I was so shocked yesterday to read that Warner Independent and Picturehouse closed their doors for good. Is this the beginning of the end of the end for the mini-majors? Certainly not for Fox Searchlight and Focus Features which are both immensely profitable for their respective studios (Fox and Universal). But it made me think about what's been happening since the Studios opened their indie divisions several years ago.

What it comes down to is that they opened these specialty divisions so they would have a place to output 'art-house' films and hopefully have a shot at the Oscars every year. But what happened over the years is that the climate for art-house films got more and more difficult to succeed in, so Warner Independent (among others) started going up-market, and very soon low-budget art-house became much higher budget fare. And once that started happening, Warner Brothers figured - why do we need a specialty division any more if they are just putting out mid-to-high budget films that we can do on our own?

The low-budget and art-house arenas are flooded with product and very difficult to make a profit in - and the only Oscar Warner Brothers won this year was for Michael Clayton, which they released themselves.

It will be interesting to see how this effects the indie film community at large, and perhaps I'll analyze that in another email.....

If anyone has any thoughts or comments on the shuttering of Warner Independent and what it means for the indie community, I'd love to hear them! I can compile observations to share with the group.

I also wanted to let you know about the Shooting People promo that goes on until the end of May. For all of you who don't know about Shooting People...you should! I've arranged a 25% discount on their membership, and you can check it out here: http://shootingpeople.org/promo/FISPX. My favorite thing about Shooting People are their daily email bulletins work bulletins - over 200 some odd productions a WEEK looking for cast and crew. Don't even mess around with Craigs List guys, this is the real deal.

And lastly, mark your calendars for this series of live and FREE events I've got coming up. You can get all the info right here: http://www.filmspecific.com/public/department108.cfm

Enjoy your weekend and I'll speak to you again soon!

Oh yeah, and looking forward to any comments you want to share on the demise of the mini-major....

To your success, Stacey*