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Independent filmmakers have been asked to do a lot. Make the movie. Find the audience. Convince someone in Hollywood that the people who buy tickets actually… exist.
Now comes the news that, despite all this, there just aren’t enough indie films to buy?!
Earlier this week, a report from The Ankler described renewed enthusiasm for independent acquisitions through interviews with agents and financiers from CAA, UTA, WME, Gersh, and 30West. The shortage these dealmakers described came with an important qualification: Buyers wanted indie movies that were both “distinctive” and “broadly commercial.”
For Annapurna Sriram, who has been touring her SXSW-winning debut feature “Fucktoys” and negotiating over its future for a year-plus, that distinction raises a key question about whose work counts in today’s market.
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“There are so many movies to buy,” Sriram told IndieWire. “It’s offensive to filmmakers who have been striving to get meaningful distribution to be told that there’s a shortage of movies. It’s like none of our work fucking matters?”
Sriram has received distribution offers for “Fucktoys,” but never one with terms she’d accept. That was already true when IndieWire spoke with her in July 2025, following a Fantasia Festival screening attended by more than 600 people. That night, the candy-colored comedy — starring Sriram herself as a cursed sex worker — sold more than $1,000 in merchandise from a single suitcase. Fans even got into a bidding war over her last poster.
“I would never let a client talk down my rate,” the filmmaker and trained dominatrix said then. “Why would I let a distributor?”
Since that conversation, Sriram and “Fucktoys” executive producer Tim Petryni have continued building the film’s audience on their own. The director says the response to their grassroots campaign has shown a clear appetite for the work, even as it has struggled to secure a financial partner willing to invest in a substantial theatrical release.
For many, that gap proves impossible to close.
“People didn’t know how to categorize our film,” Sriram said. “It’s a comedy, it’s a romance, it’s playful, it’s girly. It’s this take on exploitation cinema examining exploitation in the world. I think the industry had a hard time understanding how to place that. But it doesn’t matter because audiences are still responding to it.”
That reaction is precisely what Sriram wants Hollywood buyers to take more seriously.
An indie filmmaker can demonstrate that a movie has paying fans, while a distributor weighs the cost of reaching those customers against its other business interests. Both can look at the same project and arrive at fundamentally different conclusions about its theatrical viability. Still, the alleged shortage turns on how you define “commercial appeal” in 2026.
Differences of opinion are normal when it comes to buying and selling movies. But if the industry’s top shoppers declare a drought in a marketplace many artists see as overcrowded and fiercely competitive, they can wonder whether their work figured into that assessment at all.
The team behind “Hundreds of Beavers,” for example, knows precisely what can happen when filmmakers bet on their own overlooked potential. Made for about $150,000, the black-and-white slapstick comedy pursued a self-distributed rollout that ultimately surpassed $1 million at the box office. The film’s official X account also responded to The Ankler, saying the story “feels so wrong on the ground,” adding: “So many great films out there right now.”
Of course, not everything is the next “Obsession,” and broadly speaking, it shouldn’t be.
Producer and TIFF programmer Peter Kuplowsky — whose Midnight Madness program premiered Curry Barker’s $500 million-plus global hit — responded to The Ankler article on X, describing the problem as “a lack of nerve and imagination” on the distributors’ end.
Later, speaking with IndieWire, Kuplowsky acknowledged that the article specified demand for films that were “genuinely distinctive and broadly commercial.” But asked, “How does one objectively define what that actually means?”
Kuplowsky says the disappearance of distribution safety nets, like the pay-TV market, presents a sincere obstacle for buyers recouping costs. He also questioned whether the conversation was focusing on the right problem, suggesting more commitment could actually mitigate risk.
“To me, a major issue remains a lack of investment in reaching audiences,” he said.
For “Fucktoys,” that investment has increasingly meant taking the movie on the road. Sriram says theaters began approaching her team after audience requests and social media attention piled up. Their team books screenings, markets them, and delivers event energy every time.
“It’s like when people followed the Dead on tour,” she said. “We would have people traveling all around upstate New York, flying into New York City to see it. And I would have audience members wearing the merch because they’ve already seen the film.”
Some “Fucktoys” fans return four or five times, Sriram said, while newcomers routinely message her to ask when the movie will reach their city. Still, her ability to meet that demand has limits.
“It’s really felt like we’re only doing it on this small scale because that’s all we can afford to do and that we can manage to do as a two-person team,” Sriram said. “But imagine if you had a whole company behind this. This is money being left on the table, and we don’t know why.”
Some would-be partners have interpreted that exposure differently, telling Sriram and her producer that they had now screened “Fucktoys” too much and oversaturated the market. Petryni instead compares their strategy to online creators building a following.
“All we’re doing is a different version of how YouTubers build a fan base,” he said, asserting, “The property is actually worth more now than it was worth then.”
Without a significant minimum guarantee (that’s the upfront payment for a film’s distribution rights), Sriram says she wants a longer theatrical window and meaningful marketing support. Among her concerns, she worries that a handful of screenings followed by a quick move to VOD can leave artists struggling to demonstrate their potential when pitching another project.
“Let it breathe in theatrical. Let it live there. Let people discover it. Let people find it,” she said. “Then, really support it with marketing, support it with PR, support it with a marketing spend so people know it exists so they know to go and check it out.”
Sriram is already writing her next script. She also wants more international “Fucktoys” screenings, a physical release, and a Trashtown, U.S.A. festival that would expand her community in theme with the fictional world they helped create. While Sriram pursues those ambitions, what advice does she have for other filmmakers? Remember the value of what you still own.
“Hold onto your rights,” she said. “I look at our film as like building a house. It took me almost a decade to build my house. And I think my house is worth about $2 million. So if someone knocks on my door and says, ‘Hey, I want to buy your house for $10,000.’ I’m not going to sell my million-dollar house for $10,000; I’m going to stay with my house! I’m going to hold onto my property and sell it when the right buyer comes. I think that having that mindset about your work is so important, and I really want other filmmakers to know that they have that worth.”
