In time for the iconic brand’s 25th anniversary, IFC Films is getting a refresh: as Independent Film Company (IFC). Much about the New York-based leader in indie film’s identity will remain the same, though AMC Networks film head Scott Shooman told IndieWire that the company’s approach to release strategies — including windows and number of theaters — will be more specifically tailored to each film.
Independent Film Company will now fall under a new named umbrella of IFC Entertainment Group, under which AMC Networks’ four film verticals will now fall: Independent Film Company, the IFC Center theater in the West Village of Manhattan, genre releaser RLJE Films, and premier horror streaming service Shudder. This season, for example, the IFC Entertainment Group has “Clown in a Cornfield” (RLJE, May 9) and Cannes premiere “Dangerous Animals” (Independent Film Company/Shudder, June 6), both of which it plans to take out into 2,000 theaters based off the success of last year’s “Late Night with the Devil.”
The IFC Entertainment Group was emboldened to adopt the refresh after a successful 2024 with some of the company’s highest box-office achievements in its history, with films including “Late Night with the Devil,” “Oddity, “The Taste of Things,” “In a Violent Nature,” “Ghostlight,” and the Oscar-nominated stop-motion animated feature “Memoir of a Snail.” (The latter film was also the company’s first Oscar nominee in a decade.)
“We had our second-best year theatrically ever last year, beating our friends and competitors at Bleecker, Roadside, Sony Classics, Magnolia. We did better than all of them last year, theatrically, which I think is a surprise to a lot of people when they go back and look at it,” Shooman said in an IndieWire interview.
Shooman said a “toe in genres” will still be a guiding principle for the company while still having that “auteur-oriented vision.” (Across the IFC Entertainment Group’s divisions, Shooman said they hope to acquire “four or five” titles out of Cannes this year.)
“We do about 50 movies a year. Shudder buys about 30. IFC and RLJE combine for about 20, so we have different needs across different areas,” Shooman said. “Shudder being the leading horror service in the States, we have the luxury of a little bit being in the incoming call business, but we also have the best curators sniffing out who those auteurs are and how to get [movies like] “The Ugly Stepsister” before anyone else does.” The April 18 IFC release is now in theaters and will head to Shudder at the end of its 21-day window. “A theatrical release is the best advertising campaign for the marathon of a film, and we treat it that way. Streaming is a vastly important portion of the revenue stream and pie for each film, but it’s a piece of it for us,” said Shooman, who said the new IFC will still hold theatrical windows in great esteem.
As for the company’s heightened approach to release strategies amid the rebrand, Shooman said, “It’s about taking the right screens and having a bespoke approach to each film. Not every film deserves an initial 2,000-screen release, but when a film does deserve it, we want to be capable of doing so,” Shooman said. “We’re not going to hit a switch and do this overnight. It’s been something we’ve been working toward intentionally.
As for the beloved IFC Center theater in New York, which screens IFC Entertainment Group titles as well as repertory releases and first-run independent films from other distributors, nothing will change there.
“The Center is an institution. It has a long history. I believe it’s its 20th year this year, and it has a wide variety of films from docs to foreign to repertory that in that location, speaking to the curatorial edge, we have some of the best curators picking what comes there,” Shooman said. “We still hope to play our films there. It’s not necessarily the right home for the more horror and genre stuff; those may be the exception to the rule.
In terms of reinforcing the rebrand and how to get the industry on board with a big change, at least name-wise, to a legacy company, Shooman said, “That’s a lot of just walking around town and saying to people, ‘This is who we are. This is how we work together, and the types of films we do. We hear it happen so often that people say, ‘Oh, this is a Shudder film, not an IFC film. So it’s just being outward, talking to yourself, talking to the agencies, talking to the financiers. It will take probably a cycle — starting in Cannes through next Berlin to get everyone to get the hang of it — but there’s lots of changes. We’re more fluid and dynamic than all the others, and that’s what makes us independent. Stuff happens quicker on our side of the business.”
As part of the rebrand, the company revealed a new logo and a customized audio logo created by Adam “Adrock” Horovitz of the Beastie Boys. See below.
