How depressing that " more human " stories that don't feature massive explosions or mega-stars are deemed 'speciality'.
Ironically, more often than not it's these 'off-beat' films that end up on 'greatest film' lists of the future 9eg Little Miss Sunshine) - not the mainstream stuff. So, if less of them are making their way to our screens, does this mean that when, in twenty years time,we look back, there'll be a huge blank at the beginning of the 21st century? It also seems to me that with the on-going develpoment of the digital media there must come a time when the stranglehold of the distributors can be finally broken. A new , independent chain of cinemas , even. I hope so for all our sakes.

Lazzard, you've hit the point where rubber meets the road: distribution. It's one thing to make smaller, more character-driven movies; it's quite another to get anyone to see them, even if they're good to great without some sort of (typically) studio distribution system.

Things are happening on that front and I've been tracking some of them over the last 2 years on this blog. It's interesting to track projects like Edward Burns' new movie Nice Guy Johnny because they are bypassing a theatrical release entirely.

I used to work in indie distribution and I have to disagree with the assessment that it's a lack of well-funded distribution companies rather than a lack of marketable product causing this supposed "summer slump."

If this were true, it would imply that there are a bunch of indies out there capable of grossing $20M that simply weren't picked up. If that's the case, which films? We know what's out there - just scour the major festivals of the past year. I can't think of a single film that "would have" done big business but was ignored because there aren't enough studio specialty divisions any more.

The reason the studio divisions shuttered is that indie box office has been steadily declining, and this summer is just further evidence of that. And, more importantly, whether there are one or two or three breakout indie hits a summer is not an accurate gauge of the indie box office as a whole.

The real question is why the indie box office has been declining in general, and this article says nothing about it. I'd argue that articles like this, that take one summer or one year and try to make an empirical argument about a "trend" in the film industry are usually pretty far from accurate.


My own cynical opinion is that Americans are just getting stupider and therefore want more simplistic entertainment. Sophisticated indie films just can't compete with Hollywood blockbusters and reality TV. I'd even argue that the indies that do cross over aren't really representative of sophisticated independent filmmaking - are "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" or "Slumdog Millionaire" or "Little Miss Sunshine" really that different from typical crowd-pleasing Hollywood fare? Not in my opinion.