Future Indie Filmmakers' Struggles

At this point, we are 4 years past the beginning of the pandemic. As we all remember, theaters basically closed and streaming became really prevalent. While many of us are still choosing streaming over theatrical releases, that is a future problem for indie filmmakers.

Lulu Wang explained this very well in a Hollywood Reporter Roundtable:

Basically, streaming services focus on their brand. They look for what works for their service and will only heavily promote those projects that will get them more viewers. This isn't a problem for big names like Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, but for lesser known directors like Lulu Wang and Barry Jenkins (who have Academy Award nominations and wins), they run the risk of being lost in the shuffle on a streaming service.

Now, before streaming became prevalent, most indie filmmakers could send their movies to theaters and make quite a bit of money from that because word of mouth would help and everyone could go to a movie theater to see it. However, with streaming, there are so many services that releasing a film on there runs the risk of having a smaller audience than a movie theater. Word of mouth will only work in this case if the other person has the same streaming service the movie is on.

Are people still going to theaters to see movies? Yes, but what movies tend to dominate the theaters? Big franchise movies or movies with hefty marketing budgets, like the Marvel movies or Barbie. Most indie filmmakers start off with a budget of around $10,000 for their films. They can get up to $2.5 M but that's usually with a pretty well-known producer backing them. Ryan Coogler's first film, Fruitvale Station, had Forest Whitaker as a producer, but only had a budget of $900k (it did end up grossing $17.4 M, so made quite a bit back).

Even crazier? These budgets do not include marketing. Barbie's marketing budget was reported to be $150 M, which is pretty high, but studio movies do have marketing budgets set aside. Indie films don't usually have that luxury and even those that do don't have as much buzz as studio films. So it really is word of mouth that helps indie filmmakers make their money back.

Now, there are companies that help indie filmmakers (A24 being the biggest example), but those are not as well known or resourced as much as bigger companies like Disney. So, while one could argue that the field has been slanted against indie filmmakers for a while, with this new way to watch films, it feels like indie filmmakers are in a lose-lose situation: risk getting lost on a streaming service or risk no one going to see your film in theaters.