Mainstream Studios play Indie… unfortunately?

This article from News and Observer gives a clear explanation of what everyone can see happening - studios trying to play indie by their usual rules are missing the point and putting destabilizing pressure on an organism they don’t really understand.

In the past several months, indie and foreign films seem to come and go every week without attracting ticket-buyers. Needless to say, this is making art-house theater proprietors nervous.

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It appears that the industry is suffering from distributors who have failed to distribute.

This year, two indie-movie wings of major studios were shut down: Warner Independent Pictures and Picturehouse (formed by New Line Cinema, which also shut down earlier this year, and HBO Films). Meanwhile, Paramount Vantage laid off 60 workers, and its marketing and distribution were taken over by its parent company. Although they released such films as “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Babel,” accolades and trophies weren’t enough to keep the subsidiaries afloat.

Jonathan Sehring, president of IFC Entertainment, says the major-studio distributors are mostly to blame.

“They created this problem that we’re in now,” he says, “where the studios got involved and they applied studio economics to independent film distribution. So, you know, production budgets grew dramatically. Marketing budgets grew dramatically. I think they all found out the audiences didn’t grow at the same pace.

The indie boutiques that are still around, like Sony Classics, Fox Searchlight and Universal’s Focus Features, are still picking up films, but mostly mainstream types. That way, if it becomes a big hit at the art houses they can expand to multiplexes.

But now it seems they are bypassing art-house theaters altogether. The comedy “Hamlet 2,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was snapped up by Focus for $10 million, will get the multiplex treatment when it’s released Wednesday.

Here’s the trailer for Hamlet 2: