FRESH CLIPPINGS
A New Theatrical Pipeline
AMC Theatres announced the launch of Leawood Films last week, a new distribution label built specifically to bring more small and mid-sized movies into theaters. The company is targeting fully financed or already completed films, the kind that often play well at festivals and then struggle to find a real theatrical home. Variance will handle North American bookings, AMC will handle marketing, and Piece of Magic Entertainment will handle distribution overseas.
The logic behind this is simple. Movie theater chains need more movies. The theatrical business has recovered in fits and starts since the pandemic, but it remains dependent on a relatively small number of major releases to fill an enormous amount of screen capacity. AMC has thousands of screens and not always enough compelling films to put on them. And though they’re part of Fathom, a joint-venture with Regal and Cinemark, Leawood Films is a more direct response to that excess capacity for AMC specifically. The chain has been explicit that this is meant to complement its studio relationships rather than compete with them.
What makes this interesting, though, is the potential pipeline it could create for those outside of the Hollywood system, i.e. creators. AMC already has direct experience distributing outside the traditional studios, having worked with Taylor Swift on The Eras Tour and with Beyoncé on Renaissance. Those were massive theatrical successes built on the fandom of two major music stars. Leawood Films formalizes that infrastructure into something that’s repeatable. And critically, it is not exclusive to AMC. The label plans to work with rival theater circuits both domestically and internationally.
Thinking about everything happening in the creator-to-theatrical space right now, it will be very interesting to see how, or if, audiences built online will show up to theaters now that presumably more shots will be taken in the space.
Because what’s been missing for a lot of creators and independent filmmakers is not necessarily the audience, but the infrastructure to get from a finished film to actual screens.
It is early, and the first titles will not be announced until next year or even 2028. But if AMC executes this well, it can become a genuine path alongside traditional studio distribution and the self-distribution model.
That is a meaningful new door.
An Inside Look at YouTube’s Creator Deals
Natalie Jarvey got the scoop on how YouTube is paying creators millions of dollars just to keep them from leaving. As we know, the Netflix incursion into creators has only accelerated in recent months, and YouTube’s response has been quite the story since.
According to Jarvey’s reporting, the platform is currently making offers to roughly 15 creators, with deals ranging from the low seven figures up to around $10 million, all to keep their content exclusive to YouTube for a defined period. The offers reportedly come with both a carrot and a stick. Take content to a competing platform, particularly Netflix, and a creator risks losing their spot at Brandcast, YouTube’s advertising showcase, along with billboard promotion and access to the preferred advertising program reserved for top-tier creators.
One dealmaker described YouTube executives as “scared shitless”, which is a remarkable posture for a company that still dominates streaming by every meaningful metric. The fact that YouTube feels compelled to pay millions to retain talent it helped create in the first place says a lot about how leverage may be shifting.
Digital talent has never carried more power than it does right now, and YouTube writing eight-figure checks to keep people from leaving is the clearest evidence of that yet.
What Exclusivity Really Means
Speaking about exclusivity, Steve Raizes wrote a piece last month about the importance of being clear on what that truly means.
On August 13, Disney+ and The Overlap announced a one-year deal making Disney+ the headline sponsor of Stick to Football and a new show called Stick to United with Wayne Rooney. Both companies put out press releases the same day.
The releases did not describe the same deal.
Disney’s version says 20 of the 40 Stick to Football episodes are exclusive to Disney+ for a limited time, along with six commissioned specials, and stops there. It never says what happens to any of it afterward. Global, which holds a majority stake in The Overlap, says both the windowed episodes and the specials return to YouTube once the exclusive period ends. Global’s CEO said the same thing on LinkedIn.
Neither release states how long the exclusive window actually lasts. Neither confirms or denies the other’s account of what happens to the specials once that window closes. As Raizes points out, both versions can technically be true at the same time, because exclusivity can now mean at least four different things: here first, here only, here only for a while, or here only in certain territories. Each company simply picked the reading that serves its own audience. Disney is writing for someone deciding whether to subscribe. Global is writing for advertisers and for the YouTube audience that does not want to feel like it is being locked out.
The larger point is that if you are negotiating any kind of distribution or sponsorship deal in this environment, there is a real chance the other side is reading exclusive as “here only” while you are reading it as “here first,” and nobody has to be acting in bad faith for that gap to exist.
Raizes’s advice is practical: when exclusivity shows up in an agreement, make the document answer five specific questions.
How long?
In which territories?
For which specific episodes?
What happens the day it expires?
And who is responsible for making that happen?
As legacy platforms and creators increasingly share the same content, the old assumptions baked into contract language may not hold like they used to.
Windowing used to be a relatively simple concept. But it no longer is, and the Disney and Overlap situation is proof that even sophisticated companies with experienced legal teams are not immune to the ambiguity.
GARDEN VIEW
Is M. Night the first traditional director to become a creator? Excited to see where this channel goes…
HARVEST QUOTE
"Executives at creator economy companies face unique challenges. These businesses are built around a creator (or in some cases a group), who are personally and often inseparably tied to the businesses."
— Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg, discussing the recent exodus of executives at creator companies
Have a great weekend…