The good news is that, in the US, past the big lights of Hollywood, there is a real indie film world where filmmakers spend millions of $s making movies, and film festivals and indie distributors make - collectively - hundreds of millions of $s from art house features, docs.

2 - There's space for filmmakers who want to make - like Hong Sang-soo of South Korea - completely
non-Hollywood movies for under $200,000 and possibly make the money back. However, film is always a risky business. Most media covers the US film biz as one thing, with the focus..

3...on Hollywood. But, there are several other smaller film businesses going on - away from the spotlight. So that's good news for real indie filmmakers.

4 - Financial data is not easily available for many of the non-Hollywood projects and companies. So I do not know if anyone is making a significant profit. But, the non-Hollywood film activity does spend and bring in hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

5 - Art house films/real indie films are not about the money anyway :). So I am glad that there are artists and spaces that make that type of film happen.

Everyone has been affected by the pandemic. Let's see how things come back in 2-3 years.

6 - Some data - one small part of the non-Hollywood film world (some Hollywood movies do play at Sundance) - "...festival generates roughly $18 million in state and local taxes." - https://www.sundance.org/pdf/2020%20Sundance%20Film%20Festival%20Economic%20Impact%20Report.pdf

7 - Another bit of data (SXSW also plays some Hollywood movies) - "According to SXSW, the 2019 festival brought in $355 million in total..." - from - https://www.kvue.com/article/entertainment/events/sxsw/sxsw-impact-austin/269-e54e58cf-d90e-46e5-bdb0-0591a97abc7a

8 - And I've seen info where art house theaters in medium sized cities make close to $500K a year in ticket sales.

Once things open back up, hopefully most indie film businesses and events will come back to 2019 levels.

END OF THREAD :)