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How did you first hear about 1091 Pictures?
They approached me. I premiered at the REDACTEDREDACTED film festival in REDACTEDREDACTED 2020. And a month or six weeks after that, one of their reps emailed me. They had been going through the REDACTEDREDACTED catalogue and wanted to watch a screener.
documentary, niche audience
documentary
I knew REDACTEDREDACTED [former Orchard employee] and met them at REDACTEDREDACTED Film Festival.
I first heard of The Orchard and had submitted a movie to them right during the transition, so the person who had an Orchard email address wrote back from a 1091 email address.
fiction, drama
documentary
Did my own research on them and found that they were taking an incredible amount of movies.
Seemed that they were less passionate and bulk-buying—following the model of Gravitas in the digital space.
We were familiar with their first iteration as The Orchard. We followed Sony’s divestment of The Orchard and the rebranding as 1091/Streamwise in the trades.
fiction, some name cast
What motivated you to work with them?
We first reached out to them because of their clout and their history (as The Orchard). They understood what the movie was. They already liked our key art, our trailer. We had a lot of conversations with distributors who wanted to sell it as a horror movie. It’s not a horror movie.
fiction, no name cast
The Orchard seemingly released fewer films but put more energy behind them. 1091 seems to be much broader—they take in more films, different levels. Some might get theatrical (majority don’t at this point). Changing of the guard seemed to change quite a bit. But we love saying that we’re on the same distributor as Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
fiction, genre
documentary, niche audience
I had been fully prepared to self-distribute if necessary because I had such a niche movie. Ultimately, I decided that If I were to self-distribute it, I would still be sitting on a hard drive. Having someone set deadlines and parameters was good for me. They were going to be able to do things that I couldn’t do on my own—getting in front of the streamers. In the end, I decided it made sense for what they could do.
fiction, comedy, no name cast
They had the best name. People knew who they were. We made that movie for so little money that my feeling was that for my next project, if I could say my film was with a company that people knew who they were and knew they had done bigger films, that would be a good thing.
My producer had worked with them before, and she didn’t encourage investigating other options.
fiction, drama, no name cast
documentary
We had a few offers, and we were bouncing terms back and forth among everyone and 1091 seemed the most eager to beat everyone’s offer and had a good attitude about what they wanted to do with the movie. They did not bend on split. They came in with a better term length than what was on the table. They moved on the MG. They were willing to be the highest MG that was offered.
They approached us. They originally approached us right when they were switching from Orchard to 1091. The team really wanted a distribution company with a name, more than necessarily a good deal, or anything like that. They wanted a fancy distribution company, and that’s why we went with 1091.
fiction, drama, name cast
documentary
It felt like they “got it” and connected with it.
It was the best numbers of return. The one key contractual element was that they were saying they were going to do no marketing. Usually, companies say they will do it, and they charge you, but they won’t do any marketing. Any third-party elements that we needed, we were free to get from other people or they’d charge us. We went to third parties to get closed captioning and all that stuff. They all passed QC. It cost us very little to put it up with them, and if we are to make money through this, it’ll come back to us immediately.
documentary
fiction, some name cast
Honestly, they were number three on our list of offers. Our top two choices refused to negotiate the revenue splits in their offers, so we checked our egos at the door and went with 1091 because at least their splits were standard. In speaking to filmmakers about their experiences with 1091, there were definitely more mixed-to-negative reviews than glowing ones. But across the board, filmmakers said they were transparent, which was key. And when we researched their SVOD licenses for their titles, they seemed to have more access there than some of the other companies that were lower on our offer list. SVOD and AVOD deals are the only real revenue streams for independent films now.
What went well?
They were very chill about turning things in and that kind of legal side of things. They’re very transparent about what they’re spending and they’re not trying to rack up that figure as high as they can get it. They’re trying to keep marketing spend as low as possible which shows a lot of integrity on their behalf. The transparency with data-—we already know how many people have seen the film on each platform. They have a website for us to access that in real time that is really cool to see—so I can see how many people watched it yesterday, for example. That transparency of data is really cool. Creatively they've been open to every idea we’ve thrown out there. Really cool, personable, and chill way to go about this.
fiction, genre
fiction, comedy
It’s on a ton of different platforms and it has continued to be on different platforms, which is nice. I’ve never had a problem getting quarterly statements and checks. I’ve heard so many horror stories with that. Not tons and tons of money but at least we knew whatever the reports say and they pay us.
Did they make our movie go gangbusters? No. But they did work and got sales. Overall, I really liked them.
fiction, drama, no name cast
documentary
Very impressed with the press team because it was internal and they haven’t charged us for any of that (as far as I’ve seen). They’ve been better to work with than any publicist I’ve worked with. And for free.
I like their dashboard. I’m a numbers person, I like to see in real time what’s happening and to see if the check they sent matches. So far so good.
documentary
They were fairly communicative. I liked their dashboard.
fiction, drama
documentary
They did get it onto REDACTEDREDACTED [selective SVOD platform]. The targeted publicity worked to a certain degree. As for the timing of the release, I don't think that worked. I think people were so distracted. I don’t hold that against them.
The big thing for me was I wanted to bring in a publicist that worked specifically within the REDACTEDREDACTED space. And they were fine with that.
documentary
fiction, genre, no cast
They did single handedly get us the streaming deal, which still isn’t much money, but it gave us clout out the wazoo. For a team with no sales agents and zero connections, that in and of itself made it 1000% worth it to go with them.
The deliverables process was smooth and painless. Streamwise, their dashboard, is incredibly helpful. You can see most transactions that were made, including the platform and country. No mysterious reports and murky spreadsheets you get from some other distributors. Communication started off on a good foot. Lastly, expense caps were honored.
fiction, some name cast
What went poorly?
There were a few technical glitches. They do seem to have a tiered deal with which films they take on. There seems to be a tier of larger films that get tons of placement on social, that have slightly different deals that are more important priorities. Ours was not on that.
fiction, genre
Signed our deal in 2018, and it was in 2019 that they changed to 1091. They didn’t reach out to tell us they became 1091—I heard about it through someone else. They're still reporting marketing expenses but I do not know that they’re doing anything to market the film. Maybe when they were first putting it out, but nothing since. But still a percentage of the revenue reports goes to a large marketing budget.
fiction, comedy, no name cast
fiction, drama. name cast
[After the release,] the communication was spotty after a while. That could be on us—maybe we should have been the ones updating and pressing but we didn't know if that was appropriate and didn't want to harass them.
documentary
I didn’t like having to go back and forth on the key art and the trailer. They were not awesome about that stuff. Their feedback was not my taste. They pitched some key art designs that made me really sad. We didn’t go with any of them.
Zero input or ideas when it came to marketing. They have a publicity department, they said they would get us enough reviews to get a rating on Rotten Tomatoes. We still don’t have that. I really felt that they were relying on our star name to make it profitable. They said that they were happy with how the film did, but I don’t think we’re ever going to make our money back.
drama, name cast
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[Had a very specific delivery problem which was 1091’s fault]
No one said, “I really liked your movie.” It was very like, “let’s put this in the machine.” I imagine every filmmaker has a different story. Maybe there were more conversations between REDACTEDREDACTED [sales agent] and them that I didn’t know about. They seemed fine and professional. I’m working with Bitmax right now on a different film. Bitmax feels like their communication seems right, because they are just an aggregator and don’t claim to be anything different. I don't expect them to watch the movie and say here are our thoughts. 1091 was a lot like Bitmax in that way.
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[Had a very specific artwork delivery problem which was 1091’s fault.] I notified them and they changed it.
Did they breach the contract?
No (across the board)
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So far, so good. A plus side: no dishonesty yet!
Filmmaker Friendliness?
They seem to understand filmmakers. They seem to not pretend that they know better than the filmmaker does. Able to speak the language. But I never got a good sense that they had really watched the movie. I understand that for them it was not necessarily important, but for us it was important. We stopped pushing the matter.
fiction, genre
fiction, drama
They were great about the transition from The Orchard to 1091. They sent us several letters telling us it was coming and then again once it happened. I was assigned a point person who helped with renewing deals and they put it on new platforms.
Up until release date, 10 out of 10: super regular meetings, super great tone. On our side the whole time. Once the movie came out, way less so and sometimes it took a couple weeks to hear back on an email. I get that, but we were a little let down after the movie came out.
documentary
documentary
Overall I would say B, B+. Definitely not bad. It seemed pretty clear that the reps were overworked. They have a lot of movies. They’re a mass distributor. There were times it would be harder to get a response, but they always responded.
I don't want to make them sound super cold. It did feel like there was a person behind the emails. They were responsive. The responses seemed like they were coming from someone who was getting a ton of emails a day of a similar nature, so they were on autopilot with their responses. But also, no real issues. There wasn’t any reason to have any kind of specific conversation about something special with respect to your project.
documentary
fiction, drama
One point I feel could be added is the fact that some sales agents do not tell filmmakers about 1091’s dashboard and that relationship can seem a bit opaque.
Compared to the horror stories you read about, we would still say 1091 is filmmaker friendly. They’re transparent, they don’t have nefarious hidden expenses, and their splits are fair. You just need to know they have no bandwidth to promote your film.
fiction, some name cast
What would you have done differently?
I would have set aside money for PR and marketing on our end. They did very little of that for us.
fiction, genre
I don’t think I'd do anything differently. At the time—and I stand behind this decision—the name was more important to me than trying to self-distribute, which may have given us a bigger ROI but not given us the credibility. Today we’re focused on the financial outcome of the deal—and I wouldn't do that today.
fiction, comedy, no name cast
fiction, drama
I might not have jumped on the first offer that ever came though. I might have tried other things and compared and contrasted them.
documentary
Nothing to do with 1091, or any complaints, but I never submitted to other distributors. Why didn’t I just see what was out there? It was in the pandemic, I couldn’t handle it.
We went with 1091 over an Indie Rights or Bitmax because they do have relationships with SVOD, Cable VOD—other curated platforms. As far as I know, they haven't started pitching our project out to those places yet. I’m actually due to have a conversation with REDACTEDREDACTED [sales agent] about how that is going. My understanding is that they’re going to release it on VOD, see how it does, and if it does well, it’ll give them more intel re: licensing.
documentary
I might have taken the other deal. Just because maybe they were a more dynamic company. They had the bigger in-house team, they might have pushed the film more. They might have done more appropriate PR for the film. But all of the deals—none of them were great deals. I was just happy to get a deal and have it out there. Most people would say that as well. It’s been a good calling card for me, a good showcase.
fiction, drama, no name cast
fiction, some name cast
At this moment, we feel like our options were a) a boutique company with a better “artistic” reputation but with less transparency and higher splits; or, b) 1091, a larger company with less “artistic” titles, more transparency, and lower splits. There would be a loss either way, and we still struggle about whether or not we made the right choice—especially knowing we would have at least received more personal attention at the boutique companies. But until a significant SVOD or cable deal happens, it feels like 1091 was ultimately the wrong move. We were warned about the poor marketing, so that came as no surprise. But we would also say from the 10,000-feet view that most of these distribution companies are struggling. You look behind the curtain and it’s layoffs and furloughs and disorganization. We feel like the streaming wars really changed the playing field for independent films, and distributors have yet to adapt to many of the monumental changes. And, of course, two years of the pandemic have only added to these challenges. While the grass may look greener, the hard truth may be that most of these companies are the same.
Takeaways
- The 1091 brand is still not fully established. Acquisitions vary from microbudget dramas with no-name cast to supernatural films with name attachments.
- It does seem as if 1091 is departing from The Orchard’s more selective reputation and moving into the bulk buying of a distributor like Gravitas. Both distributors have solid relationships with platforms, but both have overworked staff, and impersonal communication styles after release.
- A lot of filmmakers were approached directly and worked with 1091 without retaining a sales agent; that does bode well for a company crafting a filmmaker-friendly relationship.
- Because 1091 inherited a lot of prestigious commercial titles from The Orchard, it seems as if filmmakers are drawn to the company because of those associations, and not necessarily due to their current curation.
