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Industry Beat
by Anthony Kaufman
Hits & Misses 2024: Case Studies of Six Sundance 2024 Premieres
Ghostlight In September, Variety declared, “Indie Films Are Staging a Box Office Comeback,” touting the success of the films Longlegs, Thelma and Late Night with the Devil as signs of life for a segment of the industry “crushed by COVID, strikes and streaming,” as reporter Brent Lang wrote. “And while it’s a long way from the arthouse heyday of the 1990s and early aughts, the turnaround is impressive.”
Maybe not that impressive.
Citing the more than $100 million global gross of Longlegs, a NEON-produced wide-release serial-killer movie, as some kind of indie darling misses the point. Thelma and Late Night are better gauges of the industry, and their grosses were around $10 million. And while those are damn good ticket sales for the pandemic age, these numbers are an exceedingly rare occurrence nowadays for independent film acquisitions—of which Thelma (bought by Magnolia, more below) and Late Night (purchased by IFC Films) are among the exceptions. Such successes, as AMC Networks/IFC Films head Scott Shooman admits, “aren’t as consistently spread out across the same number of movies as before.”
Yet, echoing Variety’s optimism, Shooman and others describe a far less dour portrait of the market than in recent years. With indie studios going bigger and broader theatrically out of the gate, Shooman says, “We had our best opening weekend in our history [Late Night]; NEON had their biggest success ever [Longlegs]; A24 had their best opening of the year [Civil War]—the indies are doing well in providing alternative content, and that’s what the indies are there to do. So, as studios make fewer movies, more four-quadrant movies, and jettison a certain audience, I really believe it provides us an opportunity.”
On the higher-budgeted, star-driven end of the specialized industry spectrum, 2024 will, indeed, produce some major prestige movie events (right now, Focus’s Conclave, NEON’s Anora and A24’s We Live in Time are all breakouts). This bodes well for everyone. But, again, the more pertinent question for independent filmmakers is what is happening to films made completely outside the system.
At Sundance, independent film’s most important marketplace, we can still see some positive developments. Of the 10 films in Sundance’s 2024 Dramatic Competition, only one film, Esteban Arango’s feature Ponyboi, was not acquired. Two entered Sundance with distributors attached (NEON’s Stress Positions; Searchlight/Hulu’s Suncoast), but most of the films found distribution the old-fashioned way: a positively received Park City premiere, followed by acquisition offers in the days (A Real Pain, Dìdi) or weeks (Between the Temples, Good One, Exhibiting Forgiveness, In the Summers) that followed. Just two years ago, this model was severely in doubt.
Distributors also see an exhibition landscape that is surprisingly consistent. “What remains from the old ecosystem is that theatrical is still primary,” says Michael Barker. The veteran co-president of Sony Pictures Classics continues, “Even if the box office is a lot less than it used to be, the theatrical impression on the public’s minds causes quality movies to have a very long take in revenues in home entertainment, international, airplanes and so on.”
According to Barker, big theater chains such as AMC and Cinemark are also becoming more receptive to independents than in the past. “The circuits have realized they can take advantage of these new opportunities,” he says. “They can’t just analyze the highest opening weekends in the same simplistic way. They’re paying attention to the weekdays, which sometimes do better than the weekends.”
Distributors also point to examples of the traditional older arthouse audience “slowly” coming back to theaters this year, as well as a more cinephilic younger audience. “One of the silver linings of the pandemic,” says Barker, “is that young people stayed home and watched lots of movies and became very film-savvy and sophisticated in their tastes.”
Indeed, one of this year’s truly indie success stories defies the calls of a flailing market for indies: Outside Sundance, the scrappy DIY $150,000-budgeted comedy Hundreds of Beavers grossed more than $500,000 at the theatrical box office, helping the film gain enough momentum to have a presence and an audience on TVOD.
Documentaries are a different story. With the exception of Focus Features’s Pharrell Williams LEGO doc Piece by Piece, which earned more than $9.7 million at the box office in 2024, successful theatrical docs were all right-wing and faith-based propaganda, led by the anti-DEI doc Am I Racist? ($12.3 million) and Jesus Thirsts: The Miracle of the Eucharist ($2.9 million). Meanwhile, the fate of Sundance’s docs bore out this trepidation.
Many of Sundance’s nonfiction films were made by streamers, and several of the independent documentaries in competition weren’t even picked up, including Gaucho Gaucho and Love Machina, as well as Eno and Union (which both self-distributed). Even Chris Smith’s much-loved DEVO doc remains in limbo 10 months after the festival. Coming into next year’s Sundance doc market, perhaps nonfiction-makers can take solace in Netflix’s newsy purchases of Daughters and Skywalkers: A Love Story, and Warner Bros’ $15 million payout for Superman: The Christopher Reeves Story, but they were all purchased strictly for digital libraries (and awards recognition). “We can’t bury our heads in the sand,” admits Carolyn Bernstein, EVP of National Geographic Documentary Films. “Obviously, it’s a different theatrical doc market than when we had Free Solo.”
Even so, the future of independent film (if not the United States) looks a bit brighter than it has in recent years—though independent producers are still complaining louder than ever that their own sustainability remains in doubt as budgets stay down and costs remain up. To help ponder the path forward, consider these six case studies from Sundance 2024 (in order of release date) and what became of them beyond the Park City bubble.
Ghostlight
Release dates: June 14 (theaters), July 30 (VOD)
Budget: $477,000
U.S. box office: $697,229
Widest release: 502 theaters
Financing & Production: After the success of their 2019 film, Saint Frances, filmmakers Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan are set to go into production in 2023 with a $7 million film called Mouse, written by O’Sullivan and fully financed by Anita Gou’s Kindred Spirit. But on May 23, as a result of the SAG strikes, they lose their cast. A week later, they pivot to a low-budget drama about a construction worker who joins a local production of Romeo and Juliet called Ghostlight with the intention of keeping much of the same crew but on a much lower budget—about $500,000.
In September, Thompson writes an email to his producer, Eddie Linker, outlining his and O’Sullivan’s plan to make Ghostlight with just nine crew members and minimal production resources. Thompson writes, “We are cramming 123 scenes, 29 speaking roles and 17 locations into 21 shooting days and a sub-500K budget. And [we] chose to do this, from the outset, because [we] know that we can.” Just before their October 1 start date, the film is fully financed by 18 individual executive producers including O’Sullivan, none of whom put in more than $50,000. “We had to shake every tree that we had been cultivating since I was making microbudget movies in 2013,” says Thompson. “It was a constant battle between [producer] Chelsea Krant building the budget and us looking for financing, so we all had to meet in the middle. We deferred writer’s and director’s fees,” he adds. “It’s hard to remember that filmmaking shouldn’t be a hobby.”
On October 31, production wraps; on November 3, they submit a 130-minute assembly cut to Sundance; on November 9, they get an official invitation.
Sales & Distribution: Just a week after their premiere in Park City, the filmmakers announce a deal for North American rights, including a theatrical commitment, with AMC Network’s IFC Films and occasional partner Sapan Studio (which is owned and run by former AMC Networks executive Josh Sapan). “It was in a different tier from the other offers, and they were talking about theatrical and more ambitiously about the film,” says Thompson, who also points to the two companies’ commitment to last year’s French hit The Taste of Things. “They were going to give us The Taste of Things treatment.”
Without name stars or an easy marketing hook, AMC Networks/IFC Films head Scott Shooman committed to the film on a purely emotional level. “I looked around the room and saw everyone weeping,” he says. “The last time I remember experiencing that kind of emotion at a screening was at Fruitvale Station.”
Though IFC Films is known for its day-and-date VOD releases, the company plans a fairly aggressive 502-screen theatrical rollout in its second weekend, which earns a so-so $265,944. “A lot of those theaters fell off quickly,” admits Shooman, “but it settled into a nice life playing in the arthouse markets where it did well.” Per-theater averages remain mostly consistent into its run, and, according to Shooman, the film performs “well beyond their expectations,” setting up the digital release well. With a 99 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 100 reviews, Shooman argues, “Quality is the entry point: It’s just got to be really good, and when you’re in that upper echelon, it really moves the needle.”
Recoupment: According to Thompson, the film is in the black, thanks to the domestic sale, along with some international deals from Visit Films, both to airlines and major territories such as Spain, France, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, which “brought us along further,” he says. “The streaming numbers were better than they expected, and the film stayed in the public consciousness longer than I expected.”
This past fall, the filmmakers also went back and shot Mouse independently, without any studio or indie-studio involvement, according to Thompson. Adds O’Sullivan, “Ghostlight continues to open doors for us and shows folks what we can do even with limited resources.”
Thelma
Release dates: June 21 (theaters), July 19 (TVOD), November 15 (SVOD, Hulu)
Budget: Less than $3 million
U.S. box office: $9,001,958
Widest release: 1,290 theaters
Financing & Production: In 2021, producer-actress Zoë Worth and her producing partner Chris Kaye are looking for a new project. Close friends with writer-director Josh Margolin for years, having collaborated on projects like the web series Chloe + Zoë, Worth immediately falls in love with Margolin’s script for Thelma, about an elderly woman seeking justice after being conned. A month after sending out the script to nonagenarian actress June Squibb, she signs on to star. Together with the help of CAA media finance agent Nick Ogiony, they package the film further, locking in rising actor Fred Hechinger and indie vet Parker Posey. According to Worth, every time they reach out to another actor, they take another pass at the script with that actor’s character in mind.
CAA’s team helps secure all the financing from Swiss film company Zurich Avenue (Nyad) in summer 2022. Working with SAG’s Diversity-In-Casting Incentive, they carve out a rate at the union’s lowest budget tier, with production scheduled for 25 days. Their locations are the most easily available, including Margolin’s grandmother’s actual condo and The Motion Picture & Television Fund’s assisted living campus. According to Worth, the team pulls off the film and its action sequences by being extremely prepared. Margolin, who also worked as the editor, “shot-listed everything within an inch of its life,” says Worth, and “no one got paid more than scale.”
Sales & Distribution: Tipped as one of Sundance’s top “acquisition titles to watch,” Thelma premieres at the Ray Theatre in Park City on opening night to rapturous delight—Variety likens the film to a “warm hug.” On January 30, after receiving multiple offers, its North American rights are acquired by Magnolia Pictures, which begins prepping for a robust summer release. On June 21, Thelma opens on more than 1,200 screens as “a multigenerational crowd-pleaser and counterprogramming for a world on fire,” says Neal Block, head of distribution and marketing at Magnolia. The film ranks eighth overall for the week, earning more than $2.3 million, above the company’s expectations.
“We felt pretty good about being able to reach an older audience, the audience that everyone loves to say is never coming back to theaters,” continues Block. “They will go to the theater—it’s just that the movie now needs to be really good.” (Thelma’s Rotten Tomatoes score is a 98.) To reach audiences, the then-94-year-old Squibb does a “heroic amount of interviews,” notes Block. She also records viral videos for social media, such as reciting lines from famous action films and off-the-cuff challenges to big action stars. “Those things really broke through the noise,” says Block.
After the film continues to perform reasonably well, many exhibitors keep it onscreen and the film plays for 18 weeks. “We saw that our grosses weren’t top-loaded in just New York and L.A. and that some unexpected regional markets were up there in the top 15,” says Block, including the Dedham Community Theatre in Massachusetts, the Mariemont Theatre in Cincinnati and the Rose Theatre in Port Townsend, Washington. “It was evidence that the film’s appeal was wide-ranging and penetrating to a more crossover audience,” he says. Even after the film hits VOD platforms on July 19, the film earns an additional $1 million in theaters. “Nobody wants to cut off something making money,” says Block.
Recoupment: It’s a winner! Magnolia is ecstatic about the film’s $9 million domestic grosses, and Thelma remains one of the company’s best-performing VOD titles in years. Abroad, Universal has international rights and has been rolling out the film in multiple territories, with openings in or near the top ten in several countries. According to Worth, the film’s success continues to propel their own careers, with another project in the works at Zurich Avenue. “We have many places where we can take our other projects,” she says. “I feel more interest and more doors opening.”
Good One
Release dates: August 9 (theaters), December 6 (TVOD)
Budget: Less than seven figures
U.S. box office: $345,383
Widest release: 93 theaters
Financing & Production: In 2021, India Donaldson has a finished script for Good One, her feature debut about a 17-year-old on a camping trip with her father and his oldest friend. Originally set in California, she soon pivots to upstate New York, calling in favors from friends and colleagues. The budget is trimmed and trimmed. Their calls to get financing from a single production company are denied. (“A lot of financiers were still waiting for the films they invested in from the last year to get revenue,” admits producer-actress Diana Irvine.) But they push forward anyway, hoping to shoot in early 2022.
Because their star, Lily Collias, is only 17 at the time, they can’t afford the extra costs of working with a minor, so they wait. Eventually, funding comes from a small pool of equity investors, but a large portion of their budget is soft money and donations via fiscal sponsor Film Independent. “That incentivized financiers because their pie slice got bigger because there was less equity,” explains Irvine. With just enough money to get through a very tight 12-day non-union shoot, production begins with the hope that additional funding will eventually come through. “At what point is it irresponsible to go forward if we don’t have enough money to finish?” Irvine asks herself.
The team submits the film to the U.S. in Progress program at the American Film Festival in Wrocław, Poland, and wins the Polish Film Institute Award, which comes with post-production services in Poland worth $50,000. Even with that grant, there’s still a financing gap just as they get their Sundance invitation. While getting into Sundance doesn’t help them much (“That was really shocking to me,” says Irvine), they eventually find some finishing funds through a Brooklyn-based commercial production company called Tinygiant. At Sundance, the film impresses, voted in Indiewire’s
critics poll as the third best film overall and the best debut film at the festival.
Sales & Distribution: In mid-February, Metrograph Pictures announces its acquisition of North American rights—it’s the company’s first stab at distribution under an expansion of the Manhattan movie theater led by former A24 executive David Laub. “We were told it doesn’t happen at Sundance for movies like ours,” says Irvine, “so we had tempered expectations. But the enthusiasm from David and Metrograph was amazing. Honestly, we were surprised by their theatrical promises. They overdelivered, which reflected their understanding of the film.”
“This was a great first film for us,” explains Laub, “because it’s a quality independent movie with strong filmmaking, great writing and great acting. It’s not the flashiest, and it doesn’t have a big cast, but I think it’s brilliant.” Metrograph banks on film festival exposure—including at some of the world’s best, from New Directors/New Films to Cannes’ Directors Fortnight—and critical acclaim to boost awareness before its August release. “We had to put it in front of people,” says Laub. Metrograph’s marketing executive Nico Chapin points to an “excitement around new voices.” Indeed, the trailer—launched right before Cannes—highlights quotes that focus on the director’s “promising debut” and Collias as a “luminous discovery,” along with an emphasis on the film’s suspenseful undercurrent.
With a 98 percent positive Rotten Tomatoes score and raves from the New York Times’s Alissa Wilkinson and NPR’s Justin Chang, Metrograph launches the film in three theaters—two in New York, one in Los Angeles—and reaps a formidable $27,846. With Donaldson doing Q&As across the country with guest moderators like Aidy Bryant in L.A. and Andrew Bujalski in Austin, the film plays solidly through Labor Day, expanding to 93 theaters and earning a cumulative total of $260,828. But then, the market becomes crowded in September, and ticket sales drop precipitously. “We would have loved to hold it longer,” admits Laub, “but Beetlejuice [Beetlejuice] took up a lot of the oxygen.”
Recoupment: Metrograph remains bullish on the film and re-releases the film theatrically in December to take advantage of awards buzz and critics’ top ten lists. The film receives two Gotham Award nominations for Breakthrough Director and Breakthrough Performer, and the company is betting on further acclaim. Additional monies are coming in from international sales via Visit Films (“Cannes had a massive impact,” says Visit Films’s Ryan Kampe, “and it sold quite widely.”) And with a TVOD launch in December, Irvine says, “We’re optimistic that we’ll be in the black—we worked hard to be responsible with other people’s money. I think it’s doing what we all hoped a real independent film can do for us as filmmakers, which is to give us the option to make our next project.”
Sugarcane
Release dates: August 9 (theaters), December 9 (cable, National Geographic), December 10 (SVOD, Disney+ and Hulu)
Budget: Around $1.5 million
U.S. box office: $108,420
Widest release: 21 theaters
Financing & Production: After news breaks in 2021 about the forced separation and abuse of Indigenous children at boarding schools run by the Catholic Church in Canada, Peabody-nominated investigative journalist Emily Kassie reaches out to her former colleague Julian Brave NoiseCat to direct a documentary on the subject. After several months of shooting, the team connects with award-winning doc producer Kellen Quinn (Midnight Family, Time). “They originally had some equity financing on the table,” says Quinn, “but I suggested that maintaining independence was going to be crucial, so I began taking it out to a few investors that I knew.” After Bill Way and Elliott Whitton at Fit Via Vi agree to put in funding, the project gets accepted into Sundance’s Catalyst program, where Way and Whitton vouch for the project. In addition to gathering individual funders at Catalyst (there are a total of 23 executive producers), the doc sees Impact Partners come on as the key executive producer. Kellen believes it’s important to keep the equity low “because we needed to make sure that the filmmakers’ own money was returned to them.”
Sales & Distribution: After Sugarcane premieres at Sundance in the U.S. Documentary competition, it wins the Directing Award and receives lots of strong reviews, ranking in the top ten documentaries in Indiewire’s Sundance Critics poll. A month later, National Geographic Documentary Films announces the acquisition of worldwide rights. Deadline puts the price tag in the low seven figures. According to Quinn, Nat Geo is their top choice based on the small, highly selective slate of nonfiction films it acquires. “This film felt like it didn’t need to be one of many on an awards slate,” he says. Also, because of National Geographic’s problematic history with Indigenous people, says Quinn, it was especially fitting that the company take on this story.
Sundance never really is a strong market for social issue documentaries. But Carolyn Bernstein, EVP of National Geographic Documentary Films, says that despite Sugarcane’s “challenging subject matter, I feel like we are called to support this kind of story. These films are not across our slate, but I think we have one each year—The Cave, Bobi Wine—and this year, it’s Sugarcane.”
To amplify the film’s message and help position it for awards, Sugarcane participates in dozens of film festivals throughout the year and “a limited but robust release,” says Bernstein, “and then all of that ladders up to our streaming release.” On August 9, the film opens at New York’s Film Forum with decent weekend sales of $7,648. After 11 weeks in distribution, it grosses just over $108,000, but in the process, it also earns a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes off 52 reviews. “We’re not that focused on box office,” says Bernstein. “We’re a profit company, but impact is one of the markers of success for us, and awards also connect to impact.” To wit, Sugarcane finds itself one of the frontrunners for the Best Documentary Oscar, and Lily Gladstone signs on as an executive producer to help with the campaign.
Recoupment: While an Oscar nomination or win will certainly raise the film’s profile and profitability, Bernstein points to the real-world effects of the honors. Last year, for instance, when the Oscar nomination for Bobi Wine: The People’s President was announced, the activist and his wife, who were under house arrest in Uganda, were allowed to leave. “If that’s not impact, I don’t know what is,” she says.
As further indication of Sugarcane’s reach, President Biden issues a formal “long overdue” apology in late October for America’s role in similar cases of abuse and trauma at Indian boarding schools in the United States. “It was so moving and unexpected; I feel like we’ve already won,” says Bernstein, referring to Biden’s speech. “With this movie, making change is a successful run for us.”
And for the filmmakers, according to Quinn, the money they invested in the film to accomplish the early shooting was returned to them from additional grants from executive producers along with the Nat Geo licensing fee.
Between the Temples
Release dates: August 23 (theaters), September 24 (TVOD)
Budget: $3–5 million
U.S. box office: $2,073,122
Widest release: 576 theaters
Financing & Production: In spring 2019, publicist-turned-producer Adam Kersh and writer-director Nathan Silver (Thirst Street) pitch the project—based on Silver’s own mother’s experience of getting a bat mitzvah at an older age—to Ley Line Entertainment (investors in films such as Everything Everywhere All At Once and The Green Knight). “We loved it,” says Ley Line’s Theresa Page. “We knew Nathan’s previous films and thought, ‘Let’s take him to the next level.’”
According to Page, casting is particularly crucial for an independent film like Between the Temples. “Our job was to find the connections to Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane and give our personal pitch to them,” she says, “There [were] lots of phone calls and passionate pleas for them to just read the scriptment, and it worked.” With only about 50 pages of written material, the actors were able to be more creatively involved in building their characters. The company fully finances the film with an 18-day production schedule, set for March 2023 in upstate New York and leveraging the New York State tax credit.
Sales & Distribution: Between the Temples is selected for Sundance’s Dramatic Competition and screens in a prime first Friday slot. Buzz is strong and trade reviews are solid (Indiewire: “spiky, hilarious … screwball comedy”), and the offers start coming in. “We knew that this was a smaller film,” says Page, “but we really wanted a theatrical release and wanted a distributor that understood what the film was.” In early February, a couple weeks after the festival, Sony Pictures Classics announces a worldwide rights deal for the film.
The distributor takes out the film in late August across 576 theaters. According to Sony Pictures Classics’s Michael Barker, the film is successful theatrically in “a new way,” he says. “If the old way was to slowly open the film and play for six months, now you open in a wider way, make an impression, hang on to theaters where there is traction for as long as you possibly can, and then if you have great word of mouth, you come back. Distribution has become a bit like an accordion,” he explains. “You start big, then you go small, then you go out again.”
After ten weeks in release and trickling down to single-digit theater counts, the company brings the film back out to 87 theaters (though ticket sales are insignificant at $41 per screen.)
Still, Barker attributes the actors as crucial to the film’s endurance in the marketplace. “What brought a wider audience is the personality and charisma and profile of Carol Kane and Jason Schwartzman,” he says. “People came to this movie with a history of these two actors, and that really helped.” Barker is also heartened by Silver’s status as a budding “auteur” in the classic sense. “I think it’s comforting to know that that kind of auteur sensibility still works,” he says.
Recoupment: While a $2 million haul in U.S. ticket sales may not sound like much, Ley Line’s Page is pleased with the results and proud of the film’s international profile, including releases in France and the U.K. Silver and co-writer C. Mason Wells are also recognized by the Gothams with a best screenplay nomination. “I have no doubt that we will do really well with the film,” says Page. “I have a lot of confidence in it.”
Union
Release dates: October 18 (theaters), Spring 2025 (TVOD)
Budget: $1–1.5 million
U.S. box office: “High five figures”
Widest release: n/a
Financing & Production: Award-winning filmmakers Brett Story and Stephen Maing team up in 2020 to follow the organizing efforts at the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) in Staten Island. The film is funded through 40 percent equity, a combination of Impact Partners, Anonymous Content and personal investors “who were first money in to ensure we could start filming from day one of the ALU’s campaign,” explains producer Samantha Curley. Non-equity soft money comes from a range of sources, including the IDA, Sundance, Ford Foundation, Omidyar, Perspective Fund, Catapult, FOV, NBCU Academy Original Voices, a Hot Docs pitch award and individual donations. The filmmakers are on the ground with ALU organizer Chris Smalls and his team for 230 days from March 2021 to August 2023.
Sales & Distribution: After its hotly anticipated Sundance premiere, the film receives a range of reviews, from all-out raves (from this writer, included) to more lukewarm responses, but in Indiewire’s Critics Poll, it ultimately ranks as the fourth Best Documentary at the festival. Still, the film does not receive any distribution offers. Going into the festival, “We always knew it wasn’t going to end up on Amazon,” admits Curley. “But what we experienced was that organized labor is a threat to structures of power, and that reality hit hard in the aftermath of Sundance. We heard from lots of executives, ‘I love the film and think it’s so important, but my boss would never go for it.’”
Because the market for political documentaries “has been slow,” says Curley, the team was already raising money for self-distribution and an impact and awards campaign. To ramp up for the eventual release, the film plays post-Sundance at more than 75 film festivals around the world. Working with independent distribution consultant Michael Tuckman, the film opens on October 18 for a week-long run at New York’s IFC Center, where it gets extended another couple of weeks, followed by week-long runs in L.A. (where it gets another week) and Chicago and one-night engagements in 17 other cities. Eventized screenings also include special guest moderators, such as actors Wyatt Cenac and Adam Conover, and prominent labor organizers. According to Curley, they are the top grossing film in every theater where they played for a single night. One of the most impactful screenings takes place for a group of Amazon warehouse workers in North Carolina. “We got to witness how effective the film is as an organizing tool,” she says. “In many ways, that screening felt like the full culmination of making the film.”
Through November, they estimate more than 25,000 people saw the film in theaters, thanks in part to the work of impact campaign strategist Red Owl, which helps coordinate with more than 200 community partners, including such prominent labor unions as the AFL-CLO, UTLA (a large teacher’s union) and SEIU (Service Employees International Union).
As the film enters award season, Hollywood producer-director Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up, Anchorman) signs on as an executive producer, and a five-day exclusive direct-to-audience global TVOD launch in partnership with GATHR is planned for Black Friday (Nov. 29) to Giving Tuesday (Dec. 3). The team plans for an official TVOD launch in spring 2025.
Recoupment: Though Union still hasn’t found a permanent home, Curley believes that if they can “prove that there’s an engaged audience for this film, it might reopen some doors.” She also points to a lot of interest from international unions, “so we believe there’s a strong international market for the film,” which they’ll look to tap into in 2025.
On International Workers’ Day, May 1, they’ve already booked to screen at a labor event at the Ford Foundation, with others in the works. “We are really excited to be part of this canon of films about labor,” says Curley. “There is a going to be a long life for this film.” With international and education rights still up for grabs, Curley admits, “I don’t know if we’ll get to 100 percent recoupment, but over the next 10 years, I think we’ll get close. It’s just going to take time.”
