John Horn at the LA Times had an important article last week on the impact of Video-On-Demand on independent film economics. The link to it Is above. Link to our earlier report and see comments below.

This article follows the general outline of our earlier report (back on April 2, almost 5 weeks ago!) on the IndiePix Blog, “Just When You Thought …” that featured the IndiePix Buzz-o-Meter. In that article, we pointed to the building hype surrounding on-demand delivery of independent films, pioneered by IFC, but now facing competition from other cable operators.

There are several success stories, especially Flawless and Shrooms, both from Magnolia. It would be more convincing if there were success stories from other distributors in addition to Magnolia, but the LA Times writer did not report on any of those.

Hall gets a good quote from Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC, to the effect that Gomorrah brought in about $3 per stream on 85,000 streams for IFC (with presumably some lesser share to the filmmakers). Hall also has a quote from Joshua Safdie, writer-director of a Cannes movie last year that went to IFC screens and cable, who has yet to see anything beyond his advance, which he described as small.

I especially liked Andrew Herwitz comment from the article:

“It is the wave of the future,” said Andrew Herwitz, whose Films Sales Company is a prominent vendor of independent movies. “But the future is not yet here.”

The Buzz-o-Meter is hitting new hights on VOD. There will be more to come!