Terrifier 3
The Balancing Act of Independent Film Distribution
October 28, 2024
Psychologists have long said that people have a basic human need to feel seen and heard.
The same can be said about independent film.
In the cover story of the October 2024 issue of Media Play News, we take a deep dive into independent film distribution, a segment of the industry to which we’ve always felt a close kinship because the home is where these films, produced outside of the Hollywood mainstream, are primarily seen.
Festival runs, limited theatrical engagements: these are but tools to generate a buzz that will hopefully encourage viewers to tune in at home and watch, either on a streaming service, an a la carte digital platform, or on disc.
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Bringing independent films to market has always been a challenge. There was a brief honeymoon in the early days of the videocassette rental business, when the novelty of being able to watch movies at home, on demand, prompted video retailers to promote the concept of customer dissatisfaction. They would only bring in a couple of copies of the latest big theatrical hits, because they knew that if their customers didn’t find what they were looking for, they would likely rent two or three other movies they would come across while scouring the store’s vast inventory of cassettes.
As the novelty of renting movies wore off, retailers – encouraged by revenue-sharing and other studio incentive programs – began to go deeper and deeper on the hits. Things got even worse for the indies as consolidation decimated the ranks of mom-and-pop rental stores familiar with their customers’ tastes and the big national rental chains, with their centralized buying and one-size-fits-all approach, took over.
The emergence of DVD in 1997 gave the indies a second major boost, as consumers, delighted at the opportunity to buy and own movies at a reasonable price, began to build their own film libraries.
But, once again, the newness factor eventually wore off, although independent film distributors soon found a lucrative new market in both digital rentals and sales and in Netflix, which was hungry for product as it sought to build out its subscription streaming venture. Then came the pandemic and the other big new subscription streamers, and the indies felt they had hit the jackpot.
But once again, their euphoria was short-lived. The big subscription streamers began churning out their own movies and shows, and while new opportunities kept arising, most notably with AVOD and FAST, bringing independent films into the home market remains a challenge and a struggle.
We interviewed nearly a dozen independent film distributors for our cover story, and the consensus is that successfully bringing independent films to market is something of a balancing act, equal parts art, science and luck.
You have to have the right film, and you have to know your target audience: how big, how loyal, how they like to watch movies, and how best to reach them. Once these factors are in place, you need to figure out which platform or platforms are best for that type of film, and that kind of audience, and develop a windowing strategy based, in large part, on cost versus return.
Even then, it’s hit or miss. But that’s one thing independent film distributors have in common with their major-studio peers and their would-be Hollywood blockbusters: You just never know.