Mark Duplass is done waiting for the streamers to come around. Instead, he’s building a new path—one project at a time.

As the traditional television ecosystem continues to contract and consolidate, Duplass Brothers Productions is doubling down on an old-school idea with a new twist: make it cheap, keep ownership, and control the path to profit. It’s the indie film ethos—only this time, applied to television.

“We basically function like Warner Bros. TV,” Duplass said in a recent interview, describing how his company is acting as its own studio—developing, financing, and producing projects without going through traditional network or streamer greenlights. “We do everything and then we look at the value of these deals and decide which is best for us.”

That strategy is already bearing fruit. The Duplass-produced Penelope—a largely silent YA series starring Megan Stott—was written, directed, and funded independently, with Duplass using his Morning Show paycheck to bankroll the shoot. They then licensed U.S. streaming rights to Netflix and global rights to Fremantle, all while retaining full ownership. The series quietly broke into Netflix’s Top Ten and earned two Gotham Award nominations without a single marketing dollar from the streamer.

The same model followed with The Creep Tapes, which went to horror platform Shudder, and now with The Long Long Night, a dark comedy about two men contemplating suicide. That project, unable to land a satisfactory distribution deal, is being self-released through platforms like Kinema and Seed&Spark. “We have to be realistic here,” Duplass said. “Not a lot of people have heard of Kinema. But the show was so cheap for us to make that if all that happens is we bring some awareness to a new distribution model and maybe make our money back, we can live to fight another day.”

For Duplass, this isn’t about replacing Hollywood—it’s about creating an alternative to the legacy model that has become risk-averse and top-heavy. “Streamers aren’t going to spend $4 million on a Sundance indie anymore,” he noted. “But that doesn’t mean great work can’t get made. You just have to make it for $400,000 and figure out the rest yourself.”

That thinking echoes the Duplass Brothers’ roots in microbudget filmmaking, dating back to 2005’s The Puffy Chair, made for just $15,000. Today, they’re applying those same constraints—with a smarter backend strategy. “Companies normally pay X for things. They’re thrilled that Duplass Brothers can deliver it to them for 0.5X. I can make it for 0.25X and everybody wins.”

Still, Duplass is the first to admit it’s not easy. “We’re in the hardest moment of self-financing and trying to get your money back,” he said. “But if I can put a dollar into a project and get $1.25 back—owning it, controlling it, no creative interference—that’s a better place than I’ve ever been.”

He’s hopeful that a broader indie TV ecosystem can emerge—just as the Sundance revolution once reshaped independent film. Festivals like SeriesFest and ATX could become marketplaces, he suggests, with executives incentivized to attend or miss out on the next Penelope.

Duplass knows streamers aren’t the enemy—they’re just not the only game in town anymore. “If they can’t pay me the big whopping fee, it’s okay,” he said. “Let’s go nonexclusive. Let’s live to fight another day. Let’s chase success a different way.”

And while he’s open to exploring YouTube, Tubi, Patreon, and other platforms, he’s also clear-eyed about the tradeoffs. “The consistency needed for a successful YouTube channel? That’s anathema to a healthy, balanced life,” he laughed. “But who knows—we might find a model that works.”

For now, Duplass is staying the course—and building a catalog of creator-owned work along the way. “The more titles we own, the more those become greater than the sum of their parts,” he said. “That’s our retirement plan.”

Click HERE to read the full profile about Mark Duplass in this week’s Vulture