Indie Films Turned to Roadshow Releases When Traditional Rollouts Failed — and Distributors Took Note

On June 13, hundreds of true believers gathered at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California dressed in colorful, reflective, space-age outfits to watch a film and celebrate the existence of aliens. They weren’t there to watch Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” but “Welcome Space Brothers,” a documentary about the Unarian movement and their benevolent leader who believed she communed with extraterrestrial life, Ruth Norman.

The movie has played film festivals since 2023, but absent any real distribution, the producers, alongside Elijah Wood’s SpectreVision, took it upon themselves to release the film whichever way they could. June 13 was the beginning of a roadshow on behalf of the film in which director Jodi Wille plans to tour to at least 15 different cities, do Q&As, and engage with local followers of Norman’s teachings. The Alex Theatre screening also featured a live performance from rocker Moby, who is a co-executive producer on “Welcome Space Brothers” and via his production banner Little Walnut bankrolled the film’s P&A to make this tour happen.

Wille is not a household name, and Moby will not be performing at other tour dates. But the initial screening netted $17,000 in profits, and the team at SpectreVision is confident the film will find its audience even in communities like Boise, ID, Roswell, NM, and more places that aren’t New York or LA.

“That specific community wants to show up to be with each other and to have the conversations about being an experiencer,” Christina Campagnola, who co-heads SpectreVision’s Management division, told IndieWire. “One person came up to me after the screening and was like, ‘This film is going to usher us into the Age of Aquarius!’ I love that so much. It just takes on a life beyond the film, and it’s really about finding like-minded people that share the same weird beliefs you have. The question is how do we continue to do this for other movies? It has to be a specific film that we feel we can tap into that audience.”

SpectreVision is just one indie shingle experimenting with the roadshow method of release, staging individual screenings of the film and making each into an event featuring the film’s stars, subjects, or filmmakers. Even distributor Utopia and their boutique label Circle Collective, which has released far more music docs for which the roadshow makes perfect sense, is touring around director Greg Vrotsos and his film “Situations” to make sure it doesn’t disappear on streaming.

It’s hardly a new idea, but it’s rapidly becoming more prevalent a method for independent releases, as well as for traditional distributors trying to shake things up. Filmmakers and production companies are looking at the traditional means of distribution and believe something is broken.

“Look at some of the box office. It’s insane. Something runs an entire week and does $600. That doesn’t make any sense to keep that movie for a week,” said Jessica Rosner, an independent distributor and theater booker currently working on a roadshow for the film “The Last Picture Shows.” “If you do know your audience, if you’re able to target your audience, you’ll get them there to those one or two shows, and it’s better for the theater.”

Ryland Brickson Cole Tews at Sitges Film Festival for ‘Hundreds of Beavers‘Courtesy Justin Cook PR

Rosner is one of the masterminds behind the roadshow for “Hundreds of Beavers,” which looks like the template everyone wants to copy. The black-and-white, slapstick silent comedy made for just $150,000 became a cult hit surpassing over $1 million in box office after launching a tour of the film around the Midwest, not the coasts.

To this day, it continues to play one-off screenings nationwide, many of them involving appearances with costumed beavers from the film. Rosner clarifies it wasn’t the Midwest tour that secured the movie its New York and LA dates, but it did spark the word of mouth that drove more people to it.

If before the roadshow was built around stars touting their own movie, like Kevin Smith with “Clerks 3” or what John Early is currently doing to support “Maddie’s Secret,” “Hundreds of Beavers” proved you can do a successful roadshow without star power, so long as you know your audience.

In the case of “Welcome Space Brothers,” the film has people who belong to a literal cult who are now coming out to watch it. “The Last Picture Shows” is a documentary about independent movie theaters past and present, and Rosner and distributor Gary Rubin are taking it directly to those offbeat theaters the movie is profiling.

Karol Martesko-Fenster of distributor Abramorama said the roadshow’s popularity for indies is emblematic of our “direct-to-audience” era. Rather than blanket your movie across the country and try and drum up attention through national press and marketing, filmmakers are appealing directly to theaters with a pitch for why their movie can perform there by packing the house on a single night, selling them on Q&As that can help make the screening more of an event. They’re tapping into local news outlets to drum up attention and then doing hyper-targeted marketing through social media using zip codes to make sure the right audience finds the title and is willing to go out for this one-night only event.

All of this requires massive coordination and effort on the part of the distributors — sometimes handled by the filmmakers themselves — to not just do the marketing but also geographically map out a tour schedule where a filmmaker can reasonably get to day-to-day. You also have to navigate exhibitor schedules if a date doesn’t work or if they have studio commitments that bar them from screening another title, and Rosner explains that you may literally not have the luxury of booking numerous screenings in advance.

Sam Green’s ‘32 Sounds’Sundance

Martesko-Fenster shouted out Sam Green’s “32 Sounds,” an experimental film that needed to be seen in a theater and wound up having Green touring around in a station wagon for a full calendar year on behalf of the film. Martesko-Fenster said it was that effort that got the attention of the Criterion Channel to eventually place the film on streaming.

“This is really where the work of a distributor comes into play,” Martesko-Fenster said, “The roadshow is more work, but they’re open to it because there’s a financial return that’s better, and there’s an awareness return that is much better, because you’re able to get regional PR to compliment national PR, and you’re able to get pockets of supporters to interact with the filmmakers.”

Campagnola with SpectreVision — which itself is not a distributor — is literally doing the outreach to these arthouse theaters herself, and she and her partner at the company believe artist-led distribution is the future. If they can raise the P&A budget, is there a means in which all the profits can go back to the filmmakers?

That requires tracking down audience data that can literally be a black box, and it’s a huge burden on anyone to be a creative and a data scientist or marketing executive, Campagnola said. But it’s incumbent on distributors in whatever format these movies are released to begin asking those questions.

“A lot of them don’t ask the filmmakers, ‘Where do you think your audience lives?’ The filmmaker’s involvement is crucial because they would know where the touch points are. Identifying those keywords and finding the audience is an important first step,” she said. “I don’t want to come across as bashing traditional distribution, but obviously the system is broken. It’s not a surprise to anyone. I know they’re trying to figure it out, but a lot of times they’re trying to satisfy an international, 100-screen deal. So they put it in 100 screens in the U.S. and it’s playing in the middle of nowhere, California. The audience of the film does not live in middle of nowhere, California. That’s what’s always baffled me. If a filmmaker knows they can sell out a theater in Glendale, California, why wouldn’t you book that theater?”