Netflix For Indies

Ted Sarandos, chief content officer of Red Envelope, the
Indie division of Netflix, said it like this:

"My thought was, how could it be that these films would just
happen at a festival and then disappear from the culture,
and is there something that we could do, enabled by our
ability to efficiently market films, to creative a living
archive of these films."

Sarandos started the company's Red Envelope Entertainment
division as an outlet for the kind of films that were good
enough to get into film festivals, but not broadly marketable
enough to get picked up.

Hooray for Ted Sarandos!

Sarandos says often conventional distributors won't touch
something that's expected to only sell 100K units. But that
could be a decent run for Netflix because it has such low
overhead.

So it seems like Red Envelope could be a great alternative to
traditional DVD distribution for indies. Also, if your film
happens to gain popularity in the Netflix system, it could
lead to getting noticed by one of the bigger distributors
who may have interest in picking up your next film, or even
financing it. This has already happened with several
filmmakers who have gone through Red Envelope.

Anyone out there already working with Red Envelope? Any
positive or negative feedback to report? I'll be sure to
share any feedback I get with the group so everyone can learn
from it.

All in all, I'm happy to see that Netflix is leveraging their
technology to offer subscribers unique and original content
to which they wouldn't otherwise have access.

And what about filmmakers?

This original content initiative creates a national
distribution channel for films and entertaining programming
otherwise not available to broad audiences. Everyone wins!

Have a great weekend everyone!


Best,
Stacey*
PS: My AFM Top 10 Buyers List and Anatomy Of A Distribution
Agreement is still available at only $29! With it, you can
submit your completed film directly to distributors and
decipher what a distribution contract looks like. Check it
out here at: http://film-distribution-secrets.com/anatomy.html