Marketing to Moviegoers

10 Independent Distributors

 

I never knew why it took the majors at least 15 years to capitalize on summer releases geared for the youth market. . . . You (simply) made a film about something wild with a great deal of action, a little sex, and possibly some sort of strange gimmick.

Filmmaker Roger Corman

Independent distributors tend to fill market segments—meaning niches— not covered by the majors. They also focus on low-budget films. Roger Corman’s book, How I Made a Hundred Hollywood Movies and Never Lost a Dime, from which the above quote is taken, recalls that the indies feasted on teen and youth summer movies in the 1950s to 1970s. The movies had provocative titles, such as Sorority House Massacre and Piranha. By the 1970s, the majors ...