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Industry Beat
by Anthony Kaufman
Solutions Based: Who Should Save Independent Film?
A Real Pain, courtesy of Sundance Institute. The Sundance Film Festival is a time for movie watching, deal making, talent scouting and, often, much soul searching about the state and future of the independent film industry. This year in particular there was no shortage of media coverage and conversations about distribution and the sustainability of the independent business. As Sundance CEO Joana Vicente told The Ringer’s “The Town” podcast, “Everyone is thinking about solutions… How can we help and figure out how all these films find a home, and what’s our role in the distribution exhibition piece?”
For Sundance’s more commercial films—of which there were several this year, including the dramatic comedy with recognizable actors (A Real Pain), the crowd-pleasing documentary (Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story) and the viral horror breakout (It’s What’s Inside)—the market produced major acquisition deals that most likely led to investor profits. For many others, not so much. “Sundance has changed—gone are the overnight sales; things take time now,” admits one producer with a fiction film at the festival. “I do believe films will sell out of the festival,” he adds, “though it may take weeks or months.”
By now, the industry’s inherent problems have been widely enumerated. Among them, streaming companies aren’t acquiring the types of films that formerly defined independent film—the “discovery films,” as attorney and sales agent John Sloss of Cinetic Media calls them. Fewer arthouse distributors have “pay-one” output deals, and without these guaranteed ancillary revenues, it’s harder for these distributors to pay significant advances or commit to robust theatrical releases. Acquisition offers become fewer and less lucrative, which consequently makes equity financiers wary of investing in indie films in the first place—a vicious cycle.
As Sloss explains, “On the scripted side, there is an inescapable reality: This marketplace depends on what it always has: the ability of all-rights distributors to get reviews and word-of-mouth. Until the theatrical market comes back fully, that’s going to be a challenged area.”
“I think we’re facing a crisis in the independent film ecosystem,” echoes Jamie Patricof, producer of this year’s critics’ favorite Exhibiting Forgiveness. “Distributors are not willing to take risks. They are unsure of how to release the films and find audiences, so there is a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace.”
For Patricof and others, there is a glimmer of hope, however. “The audience today is bigger than it ever has been—the advent of streaming has led to hundreds of millions of potential customers that didn’t exist 10 years ago. [Distributors] just need to figure out how to reach them.”
Indeed, these two powerful countervailing forces—independent film’s financial decline at the same time as visual media’s audience explosion—sparked several gatherings, discussions and writings during and around Sundance to try to identify paths forward and opportunities for independent cinema.
Keri Putnam, former CEO of the Sundance Institute and currently a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow working on extensive reporting about the independent film sector, has identified two pioneering pathways: “Those who feel it is wisest to think about every film as its own engine that must build audience demand specific to its topic, filmmaker or genre,” she says, “versus building a fieldwide strategy that might include building new platforms or exhibition structures that can work for multiple films.”
Discussion of these two different tracks could be heard around town and in the weeks that followed. During this year’s festival, for example, the Sundance Institute conducted its own “Future Models” Think Tank, a private half-day event that brought industry leaders together “to seed potential action items and interventions to build a healthier landscape for independent storytelling,” according to the festival.
“Our job is to think of creative solutions,” says Sloss, who attended the Think Tank. He offered potential ideas such as P&A subsidies for theatrical distributors to level the playing field with streamers—as he calls it, “an industry-wide endowment to support the theatrical release,” funded by an organization like the MPA.
Sloss and others have also proposed investing in filmmakers for the long-term, rather than for individual films, so wary equity financiers would be more incentivized to support an unproven director knowing they would have a small financial stake in their subsequent projects. Similar to “celebrity bonds,” or rising sports figures being their own security investments, or NFTs, you could call it the “Christopher Nolan investment plan” (i.e., if you don’t make money on Following, maybe there’s a Dark Knight or Oppenheimer on the horizon). As Patricof argues to the wider industry, “If you don’t support this ecosystem, there is no Nolan, Tarantino, Gerwig, Soderbergh.”
Veteran distribution executive Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, which acquired such “discovery films” at Sundance as Kneecap and Between the Temples, also attended the Think Tank to strongly advocate for theaters to use data collection mechanisms to better identify and engage audiences. “Data is how the business works now, and I don’t believe the theaters know how to use it,” he says.
One way to combat the streamers’ dominance, as Bernard explains, is to collect the same type of data on consumer habits that has bolstered the digital behemoths, thereby understanding what specific audiences exist and what they want to see in every theatrical market. “If they go to a movie they like one week,” he says, “then the theater needs to recommend a similar film the next week.” Companies like Live Nation and Spotify send consumers alerts about upcoming concerts for their favorite bands. “Do movie theaters? No,” says Bernard. “But it needs to happen, and it can’t happen two years from now.”
Distributors, in general, complain that theaters don’t do enough to keep indie films on screens, something that Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League acknowledges. “For sure, we don’t keep films in theaters as long as distributors would like because, unfortunately, a movie will pop and then it will decay, but it’s important to be flexible,” he says, encouraging theaters to keep one show a week reserved for films looking to build word of mouth. “It’s an awareness game,” says League, pointing to getting trailers up for indies early in front of the right movies and curated programs such as Alamo’s “Drafthouse Recommends,” which have effectively boosted specialty pictures such as Past Lives and, more recently, How to Have Sex. “It’s about building communities that trust us.”
At another Sundance event, Christie Marchese, head of fledgling online platform Kinema, co-hosted a more tech-focused meeting of the minds with entrepreneurs and filmmakers. Several ideas were put forth, according to Marchese, including expanded collaborations with brands and philanthropists, as well as a closer look at TikTok as a potentially viable platform that caters to young audiences where they are and is beginning to expand into longer-form streaming with 30 minute content.
At Kinema, which recently added its own “Watch Now” TVOD platform to its in-person and digital event offerings, Marchese also believes they can “use data better,” she says. “We’re working with filmmakers to build relationships with their audience,” also noting they’ve collected specific demographic information and viewing habits from their roughly 120,000 users. “We’re not here to compete with the streaming platforms,” she continues. “We’re just looking to support artists being able to find an audience in a sustainable way and give the creators access to their data and payouts immediately.” (According to Marchese, a few filmmakers have generated between $100,000 and $150,000 in revenue.)
Others point to the potential of Letterboxd, the burgeoning online film fan site, as a mechanism to connect audiences with independent films. But even if Letterboxd could begin to help drive its more than 10 million users to more idiosyncratic cinema, that would likely only direct audiences to watch those films on the major streaming sites, reaffirming the status quo.
Dan Sickles, director of 2017 Sundance Grand Prize Jury winning doc Dina, has another idea. He recently launched DPOP Studios, whose focus is building out a blockchain-backed direct-to-audience network for filmmakers to own, distribute and monetize their work outside of traditional systems, comparable to other “creator economies” such as Substack and OnlyFans. “It’s about empowering creators with decentralized tools, such as open-sourced code and access to application interfaces, to build new networks that help stories find the audiences they’re looking for,” he says.
But unlike Marchese, Bernard or League, Sickles is less concerned about mobilizing audiences, at least for now, than building a place for filmmakers to exist completely independently of the current structures. “Since there is absolutely no home, no alternative, for a lot of filmmakers to monetize their work, that’s ‘ambulance sirens’ to me,” he says. “We need to build a sturdy home first, then we can show how exciting the party is inside.”
Industry consultant Brian Newman, who hosted a talk after Sundance in New York City called “Film Distribution in Crisis” and who is advising Sickles on DPOP, is heartened by such discussions and new endeavors. “I’m definitely more optimistic,” he says. “Even though it may only be the more commercial films that are working right now, and the field as a whole may be stumbling, two or three ideas might arise out of all these convenings and conversations that might be worthwhile.”
And before we commit to new models entirely, some filmmakers suggest the old-fashioned ways may still have a shot. Edwin Linker, producer of Ghostlight, a Sundance discovery with no stars and the second fiction film to be acquired during the festival, is encouraged by the fact that Ghostlight distributor IFC Films committed to a theatrical run—and “to build the film slowly, grow word of mouth, play a lot more film festivals and arthouses,” he says. “I’ve always believed independent film[making] is a cycle, and this should be near the bottom right now.” In other words, perhaps the only way to go is up. “If you’re making interesting content,” he adds, “I think you still have an outside chance.”
