Variety just announced that The New York Times will no longer guarantee critical coverage of every weekly release throughout the five boroughs, perhaps putting an end to, if not a damper on, the long debated practice of four walling. While the decision — gleaned via an email A.O. Scott sent to independent distributors — will likely see smaller companies pulling back on the financially draining one-week theatrical runs and shifting their attention toward VOD, it also ensures a considerable drop in profile for these lesser known releases. A handful of sites like The Dissolve have begun to fold VOD releases into their coverage, but it doesn’t appear that The Times will be […]

Jeff Ulin, a former executive at Lucasfilm and Paramount, has spent a big chunk of his career thinking about one of the most vexing issues facing filmmakers and other media professionals today: the problem of media distribution. Ulin has recently revamped the first edition of his classic text, The Business of Media Distribution (published in 2009) with a second edition that addresses many of the radical changes to the media industries that have taken place since two significant events — the economic crash of 2008 and the widespread adoption of digital delivery tools — upset traditional models of distribution, changing […]

Earlier this week I posted “15 Lessons for Producers from the Cannes Film Festival and Market.” With the festival and market now firmly in the rear-view mirror, the consensus is that it was a solid one for the international sales community, without, perhaps that one giant locomotive title but with an appropriately modest number of films hitting their ask prices. Tastes were noted to have shifted, with buyers wanting “more Jennifer Lawrence and less Sylvester Stallone.” And on the pure indie level, I noticed, as I wrote in my piece on producers, a new crop of American independents have figured […]