“Because as this disruption happens, both historically but also looking forward, the control center comes closer and closer to the creators, and we want to be closer and closer to them and complement their business, but with us ourselves becoming creators as well,” he noted.
Liesl Copland, executive vp of content and platform strategy at Participant, pointed to the transformative impact of the major streamers — from Netflix, Amazon Prime and AppleTV+ to newcomers HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+ and others — in shaping the kind of indie films that get made and what sort of financing is possible for them.
“It’s not really about ‘what format is it? Film or episodic? Or a genre?’ It’s about ‘Is it subscriber acquisition or subscriber retention content’?” she noted. “And I think we have to blend that into our thinking when we’re dealing with the streamers, and then I think what the big problem becomes — they don’t have to recoup because they’re a revenue line and their cost bases and their revenue bases are two different things — and they don’t get revenue per film.
Copland called the impact of the streamers a “tsunami” that the indie business will be dealing with for years, adding that the impact of the COVID pandemic, which collapsed traditional theatrical windows worldwide, is likely to be permanent.