films that let you breathe. And I believe Giant Void really does that. It trusts you to sit with people, with silence, with a feeling. It doesn’t mistake stillness for emptiness. I think we’re missing that.

SOPHIA: Do you think filmmakers now have to build their own ecosystems if they want to make the films they actually believe in?

MOLLY BURNETT: I won’t pretend like I know all the answers, but this question is particularly interesting to me. I do think it’s up to you now, but I also think it always kind of has been. So I choose to look at it less as “you have to” build your own ecosystem, and more as “you get to.”

We’re living in 2026. The technology exists to build your own world around the work, find your audience, connect with collaborators, and make something without waiting for somebody to hand you the keys. And I've become very protective of my little ecosystem. I have shows I'm pitching, podcasts, things we’re developing through my production company Something Hidden. I used to look at all of those as separate things. Now I realize they’re all a part of the same world I'm building. I still want great partners. I still want to walk into a room and pitch a show and have somebody say yes. But that “yes” isn’t the beginning of my ability to create anymore.

Is it harder? Absolutely. You have to wear a lot more hats. But there’s also something incredibly freeing about realizing you don’t have to wait for permission to start.

SOPHIA: If you could change one thing about how Hollywood discovers talent, what would it be?

MOLLY BURNETT: I wish more people got a chance before someone decided they were a sure thing. Not everybody needs to be a star. Sometimes you want to get lost in a film, fall in love with the world and the characters, without already having an idea of who someone is or what you’ve seen them in before.

There’s something really exciting about discovering someone. And then discovering them again in something completely different from where you first found them.

I think that's part of what we're trying to do. We want to find the people who haven’t been found yet - both in front of and behind the camera.

SOPHIA: What would you say to an actor, writer or filmmaker who feels like nobody is going to give them their chance?

MOLLY BURNETT: First, make sure you love this art more than anything. Because it's going to be amazing and beautiful and devastating. You just have to make sure you love it enough to keep choosing it. Then figure out a way to create something on your own. I think where people get stuck is they're like,

"Well, I'm not a writer," or "I don’t know how to do this."

Go find somebody who can and partner with them. I'm not a writer, but I'm a hell of an editor. I've partnered with writers who help me build things so we can figure out how to do it together.

Find a community of people who have the same intentions as you. And just start something and see where it goes. One of the good sides of the technology we have now is that there are more ways than ever to make something yourself. But you don't have to do it all.

I think that's where people get stuck. They think creating something yourself means doing everything yourself. And it doesn’t. Go find somebody a few artists that go, "Fuck it. Let's do this."

SOPHIA: What did you want Giant Void to prove was still possible to make?

MOLLY BURNETT: Maybe it's that you can still make something outside of the system. I've never really played particularly well within a system. To my detriment sometimes. You either love me or you… how do I put this lightly… fucking hate me? And at some point, I realized I just wanted to be in charge of making things. I have ideas I'm so excited about, and sometimes people have very legitimate reasons for saying no. But you can't get mad at somebody for saying no. If they say no, it's your responsibility to figure out another way to get to yes. Or don't. Go do something else. That’s okay too.

I think that's really what I'm trying to prove with Giant Void and beyond… You don't necessarily have to wait for somebody else to decide that you're allowed to create. Good is good - Full stop.

Make something you believe is good and find a way to put it out into the world. Then keep going. Because so much of this business is luck, you have no control over when that moment is going to come. But the question remains: Are you constantly ready for it to be your turn?