Netflix owned the arthouse movie niche now it's Mubi.
Indie producers share why they're optimistic while Hollywood is wringing its hands over poor box office. The latest download from the Cannes Film Festival.
Are you a cinefile who never goes to the movies? “Garfield,” not your cup of tea?
On the podcast this week, independent film producers Thomas Hoegh and Jay Van Hoy talked to me about a new force in the theatrical business - Mubi which specializes in foreign language and arthouse titles and operates an online subscription service.
The London-based company backed by private equity firm Summit Partners is run by CEO Efe Cakarel. The company won attention at the Cannes Film Festival this year buying up promising new titles like Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” Demi Moore’s horror movie, “The Substance,” and another buzzed about effort, “The Girl with the Needle.” It also just hired a new head of distribution from Amazon MGM, Mark Boxer, who knows the US theatrical business well.
Independent producers have had a rough time post-Covid, post-labor strikes but they’re buzzing about Mubi which saw a unserved market for speciality film and has been gathering steam since launching in 2007. It also offers a movie ticket with its monthly subscription.
Hoegh, who runs Garden Studios, and screened cult classic, “Trainspotting,” at Cannes shared that Mubi is acquiring, co-financing and now commissioning projects. “They are taking on more product and bolder deals that are competing with some of the bigger streamers.” He adds, “They’re very true to the filmmaker and they have an audience. They have managed to prove the naysayers wrong.”
Mubi has found a lane where no-one else was operating, providing cinefiles a place to see, and discuss, specialty titles that have been largely abandoned by global exhibitors and are almost impossible to find at the major streamers. Adds Hoegh, “That’s really good for the auteur segment of the market.”
Filmmaker Jay Van Hoy, founder of LA-based Parts and Labor, agreed. “It’s a dedicated audience that really wants great storytelling and point of view. Mubi has recognized that, whereas Netflix went mass market, Mubi has stayed in the curated niche which is delivering.”
For more on what it's like to be at the Cannes Film Festival and how independent film is thriving as the Hollywood box office suffers its worst weekend in three decades, listen to The Media Mix podcast wherever you get your audio fix.
As ever thanks to my executive producers Jamie Maglietta and Ray Hernandez and to Situation Room Studios which produces The Media Mix along with politics and foreign relations focused, “Press Advance with Johanna Maska,” “One Decision,” and “Pod is a Woman.”
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Programming note: I’ll be at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in June. Join me and Creopoint’s Jean-Claude Goldenstein on Sunday, 16 June for an AI mixer event for the marketing community. Contact: events@creopoint.com if you’d like to sponsor or attend.
I've been hearing/seeing more about Mubi in the last couple of years but it's still very much in the background of the streaming landscape which probably contributes to it's reputation amongst the "high art" section of Letterboxd users.
Been a Mubi subscriber for some months now. Criterion isn’t available in Europe and Netflix/Amazon aren’t doing much for me as a fan of indie cinema and cinema history.