Wide Release #1
The opposite of conglomeration is collaboration.
Welcome to Wide Release, a regular newsletter where we’ll dive into the independent film ecosystem to unpack what the hell is going on, who might be responsible for getting us here, and what we might consider as we build something new. My aim here is to bring an accessible, candid, and pragmatic perspective to our ecosystem challenges, and to hold space for a collaborative and empowering conversation about our future. I join a great crew of other industry newsletters, so consider me another voice in the mix - one with a long lineage in exhibition, six figures of film school debt, and a deep desire to see our indie film ecosystem thrive.
Throughout, I also look forward to sharing the insights I’ve gleaned about audience development, strategies for getting your film out into the world, and breaking down how the ecosystem works through accessible, easy-to-understand language. I welcome any and all questions, and look forward to researching and sharing with you what I’m seeing from my window.
If you’d like to join as a paid subscriber, but do not have the funds, please send me a note and I’m happy to add you, no questions asked. Email barbara@barbaratwist.com.
I gave this keynote in April 2024 at the Sundance Catalyst ‘Future Models in Distribution’ gathering. I’ve lightly edited it for readability.
We are at an incredible inflection point in the independent film ecosystem…Yet, there is a reason we’re all here this morning: our ecosystem is damaged. We face threats from myriad sources: the attention crisis, the ongoing impact of the pandemic, unregulated technologies, and conglomeration, among others. For investors and grantors in the room, your impact isn’t being realized in the way you expected. For distributors and exhibitors, the struggle to bring in audiences is real. For filmmakers, the reality of sharing your creative stories with audiences is at risk. And for all of us, making a living in this field is quickly becoming the privilege of a few.
My talk today focuses on the US domestic market, however, I imagine much of this will sound familiar to our international colleagues, even if the mechanisms are different.
Today, we address the distribution crisis, but to understand how we arrived here, and how we’ll get out of it (because I remain confident we will), we need to understand key challenges in each sector of this ecosystem.
I’ll start with Audiences because they are what bring us together. We are all part of the moviegoing audience, yet we don’t know anything about us. We lack transparent access to data about our viewing habits and interests across platforms (movie theaters, VOD, streaming, and more). We also face an attention crisis. Attention spans grow shorter, enabled by our everyday technologies and reinforced by much of the media we consume each day. While this isn’t an issue we alone can address, it’s important to keep in mind as we think about the next area –
Marketing. There is a lack of funding for marketing in the independent film sector. Funding for film production, often perceived as the creative side of things, has always been a strong draw for grantors and investors, but there has been a noticeable absence of funding earmarked for distribution and marketing, the business side of things. Isn’t the purpose of a film to be seen by audiences? We cannot isolate the “creative” funding from the “business” funding in our field and expect that the market for these films will sustain itself.
Which brings us to Distributors. Independent distributors, meaning those not operated by a studio or streamer, are facing reduced revenue and cashflow due to the loss of the Pay One (home viewing premiere) window, which acted as a backstop and gave them financial flexibility in acquiring films while balancing their overhead. First, the home entertainment market dropped out (think DVDs and Blu-rays), then cable revenues dried up, and now many major streamers are not renewing their output deals with indie distributors. As these formerly profitable outlets shrink, how do we replace them and re-capture those audiences?
And lastly, Exhibitors. That can mean art house cinemas, film festivals, an AMC theater, or any organization focused on screening movies outside of the home. They remain the most important partner because they are responsible for developing moviegoers, shaping film culture, and in the case of film festivals, discovering new voices and helping to elevate them into the conversation. They are often the first introduction of a film to audiences, and research shows that films that play in theaters are particularly strong performers when it comes to downstream revenues, like VOD and streaming. If their participation in a film’s life cycle has such a positive financial impact, why is theatrical being minimized in a film’s release? Further, exhibitors are telling us they need more movies to play at the same time we are encountering an incredible number of films without distribution.
As we look for one overarching problem to encompass them all, I find myself at the foot of a very tall problem: verticalization and conglomeration. The speed of conglomeration is astounding, with 25 mergers and acquisitions valued at more than $100 million taking place in the media sector from 2017 to 2021, and that’s before Warner Discovery. Just 20 years ago, we had multiple thriving independent film distributors co-existing alongside specialty labels of the studios, like Paramount Vantage, Fox Searchlight, Sony Pictures Classics, and Focus Features. Now, most specialty labels have been shuttered or gutted, shells of their former selves.
Conglomeration has always meant one thing: persistent reduction of risk, the switch from unknown heights to a ceiling of certitude, from artistry to economy. And the worst part? We enabled this problem through our participation in, and tacit endorsement of it.
How did we get here?
Let’s start with a recap of windowing for a film.
A film is well-designed as a product with multiple phases of exploitation and does its best when exploited over time for two major reasons:
First, the marketing for a film encourages a viewing at that specific window and it plants a seed in the viewer to watch again in later windows. In short, it’s cumulative.
Second, within each window, you have the chance to engage a previous viewer to make a new transaction or to capture a new consumer who hasn’t previously watched.
When films maximize their revenue potential, they generate revenue to keep marketing them, which leads to generating profits. Profits which can support the overhead of a distribution company, the filmmaker’s next project, and recoupment to investors.
Prior to the age of streaming, a film typically moved thru the following windows in this order:
Theatrical, which might take 1-2 years
Pay per view
Video rental
DVD release, 12-18 months after a film’s theatrical ended
Pay TV
Free TV, 3-5 years after the theatrical release
Ancillary and non-theatrical meaning airlines, educational, or community screenings
There were exceptions, of course, like films that were “straight-to-video.” Yet, on the whole, we’re looking at 2 – 5 years for an initial release.
Today, a film’s windows can include:
Theatrical
PVOD
TVOD (iTunes or Vudu)
SVOD (Netflix, Prime, Hulu)
AVOD (Tubi, Pluto)
Physical media
Ancillary and non-theatrical
They may not go in that order, nor will every film use each window. For certain films, there is the pre-window: the film festival, used as either a sales opportunity or a marketing tool to generate buzz. As for timing? A film may go from festival to theatrical to SVOD within 30 days. One month.
Windowing creates a downstream of revenue, with marketing and exposure accumulating over the life of a film. Yet, windows can be prohibitive, restricting access in a way that doesn’t align with our goals socially or financially. The old model was not perfect by any means.
As the sequencing and timing of windows has been scrambled in recent years, it creates both challenges and opportunities in the exploitation of films. Between the pandemic and the streaming wars, the acceleration of window disruption was incredible. No one was prepared for it but it opened a space for creative flexibility in how we think about distribution. We have this unique opportunity to rebuild the system in a way that reflects our shared values, our financial needs, and centers the most important person: the audience member.
Audiences understand the release of a film through the experience of the film itself, meaning they don’t know if a screening is theatrical or non-theatrical, nor do they care about the intricacies of why a film might be on Prime Video and not on iTunes. They just want to see the movie, and it is our job to facilitate that experience.
So, as we think about changing modes of distribution, let’s think about how audiences perceive the experience of the film.
Consider two paths for an independently produced film: in the first scenario, the movie sells for all rights to a streamer. In the second scenario, the movie sells US rights to an indie distributor. Let’s see where and how the audience engages, and how the revenue flows back to the film.
We’ll call the movie BLUE SKY. It’s a kids’ movie. I take my sister and her 3 kids to the theater and we spend $10.53 each, the average movie ticket price in the US. We go Week 2, so the theater keeps 45% of the ticket and the distributor, Disney in this case, earns 55% of the ticket price. Gross splits of ticket sales are usually negotiated in advance by distributors, and can range from 35 – 65% paid to the distributor.
Disney tends towards longer theatrical windows, but decides to make this film available earlier on Disney+ using the PVOD window. Premium Video on Demand allows a higher price point, usually $20 or more, because it is available earlier, akin to the old Pay Per View window. My niece demands to see the film again because it features prominently on-screen every time she opens Disney+ to watch Bluey. My sister caves and buys the PVOD rental at $19.99.
At this point, we’ve bought five movie tickets and one PVOD rental. That’s $52.65 in movie tickets and $19.99 for the PVOD window, plus Disney gets the $149.99 for the annual subscription to Disney+. Not bad…
Now, I’m hanging out with friends, telling them about BLUE SKY because the film was a really beautiful animation that appealed to me as much as it did to my niece and nephews. But, it’s no longer in theaters because they went with that shortened window. I can’t rent it on iTunes to show them because..Disney. And I’m not a Disney+ subscriber. Oops, the revenue train just stopped. I forget about the film over time because I only see it once and I’m not getting advertisements since I’m not a Disney+ subscriber.
Let’s look at the revenue: $222.63. Disney keeps $198.93 between the ticket split, the Disney+ subscription and the PVOD rental. The theater keeps the other $23.70 as their ticket split. As for the filmmaker and investors? They were paid a premium MG for the all-rights sale, and with only $48.95 eligible for recoupment after expenses, it’s going to be a long time before they see any additional money. Further, the filmmaker doesn’t receive any reasonable data or build an audience connection between the film primarily lives on a closed platform, which requires a high price point of entry in its annual subscription fee.
Now for the second scenario, let’s imagine the film is bought by an indie distributor, say GKIDS. GKIDS is a respected distributor for animation and I trust their taste. I see it in theaters with two friends. We each pay $14 at the Laemmle Theater in Glendale. Laemmle and GKIDS split the ticket revenue 50/50. That’s $21 to GKIDS and $21 to Laemmle.
I loved it, so I tell my sister she needs to take her kids to see it. They’re busy, so she waits until it’s available on TVOD. She rents it for $6.99 from iTunes. The kids love it so much, she buys a digital copy for $14.99 so they can watch on repeat. In both cases, up to 85% of the fees go to GKIDS, say $18.68.
A few months later, I’m on a plane. I’m a nervous flier. I’m looking for comfort, something reliable. I pick a film I’ve seen before. Oh look, it’s our beautiful animation BLUE SKY now on Delta Airlines, in a negotiated package license. I watch it.
A few months after that, my sister hosts a PTA Movie night for her kids’ school. Eyeing something family friendly and appealing to all ages, she picks…our beautiful animation BLUE SKY. The school pays a non-theatrical licensing fee to GKIDS of $250.
A year after the film’s release, GKIDS releases a collaboration with Criterion Collection. It’s a beautiful edition with bonus features. I drop $30 on the Blu-ray.
Meanwhile, it’s been put on streaming and every once in awhile, when I’m having a night where I can’t decide what to watch, I put the film on in the background as I fold laundry. I pay my monthly subscription fee to the SVOD platform, and the platform pays GKIDS a flat licensing fee.
Ten years later, the film has attracted a cult following after the director put out hit after hit. GKIDS re-releases the film in theaters as an Anniversary edition. I attend a repertory screening where GKIDS receives a fee from the exhibitor between $250 - $500, on average.
And the cycle starts anew with the new Anniversary edition. On repeat, for as long as there are anniversaries and GKIDS has the rights to exploit the film.
Already, we count $569.68, plus the streaming and ancillary rights deals, going to GKIDS, and potentially on to the filmmaker. GKIDS likely paid a much lower MG than Disney, but the film has potential to earn for the filmmaker over its life. Plus, when you sell your film to a conglomerate, that healthy MG only applies to very few movies, and very specific kinds of movies.
To summarize, in the first scenario, Disney decides the value of the film for both the filmmaker and the audience. The film doesn’t maximize its potential or awareness. Further, Disney continues to use the film to sell more subscriptions, but only they reap the benefits in revenue and data. As for the audience, their perception of the film is one of limitation. Some might call it exclusivity, but I think of it as restriction. Restricted to the Disney paywall.
In the second case, the film finds its audience through multiple windows. There are more access points for data for the filmmaker, and more opportunities to connect directly with the audience. As for the perception? Accessible. When you look for the film, you can find it at multiple price points, on multiple platforms. Not every film released this way achieves its full potential, but the model has the strongest potential for sustainability due to the multiple windows of exploitation.
When we view a worldwide sale as a marker of success, we must acknowledge that we are celebrating the path of least exploitation. Further, while it may result in a large upfront MG when the film gets acquired, the impact of that film has been minimized. You’ve stopped the flow.
When you sell your film to a conglomerate, like Disney or Warner Brothers, or to a streamer like Netflix or Apple TV, you’re likely facing a company whose mandate is to realize profit as quickly as possible. When that is the priority, the approach shifts from exploiting the film as thoroughly as possible to exploiting the film as quickly as possible. This necessitates a volume business, where you bank on one film to buoy the rest. While it may be good for the company overall, it can stifle each film individually because the focus is on making money for the company, not the film.
At the same time we’re watching title maturity vanish, we’re watching old models, like advertising-based viewing and syndication, being repackaged as new innovative ideas when the only real disruption seems to be that the creators are being left out when it comes to revenue sharing.
So how do we get to an industry more like the second scenario, where there are multiple opportunities to generate revenue and where we have a sustainable ecosystem in which filmmakers, exhibitors, and distributors can afford to create and screen original, independent films?
We’ll need to stop at some roadblocks but first, let’s remind ourselves of the challenges posed at the top:
Audiences - they are our best marketing tool and our revenue source, but we don’t know enough about them.
Lack of P&A funding, particularly when it comes to theatrical releases, even though we know a theatrical remains the strongest driver for downstream revenue. This is a clear case of needing to spend money to make money, however –
Indie distributors are struggling with the loss of Pay One revenue, meaning they don’t have the VOD or home entertainment revenue to support their business models.
Exhibitors have a lack of titles available to program and frequently encounter inflexibility from distributors on full runs vs split runs.
Audience Roadblock: Our exhibitors aren’t capturing, or sharing, the kinds of demographic and psychographic data that we need to effectively build audience profiles. We need education, funding, and collective effort for this. What if there was a shared platform for audience demographics and attendance numbers that exhibitors, distributors and filmmakers could all access? How might that change our approaches to marketing?
Marketing Roadblocks:
Shortened windows have led to the necessity to market a film within 30 days. How do you reach your entire audience in such a short amount of time?
The cost for marketing has gone up. For example, exhibitors like AMC require “pay-to-play” where distributors are charged upwards of $20,000 for trailer placement in their pre-show.
Awards campaign marketing. Distributors and film teams routinely spend millions of dollars on fewer than 10,000 Academy voters after a limited, awards-qualifying theatrical release in NY/LA. Who is missing from that equation?
Industry Roadblocks: We face unrealistic market expectations. The industry continues to measure success by one metric: box office dollars.
Why is this a problem?
If a film makes money at the box office, the press will discuss its value. If it doesn’t, the press will say the film is a dud, missed its mark, or the ol’ standby: people don’t want to go to the theater anymore.
If a film makes money at the box office in its first week, a distributor will be more likely to expand it to other markets. Low gross? Maybe straight-to-streaming.
Let’s say a film draws in 50,000 people at impact screenings across the country, plus their film festival run. Is that what the industry discusses? Nope. They report the film made a dismal $10,000 at the box office, if it’s even acknowledged.
Europe has long considered admissions, as in butts-in-seats, as the metric of success. While a butt-in-seat may not always pay, we know that person is now a walking talking advertisement for the film. Word-of-mouth remains the #1 reason that someone goes to a movie, and we consistently undervalue its revenue generating potential.
Since we know there are other ways than box office dollars to measure the value of a film and calculate the return on investment, how did we get to a system with expectations so divorced from the impact of the audience themselves?
The answer lies in conglomeration.
We’ve put our films, our rights, our revenue opportunities, primarily into the hands of corporations who are focused on realizing profits for shareholders. These companies are building their brands on the backs of filmmakers and their films, yet the filmmakers aren’t seeing those profits. They don’t receive shares in the company in exchange for their films. They aren’t able to give input to the leadership of the direction of the company, as we see in the case of Warner Discovery where the CEO decides when a film is more valuable to the company as a loss than as a release.
When the only public metric is how much money a film made at the box office, and other metrics like streaming views or impact screenings are hidden or disregarded by the industry, how can we possibly know our worth and demand our value?
We opt out. We opt out of the markers of success for conglomeration, not for connection. We opt out of the incomplete narrative that box office tells. We opt out of industry expectations that we release a film in a certain way, or in certain markets before others. We opt out of the idea that a global all-rights deal is the best path forward. We opt out of the mindset that our film is more important than all the other films in our ecosystem.
We opt out and we step into the space we’ve always occupied: outside the mainstream, in the shadow of the studios but not constricted by them. Dependence on the studio system has not yielded the strongest part of our history as the independent sector and it cannot be our future.
There’s a demonstrated market:
829 million movie tickets were sold domestically in 2023.
Americans streamed 21 million year’s worth of content last year.
There are a huge number of outlets:
Movie theaters by and large aren’t owned by studios.
There are more than 350 independent art house exhibitors in North America, representing over 800 screens.
There are more than 35,000 multiplex screens in the US.
There are over 1200 film festivals older than 10 years in the US.
In 2023, audiences had 90 different streaming services to choose from, up from 51 at the start of 2020.
There are so many partners out there to activate:
Public libraries and schools with Kanopy
Universities with student campus reps, student life, film departments
Filmmaker organizations like The Gotham and industry advocacy orgs like Color Congress, Art House Convergence and Film Festival Alliance
Service distributors like Abramorama, boutique distributors like Utopia, and specialty distributors like A24 or Neon.
Film engagement platforms like Letterboxd
Projects like The Popcorn List, developed by Lela Meadow-Conner and myself as a first step towards identifying the many incredible films that go undistributed each year
Each of the teams today presenting new initiatives and taking time to give back to the ecosystem, to make it better for everyone
Our combined audience reach is huge. Film Festival Alliance and Art House Convergence, which represents more than 580 film festivals and art houses in North America, jointly estimate their total email subscribers to be 7.6 million. Streaming on Kanopy reached 23 million plays in 2023. A24 alone has 2.3 million Instagram followers. Letterboxd has north of 10 million users.
These are our ticket buyers, moviegoers, and marketers. We own the data on them. We have a unique relationship with them. They trust us as curators and as artists. There have never been more tools for audience building than now.
Why would we continue to put the power in the hands of a few when we have access to millions of invested audience members and hundreds of partners? These large companies would not exist without our films, without our work as filmmakers, without the audiences we’ve developed as exhibitors, without the filmmakers we’ve supported as artist service organizations. Why would we start with them when we’re looking to sell our films instead of investing in ourselves and a more equitable system?
The opposite of conglomeration is collaboration. Collaboration is the past, the future, and the present. It’s what brings us together today.
What do you see as the biggest barrier to opting out of the current distribution and exhibition models? How could the ecosystem support more experimentation?