The New Indie Film Arthouse: Is It Moving Online?
Per The Wrap:
As theater owners stew in Las Vegas over the major studios’ plans to shorten their exclusive windows, a quiet revolution is taking place for smaller films, where theatrical distribution can be at best a brief stopover on the way to life in a big online arthouse.
Companies like Magnolia and IFC offer release strategies that often bypass theatrical in favor of video-on-demand for independent films — and with those films showing up online on services like Comcast’s Xfinity TV (which has its own “Indie Film Club”), it’s become far easier to find even recent small movies on the computer than in theaters.
For over a year, I’ve been tracking actor-writer-director Ed Burns on Twitter (@edward_burns). He had great success with Nice Guy Johnny, a microbudget indie movie that came out last year. He has become one of the biggest proponents of digital filmmaking including an alternative approach to distribution, in effect bypassing theaters. [To learn more, I posted several items about Burns, among them here, here, and here].
On NGJ, with a production budget of around $25K, he spent exactly zero dollars on marketing. Granted he’s Ed Burns, so he can get booked on “Good Morning America” and the like. Nevertheless at a certain price point — for example, Burns’ new movie Newlyweds has a production budget of, I believe, $7K — it’s hard to imagine how a filmmaker could not at least recoup their costs and hopefully turn a profit.
My suggestion: Pay close attention to Ed Burns. He and other DIY filmmakers are widening a niche in the digital arena.
For more of The Wrap article, go here.
UPDATE: In comments Nate Winslow gets the correct budget figure for Newlyweds: $9K. And provides a link here which breaks down the budget.