Was 2025 the Year Indie Film Acquisitions Broke?
With Sundance 2026 on the horizon, the odds are stacked against indie films.
In a standard blackjack game, which offers some of the best odds of success for gamblers in a casino, the house edge typically ranges from 0.5% to 2%, meaning the average player is going to lose from around 50 cents to $2 for every $100 wagered. That’s probably about the same chance of turning a profit in the world of independent film.
And yet, as I spoke with producers for Filmmaker Magazine’s annual “Hits & Misses” column (now available to read here with six case studies of films that premiered at Sundance), there are certainly some producers and financiers that continue to stay in the indie business, champion emerging filmmakers, and make movies that launch at film festivals and get acquired in ways that make everyone happy enough to keep going. As producer Sorry, Baby and Lurker producer Alex Orlovsky told me, “You can be better at gambling than other people and make a living at it.”
But how good at indie film gambling do you have t…