Here’s What It Would Take to Build an Indie Film Super-Streamer — IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking Summit

We’ve all heard of Mubi, the Criterion Channel, Shudder, and other streamers fed by indie film libraries. But it’s a pain point across streaming that audiences don’t know where to go, which app to open, or where to subscribe, to find what they actually want to watch. When you’re talking about multiple small indie sites, there’s more dispersion than aggregation.

What’s needed is a single destination that gathers all independent films — a collaborative super streamer that makes it possible to find anything and everything indie. It could expand the market for independent film, make discovery easier on the consumer, and provide more reliable revenue share and backend to support indie filmmakers. Right?

“I think it is possible,” Keri Putnam, the former CEO of the Sundance Institute, said at IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking Summit on November 2. However, she added: “The way it would happen in the indie space isn’t the same as how it would happen in the Hollywood studio space.”

Putnam was one of three speakers on “How to Get Your Film Seen: New Takes on Audience, Funding, and Buyers.” And her idea an indie super streamer grew out of her study — which IndieWire shared exclusively — that found an audience gap of 40 million between those who watch indie movies and those interested in watching them.

Keri PutnamRich Polk for Deadline

It’s not economically feasible for anyone to acquire every niche streamer, but Putnam believes there’s another way.

“Putting together a single place and allowing a coalition of distributors to share in placing their libraries, programming there, share in the revenue from it, and benefit from direct data to the audience and the marketing that the platform can do, I feel like it’s an idea worth trying,” Putnam said.

She also acknowledged that such a proposal could be a nonstarter. Each distributor has different business ambitions and goals, along with a reluctance to pool resources, marketing dollars, and revenue.

However, those distributors could also benefit by sharing and scaling the tools and data that help films find their audiences. And the streamer might not be subscription based; it could have the option of free, ad-supported service with preroll ads. But it’s still a challenge.

“Even with services like Letterboxd, you still can’t remember that movie you wanted to see a month ago and where did it end up going? Where is it buried in the algorithm?,” said Brian Newman, principal of Sub-Genre. “Some kind of way that pulling that all together, the smart company that does that will succeed, but only if they think about the marketing side of it. That’s been the other thing: a lack of access to data, but also not marketing. Everyone in the independent world seems to think if you build it, they will come, and that just doesn’t work.”

Sam Harowitz, senior VP of content acquisition and partnerships at Tubi, said traditional window approaches fuel the disaggregation. When distributors have exclusive or semi-exclusive SVOD windows, an indie film can become buried and lack the marketing support to gain word of mouth. Audiences are increasingly attracted to free, ad-supported services — like Tubi. If a company like Tubi were to could distributors to make AVOD the first window, he said, it could mean filmmakers could “get it to audiences quicker.”

Putnam then posed a question to the panel: Would a streamer like Tubi be open to a joint marketing partnership to make this a reality?

“All opportunities are on the table,” Harowitz said. “We talk a lot about transparency, about collaboration, about discovery, all themes in relation to how do we solve the current challenge in the marketplace.”

From L: Brian Newman, Sub-Genre; Sam Harowitz, Tubi; Keri Putnam, Putnam Prods.Rich Polk for Deadline

But radical thinking about this space may be necessary sooner rather than later.

“I think the biggest thing everyone needs to wake up to is everyone thinks the business is cyclical, and I don’t agree. I’m more cynical than that,” Newman said. “I don’t think Netflix is coming back [to indies]. They’ve been walking away from the independent films and the specialty films, and everyone’s hoping they’re going to come back. I don’t think they are. So filmmakers need to be focused on their audience and that direct relationship.”

Watch IndieWire’s full “How to Get Your Film Seen” panel above.

Special thanks to our Future of Filmmaking Summit partners: Canva, Kino, SAGindie, The American Pavilion, United for Business, and The Walt Disney Studios.