As the Sundance Film Festival gets started with plenty of independently produced films on offer, AMC Networks is announcing that Sundance Now is rebranding as a streaming service focused on indie film and festival titles.
The rebrand comes amid a small wave of new exhibition opportunities for independent films, which have had trouble selling out of film festivals amid Hollywood’s larger contraction. Last year, Letterboxd, the cinephile-led social platform, launched a new film rental program, Video Store.
Sundance Now, now priced at $7.99 a month, will bring “the festival directly into viewers’ homes with films straight from their theatrical runs,” according to today’s announcement, promising a library that is “algorithm-free.”
The Sundance Now streaming service will have monthly, post-theatrical film premieres, including titles from the AMC Networks’ sister shingle, the Independent Film Company, like 100 Nights of Hero starring Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe and Charli XCX and Forbidden Fruits starring Lola Tong and Lili Reinhart. Other highlights will include new spotlight titles added every Friday and an overall curated library with refreshed monthly collections.
Film festival stand-outs from TIFF, Venice, Berlin and, of course, Sundance, will also be on the streaming service. This will include Sundance-specific programming like “Sundance Icons” (such as Richard Linklater’s Boyhood), “Sundance Thrills” (The Babadook and Speak No Evil) and “Sundance Docs” (How to Survive a Plague).
Said Courtney Thomasma, executive vp of AMC Networks’ linear and streaming products, “We’re thrilled to offer Sundance Now as a home for both filmmakers and film enthusiasts, leveraging our in-house film group and festival partnerships to promote access, discovery and affinity for culture-defining stories and storytellers.”
Scott Shooman, head of AMC Networks’ IFC Entertainment, adds, “As audiences have more options, and become more demanding, we wanted to recreate the film festival experience by showcasing a program hand-selected across all genres, by some of the best curators in the business.”
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