Red Envelope: Return to Sender
By Craig Kennedy - July 23rd, 2008; 8:31 am
The world of indie distribution continues to contract. Netflix has shut down its 2-year-old Red Envelope Entertainment which partnered with small distributors on over 100 titles including the Iraq war documentary No End in Sight and Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris.
The question remains whether the current turmoil in the indie sector is a natural contraction or a symptom of a deeper malaise.
IndieWIRE has more on the story.
Source: THR
Filed under: News
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Oh fricking hell. That’s not good news. I didn’t really love the idea of a video rental company making movies but it wasn’t anything new and Netflix financed some interesting stuff. Apparently there wasn’t enough money in it to keep them in the game.
Less competition, less avenues for financing, less movies for you and me.
I agree with Joel–bad news.
Bad news indeed, but this could inspire something to occupy the vacuum. Joel’s right, though, that less competition in general is a big lose-lose.
Hopefully, as Alexander points out, it could inspire something else worthwhile that will fill its place.
Hollywood is starting to feel the effects of our crummy economy, which includes even the big studios. If the big wigs are tightening belts and declining to greenlight projects that they might have given the go-ahead to previously, what does that mean for small independent outfits? I could see a scenario in which small indies actually thrive, especially if you have big names like Brad Pitt backing stuff.
Some folks are crying doom and gloom in the indie world and other folks are just saying too many people were involved spending too much money on too many bad films.
From a filmmaker standpoint, either way it makes things tougher, but from a film consumer standpoint, it remains to be seen how much impact there will be.
Is this really another death knell for theatrically released indie film? I don’t know.
Hahah…I’m typing right about a Blockbuster ad….you know how I feel about Blockbuster….ahahahha welcome to Craig’s whorehouse.
IndieWIRE has more on the story.
http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2008/07/netflix_exits_a.html
The fact that they were involved with 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days being seen is enough to make me cry that they’re being shut down.
The question for me is would 4 Months have found its way to theaters anyway? I’ll bet it would have, though obviously I don’t know.
“Bad news indeed, but this could inspire something to occupy the vacuum.”
You hipsters probably already know about Film Movement. Instead of a rental deal, it’s more like the Indie-of-the-Month club, with first run films getting mainlined right to your TV.
Not a substitute for what we’re losing with the Netflix cutbacks but if you’re always on the lookout for new monthly bill opportunities, this is better than giving your cat his $15/month catnip allowance. Because that’s not the right kind of help for his habit. He needs rehab; not your enabling.
I’m confused how it works exactly. Are you getting access to these indie films before they’d show up in the regular DVD channels?
Well, I will be the first to admit that I think there’s simply too many movies hitting too few theaters these days and that indie and foreign films are being overwhelmed by the tumult of 10-15 new releases a week, especially when in most cities just finding a screening of an indie or foreign film is a frustrating process.
In Portland, I have 20 or more multiplexes playing the same 8 movies each week but only ONE that specifically caters to indie and foreign films. There’s a small handful of single/multiple screen independently owned theaters chipping in, but they must support a small contingent of dedicated film-goers with limited resources.
I couldn’t even honestly say if the majority of all these week-to-week releases are mediocre nor could I tell you how they break down between studio fare and indie releases. Craig’s Weekly Forecast puts that into some perspective, but it’s an overwhelming amount of information to digest.
Maybe I’m getting what I wished for with all these indie arms/houses going away? Not sure I’m happy about it now, but maybe the market reality of what I described above is finally hitting the industry.
Alison, I hope you’re right but since we’re losing indie units left and right, I wonder how many will be left to thrive? I suppose by thrive, you mean they’ll get a better selection of talent and scripts to work from?
yeah, I’m not clear on it myself, but my impression is that these are another means of first-run distribution, and some of their titles might never even make it to retail stores. Though most of that sentence I made up off the top of my head. It’s based on a brochure I got from them with my trial subscription, but that was months ago.
I agree Joel that there are already too many movies in the pipeline than a normal person could possibly see in a year. Even in Los Angeles with a fairly large number of screens dedicated to indie product. Stuff often comes and goes in a week.
Even if I didn’t see the movies and I just did the weekend forecast, it’s hard to keep up.
As I’ve said before, choice is always awesome, but at a certain point it becomes overload.
We/they need to discover that happy medium between quantity and quality.
It seems to fluctuate. Gluts are followed by dry spells. I just wonder if this is a fluctuation or a death spiral.