By: Angelica Burlaza
Jacobi Productions co-founder Nicolas Jacobi argues that audiences are tiring of franchise reboots and formulaic sequels. With PARLOUR and an untitled intelligence feature in development, he’s betting that original, character-driven storytelling is where the next wave of demand is heading.
Nicolas Jacobi has a theory about where the film industry is headed, and it isn’t more of the same. As co-founder of Jacobi Productions, he’s watched the industry lean hard into remakes, reboots, and long-running franchises for years, first from inside the music business, later from the production side in Los Angeles and now Vancouver. His take: audiences are getting tired of it.
“We need authentic content, not the same structured stories being renewed over and over,” Jacobi said, describing the thinking behind Jacobi Productions’ slate. Rather than chase a proven formula, the studio has built its early lineup around two originals: PARLOUR, a neo-noir thriller adapted loosely from Mary Howitt’s poem “The Spider and the Fly,” and a still-untitled feature based on a real covert intelligence operation.
A studio system he knows from the inside
Jacobi didn’t arrive at this view from the outside looking in. He spent over a decade in the music industry as a record label executive and talent manager, producing and directing music videos along the way, before a 2021 opening led him to produce full-time. Those years gave him a front-row seat to how entertainment companies chase proven formulas once something works, and how quickly that instinct can flatten out originality.
It’s part of why Jacobi Productions’ first planned project, a Toronto-set television series he believed streaming platforms would compete over, was shelved rather than rushed. The writers weren’t ready, and Jacobi opted to wait rather than push out something half-formed. That decision opened the door to PARLOUR, which was introduced to him by a longtime friend who was co-producing the shelved series.
Betting on originality as a market strategy
Jacobi believes the shift toward original stories is more than a creative preference; it’s a market opportunity. Streaming platforms and financiers want material that feels different, he said, but few are willing to risk money on something unproven. That gap is where he sees room for smaller, founder-led studios to move quickly. He points to recent breakouts like Backrooms and Longlegs, along with projects such as Obsessions, as evidence that low-budget, original genre work is finding real audiences and real returns, outside the traditional studio formula.
“I’m looking for new content that has something original about it, but I know it has a market I can target,” Jacobi said, “in order for us and other financiers to be confident to invest in and distribute.”
That thinking runs through both projects on Jacobi Productions’ current slate. PARLOUR, co-written by James D. Brown and Craig Katayama, is a thriller in the neo-noir style, visually driven and grounded in moral ambiguity, with only a hint of dark comedy beneath its serious core, a different kind of thriller from the conventional mold. The untitled intelligence feature, developed alongside German investigative journalist Peter Müller, trades franchise-style spectacle for a grounded, real-world account of covert operations.
Opening the door for new voices
It’s a philosophy shaped as much by his years managing talent and directing music videos as by his time in film. Jacobi describes the goal less as finding the next franchise and more as opening the door to new voices who might otherwise be passed over in a studio system built on repetition. Zoya Jacobi, his co-founder, plays a central role in that filtering process, evaluating scripts and concepts before anything reaches the slate.
With PARLOUR targeting a Fall 2026 production start in Vancouver and the intelligence feature moving through development with Müller attached, Jacobi Productions is positioning its slate as a bet that audiences are actually asking for original stories, not sequels, next.
