We are living in an era of superabundance, where my attention is more valuable than my money, and while this is great for audiences, it’s a disaster for arthouse and indie films seeking any revenue. There’s a small silver-lining for niche and social impact documentaries that want eyeballs more than dollars, but overall, the sector is imploding and no one is talking about it publicly, though its dominating the “off the record” conversations I’ve been having.

At the start of Covid-19, nearly every distributor and film festival moved to a virtual model. Distributors developed virtual cinema programs, pairing with theaters in an effort to make some money, keep a relationship with audiences and maybe save theatrical. At first, things looked pretty good – KinoLorber was reporting numbers that weren’t very dissimilar from their 2019 theatrical numbers, and they touted them in IndieWire and elsewhere. But you’re not seeing those stories in the press anymore, and I suspect that it’s because they’ve dropped down into the abyss, as many are reporting to me behind the scenes (I have not asked KinoLorber and don’t know how they’re doing, but know it’s not being reported anymore).

One distributor told me that their virtual box office dropped from 5-6 figures per title down to under $10,000 for a month-long run. Theaters have reported to me that they’ve played ten or more titles from some distributors over the past few months, and not only have they seen revenue decline to the few hundred dollars per title, but that they’ve not received reports or payments from many well-known arthouse distributors at all – but their patrons are getting inundated with spam emails for more titles. Theaters at first saw this as a way to stay relevant to patrons, but are increasingly getting desperate. A few have been able to open drive-ins, but these seem to be working mainly for repertory fare and bigger genre titles, mainly horror – but they’ll take the revenue.