Alex Ritman reports on Variety that U.K. Indie Film Distribution Hits Breaking Point as ‘Santosh’ Saga Exposes Market Crisis: It’s an ‘Utter S—-show’.
The article discusses the latest crisis in the UK independent film distribution market and highlights the struggles faced by films like “Santosh“, a Hindi-language crime thriller, which despite critical acclaim and international recognition, had difficulty finding a UK distributor.
It points to several factors contributing to this crisis, including:
- High ticket price splits favouring cinemas
- Unprofitable Pay-One TV windows
- Declining revenues from DVDs without a corresponding rise in VOD revenues.
The result is a highly cautious market in which distributors are hesitant to invest in arthouse or foreign language films.
He quotes an executive who confided to him:
“Nobody’s buying and everybody’s terribly cautious. It’s an utter shitshow.”
The British Film Institute (BFI) offers support for indie film distribution through various initiatives to bring film to a wider UK audience. They also publish a spreadsheet of the weekly UK box office.
My take: different continent, similar story. In Canada, we simply don’t have access to cinema screens. In the UK, attempting to make money from independent films faces this plus other barriers. Is it simply that stories are not connecting with their audiences? Or is the problem something much more complex about scale, awareness and access?
