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How did you first hear about Indican Pictures?
My experience with distributors was pretty minimal to begin with. At that point, big distributors I knew were Lionsgate and things like that. This obviously wasn’t a name that I recognized. We were connected to Indican through one of our producers.
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I heard about them through our sales agent. I had worked with larger distributors and felt that I got lost in the shuffle so wanted to try a smaller mom and pop shop, get more attention.
I think it was my sales agent that brought them up. At first, I didn’t know anything about them. I was intrigued because they had a deal with Lionsgate, so they could get into a lot of the same distribution paths using the Lionsgate name. That was the hook. I was intrigued when I first heard about them.
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We were super excited because, for a small indie film like ours, Indican was a big get for us. We were over the moon. They had done things we knew. We knew of no horror stories with them. Thought of it as a reputable company. We were excited about working with them. Win-win. My partner had heard of them through doing research on independent film distributors.
I emailed a list of 42 distributors I had from a previous working relationship with a sales agent.
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They came to us soliciting to distribute our film. We had a friend who’d released a couple micro-budget films with them. It was early in the process for him and those films, but he was having what he thought was a good relationship / good communication with them.
They reached out to me. I think [our film] was an official selection in competition at [mid-tier film festival]. They reached out cold to me and just said, ‘Your film seems like it’s doing really well, we’d be really excited to talk to you more about distributing your film.’
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We were introduced to Indican by another filmmaker who had distributed a film through them.
What motivated you to work with them?
There was an offer, and the terms seemed really great—better than what other distributors were offering. Things about it, though, didn’t seem right to me, but I didn’t know enough to really fight for that concern. At that time, your options are somewhat limited on a film of that budget and scale. The idea for a lot of filmmakers is that you are happy to just get a deal. We know now there are a lot of predatory distributors who will make sure you don’t see any money. The decision wasn’t 100% mine.
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We had two other offers from smaller companies that had done material we weren’t familiar with. We felt very confident about getting it distributed. Basically, we liked them, and we had a contract negotiation. We got the contract, I read it, and thought it was heavily one sided. Didn’t really say they’d do anything other than take their money. I went to my lawyer to look at it, and he said ‘I wouldn’t sign this.’ We went through more negotiations, and they were very slow. We would send changes, they would take weeks/months to get back to us. It was a push-pull. Eventually we got it to a place we were comfortable enough and that they wouldn’t be overreaching with the rights. We didn’t feel great, but it was solid.
At the time, we didn’t have many offers to be honest with you. The kind of offers we were getting were so ridiculous. I was getting pressure to take that deal from my sales agent and my producers, because that’s all there was. There was very little communication back from Indican.
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We had a nice first meeting. I felt like this is kinda what I want this time around, a personalized smaller experience with a distributor.
My director really wanted a traditional route whereas I did not, but it was his first feature and he was excited about it. About 2-3 distributors were interested in us. Indican had a relationship with Lionsgate, so we went with them because Lionsgate had more reach.
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They said all the right things. All but guaranteed we’d be on a major streamer, get a TV deal, because of the quality of the film and their deep relationships. They loved the movie. They understood it and had great ideas on how they’d market it and where they’d go to sell it. They touted their relationships with streamers, airlines, cable networks, etc.
We weren’t getting a storm of requests. We weren’t being inundated. There were different distributors that reached out to us. Some that expressed interest and then you never hear from them. Some where you are not sure what is happening on their end. The lack of transparency around the process was something I experienced. You talk to somebody, you think things might move forward, but then there are crickets. I looked up Indican and the first thing that caught my eye was that they distributed an early [a cult classic filmmaker’s project] and thought it was cool. A third party had written about them that said these are the people that take risks and discover films that may not jump out as blockbusters but help elevate them—market, develop, branding—so they can penetrate. They’re going to be that distributor that’s going to take risks for the films that are outside of the obvious—on track for success film and help elevate it to maybe a cult following. That felt good because I held onto [my film] and had been able to have it be exactly the film I wanted it to be without having to make concessions to anybody. As far as packaging, marketing, title—the things that wouldn’t change the story, the film itself. I don’t care. If these are people that have a catalogue of films (some of which I recognize) that they help bring from the fringe to a wide audience. That seemed like somebody I wanted to talk with.
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At the time, the filmmaker that introduced us to Indican had had some moderate success with them thanks to a Redbox buy, so we felt comfortable going with them too. Turns out it was the filmmaker that secured the Redbox buy, not Indican. They don’t even actually have any other sales to Redbox!
What went well?
I like what they did with the poster. I think they did a good job even though they overcharged on their line sheet for it.
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I’ve worked with a number of distributors, I can say things about all of them - things that went well—other than this one. It was literally - from the moment the ink was signed—it was a hellacious experience. I can’t honestly in good conscience say that anything went well.
The initial conversations, communication, concept art (they went with the art we’d commissioned from a friend during our festival run). They seemed great up until release.
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Our film went further with the Indican/Lionsgate team than I could have provided as a boutique distributor through aggregation and individual vendors. They paid on time.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
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[Shaun’s] communication with me was excellent. From the get-go. Once I gave them the deliverables, it set in motion this machine. They started cutting the trailer (with 2-3 different versions). I thought they moved lightning fast. I think the trailer got turned around in a week. They are seasoned pros. It’s not the trailer I would cut, but I didn’t care. It was the one that would get eyeballs. The second was coming up with the marketing materials. The poster, the DVD wrapper— she worked really closely with me and tried to get me to understand why my ideas weren’t as good as her ideas. I really appreciated that because I’m an external processor. If you can explain things to me, I’m going to understand it. Everything was about what was at stake and everything got boiled down to the genre. She was having that conversation about trying to pigeonhole the film in a way that it would fit clearly and neatly in catalogues. They did get the film onto all the VOD platforms and, for a while, they were supporting DVD sales. They placed ads for the film in several magazines.
What went poorly?
[Very specific issue with the MG and delivery time, very specific issue about overcharging for marketing labor.] If you want to dispute the numbers, they’re so well protected in the way that they make sure that you don’t want to do that. In the contract, you pay not only your legal expense but also their legal expenses to make that happen. Despite a lot of attention put on the trailer, we’re still in the red.
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They did everything they could to make it impossible to ever have a successful delivery. They were playing this game of never wanting to accept delivery so we can justify not doing what is contractually obligated by us. We’re going to create all these impossible obstacles for you to deliver. Creatively, they just had zero respect for the movie in a number of different ways. Zero respect for the creative process.
[Very specific issues regarding the signing of the contract.] Even though we have never done anything wrong and have only been taken advantage by them.
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Communication after release. They pretty much dropped off the face of the earth. We never got a streaming or TV deal. They never told us they even submitted it to any. Their overhead was and remains significant. We negotiated a very reasonable minimum spend for them to market and promote the film, but the movie is always just a few thousand or hundred under the break-even point every quarter.
Between my lawyer and their people, it took so long to finalize the agreement. They were all doing a really good job, but it didn’t feel like I was their priority. It ultimately stretched on a year. It’s better to do things right than wrong and quick.
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They messed up the metadata, misspelling key cast and crew names even though we’d provided them correctly. They advised us of the wrong release date, which was later than the true release date, so we were a bit blindsided and unable to promote the release ahead of time, as we would have liked. And, [a very specific metadata mistake by Indican.]
Everything. First of all, they are extremely unresponsive. That first week or when they want your film and they’re trying to get the contract signed, they’re on it. The second you sign, they are completely radio silent, on to the next one. [Very specific issue with their marketing asset.] Their [revenue] reports are impossible to read, they literally make no sense at all. Even my sales agent who has been doing this for 30 years didn’t understand them. They’re intentionally not logical. They’re blatantly lying. If I ever get money I will audit them on behalf of other filmmakers. I know beyond a reasonable doubt they’re lying about their numbers. Never saw a cent from them other than the crappy MG. Anything negative you can think of.
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We received numbers for a theatrical release that was fabricated, the movie didn’t sell well, the poster was Lionsgate’s choice for us and didn’t reflect our film at all, they bulldozed us with their own decisions, and we have terrible reviews because of the bait-n-switch poster that isn’t in line with our film. All things I had warned my director about, so we had managed expectations.
Did they breach the contract?
I couldn’t say 100% without being able to know the exact real numbers that my film made. It feels like they did but they’re so well protected that I cannot prove that.
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Without auditing them, there’s no way for me to point to a specific spot. It definitely goes beyond a gut feeling because there are things that don’t add up. It’s about the accounting, but nothing really I can point to.
Yes.
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No.
No.
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It’s incredibly difficult to say. They give quarterly statements, which seems nice, until you realize that you have no way of knowing if those quarterly statements are legit. It’s a piece of paper with a company heading and every quarter you see that your film was so close to making a profit, but sadly not this quarter, maybe on the next one. We’ve never seen the deals they’ve made with actual distributors, so you have no way to cross reference what they’re making versus what their overhead is—or what they say it is.
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We were contracted for quarterly reports but are lucky to get one report annually. The accounting is a bit suspect [Very specific accounting error that was never corrected by Indican.] When called on this they indicated they’d correct it but never sent a correction. It makes you wonder what other numbers are also randomly made up. Other than the one filmmaker with the Redbox buy, we do not know a single filmmaker who has seen a payment from them.
Filmmaker Friendliness?
It’s all very legal. The way a politician talks to you, and you just want to be real. There’s none of that [realness], and I believe that’s to protect themselves. Which is disheartening because when you go into business with someone, you want to have a real conversation.
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I would say that their their tone was constantly hostile and they refused to even get on the phone and talk. They would never return a single phone call.
They definitely talk down to you. You can just kind of tell they are crooks, used car salesmen.
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Sure, they were very pleasant, easy to talk to at first, and consistent.
They are in the beginning. Although, at the time we thought them being understanding about the artwork we wanted was a big “give” by them. However, we later realized they were most likely very excited to take what amounted to free artwork for them—so they didn’t have that expense down the road.
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Talking to Shaun on the phone—she’s just super personable and very cut and dry and direct. Kinda feels like a trustworthy, non-glitzy person who is able to demonstrate through her words that she understood what I was trying to do, and she wanted to elevate the visibility and exposure for the film and that she knew how to do that.
They invested a good amount of money into the trailer, marketing, and getting it out into the world. The negative—and everyone is used to this—you basically have to pay that off before you see a dollar of income.
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At first. Early meetings with Shaun and Randolph and deliverables drop-offs were very smooth. After the release, they wouldn’t take our calls or even allow us onto the lot and we’d have to stand by the guard shack and wait for them to send an underling down. Shaun was suddenly never available.
What would you have done differently?
I would definitely choose self-distribution.
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I would have run like there was a raging forest fire behind me.
Slap myself in the face. So many things. Obviously I wouldn’t have taken this deal. I wouldn’t have taken any deal. They didn’t do anything at all to benefit me in any way. It definitely hurt me in a lot of ways. I don’t think they are distributors. I think they are more like aggregators and they take all the money (and get it on platforms). They’re not really getting it out there. These low-level distributors prey on our naivete. They’re making money on us. Going with the person who actually has passion for your project is the lesson I took away from that.
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Since then, I have worked with other distributors. They’re all bigger, and things were much smoother. But, there’s no clean system out there.
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I don’t think we would [do anything differently], because we got the experience our director wanted and now he understands why not to do it this way. But he is satisfied with a poster that pops (years later) and Lionsgate written in his resume.
If all we were getting were offers from companies like Indican, we’d keep the rights and self-distribute. We did a film right before this one where we kept the right, self-distributed and made about $70K on our own. Got it into a handful of theatres, sold merch at the screenings, printed our own DVDs and sold merch and DVDs at festivals as we made our way across the circuit. We thought Indican would be able to do more—at least they said they would be able to—and now that we’re seven years into the Indican deal, we can officially say, it’s been a bust. They didn’t get the film out anywhere. We never saw any of the market spend they claimed. The only strategy we saw/experienced was them telling us to lobby hard to our friends, family, and fans to get initial sales. After that, they moved on.
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I would consider working with them again. It’s hard…if there’s not money to be made for me and my particular film. I believe they did a good job at pitching the film. I made the film that I wanted to make. At the level of film that I had, I think Indican took me because they saw that there was a chance for [my film] to be huge, a dark horse.
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We would definitely not go with Indican. We were new filmmakers and didn’t know enough about the distribution process to do our due diligence and see potential red flags.
Any Final Thoughts?
On your first film you’re going to get screwed over, because you just don’t know enough. Now we’re learning more and getting better. Very few good options out there. Most of the time I tell filmmakers to put their movie on Filmhub based on how much money they spent. I’ve had deals that have worked out in my favor since then which has been nice. You learn through the process. But it sucks that a lot of people say that.
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It’s so funny having this conversation. I wish people could climb into my brain and know how bad it is and how bad these people are and how dishonest and nasty and awful they are. But I can’t do that. I guess there’s nothing else to say. Working with them was the worst professional experience I’ve had in my entire career and I say this after having worked with a lot of distributors.
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All I can say is just stay away. You know they have really schlocky horror films, that’s what they’re good at. They acquire tons of those. I don’t know how I ended up on their radar. Stay away 100%. When it comes to these kinds of distributors in general, what are you really getting out of it? You’re giving them your baby, what’s in it for you?
On most of my features, we have a decision team, so we give and take in different ways and have managed expectations. The experience of making choices alone is always worse than the measured team decision. I wouldn’t have chosen this route, but I enjoy the education of it and trying new distributors since the industry changes yearly and they all transition into new kinds of distributors as access and the industry adjusts.
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We’ve come to understand that that’s pretty much the M.O. for these lower-end distributors. They build libraries of films, use the filmmakers and their supporters to get those initial sales, then move onto the next title to rinse and repeat. For them it’s a straight numbers game. They’re not interested in putting any time or money into a film. They do just enough to not be in breach and the name of the game is just get as many titles as possible.
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There’s the success that you have and the success that you are perceived to have. What doesn’t get seen in that is the amount of time people are excited about me as filmmaker because Lionsgate distributed my film. There’s no interest in the subtlety. Being able to say my first feature is distributed by Lionsgate is awesome. People have raised their eyebrows. But what does it actually mean? I couldn’t tell you. Did more people see the film because of that? I have no idea what the metrics are, what the data is.
Indican does not appear to have any successful licensing deals with large cable or streaming platforms. Their model appears to be a straight to SVOD model, which means a first-year return of approximately $4K - $5K, with subsequently less each year. Without a reasonable expense cap, and with questionable accounting and haphazard reporting, taking a film to Indican is essentially giving your movie away for nothing.
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Takeaways
TFC does not regularly handle horror/genre films, so we cannot really speak to expectations surrounding their overall distribution. In general, however, narrative films with no “name” cast have always been fairly difficult to market. Lack of communication and lack of transparency with regard to earnings reports are inexcusable, of course. But stepping back and looking at these films and what platforms they are on, the model relies heavily on TVOD and Cable VOD platforms, which are now also mostly TVOD. It’s a shame that platforms are not making as many SVOD or TV deals as they were in the past, and distributors know this. So they take a chance and if that doesn’t work out, they structure the deal such that they at least make back whatever money from TVOD they laid out for an MG. And who knows what those “distribution expenses” are every quarter? Are they actually doing work after the films are on the platforms? Maybe, maybe not. In the end, it seems like some filmmakers were happy with Indican, others were happy with the advice re posters/trailers, some liked being able to invoke the name Lionsgate, and the rest probably would have been better off self-distributing. Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s a shame that there is a perceived hurdle and stigma regarding what it takes to self-distribute, because distributors know that too.
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Are you a filmmaker or distributor who wants to contribute to this page? Please reach out at drc@thefilmcollaborative.org. Emails sent to this inbox are confidential and accessed only by the staffer who facilitates ReportCard interviews.
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