How Bleecker Street Endured Tragedy and Elon Musk’s Legal Threats to Have Its Hottest Year

The independent studio is deep in the awards race with "Tender Loving Care" and riding high on the success of "Hadestown: The Musical" despite the death of its founder.

Last month, Kent Sanderson, the CEO of Bleecker Street, took to social media to reaffirm the plucky indie studio’s commitment to release “Musk,” a scathing look at the world’s richest man, in theaters.

“To be 100% clear, we are absolutely releasing MUSK in the United States on October 9th,” Sanderson wrote amid reports that Universal Pictures, the sprawling media conglomerate that had foreign rights to the film, was getting cold feet.

Universal also won’t be backing down, but the rumors made a perverse kind of sense. Elon Musk, whose political transformation and business career are examined over the course of the nearly four-hour film, has threatened legal action. And his Silicon Valley brethren initially closed ranks with the likes of Facebook and YouTube, refusing to run ads for “Musk” (they’d later backtrack). The fracas has only elevated the film’s profile, with every tweet that Musk has fired off igniting a new wave of coverage.

“When Elon Musk does anything, it’s press-worthy,” Sanderson said during a Zoom interview in late September. “You can’t deny that he’s bringing attention to the movie. He’s the most followed person on Twitter, so for a documentary it feels extremely noisy.”

Nor is Sanderson worried about Musk unleashing an army of lawyers to prevent the film’s release or to go after Bleecker Street or Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning director behind the documentary.

“This movie is not designed to be controversial,” Sanderson said. “It is a piece of journalism. What we’re doing is standing behind extremely well-researched, deeply embedded reporting. I think we’ll be OK. I believe in the power of the press in the United States. I believe it can continue telling the truth and telling important stories.”

“Musk” may be making headlines, but it’s part of a robust slate of fall films from Bleecker, many of which will factor into the Oscar race. They include “Tender Loving Care,” a meditation on aging and relationships that is expected to be Mike Leigh’s final production; Guy Nattiv’s “The Liberation,” which has earned raves for Carrie Coon’s performance as a woman who joins a cult; and Anton Corbijn’s “A Talent for Murder,” with a devilish Helen Mirren as novelist Patricia Highsmith. In recent years, Bleecker left the hunt for Academy Awards to its competitors.

“We had taken a step back from fall awards because you have to have the movies to do it,” Sanderson said.

It helped that the company had undergone a strategic pivot, one that saw them getting in at the script stage on movies like “The Liberation” and “Tender Loving Care” instead of relying on acquisitions of completed films at festivals.

“You’re seeing the fruits of these efforts,” Sanderson said, adding, “It’s become extremely competitive and expensive to acquire films at places like Sundance.”

Not everything is about the Oscars. The company will also release “Victorian Psycho,” a gonzo horror film that stars “scream queen” Maika Monroe as a murderous governess.

“It’s a wide release, crazy, genre movie, nestled right in between Mike Leigh and Guy Nattiv,” Sanderson said. “It’s a straight down the middle, super fun commercial release.”

What makes Bleecker’s 2026 slate particularly impressive is that the resurgence has come in the wake of a devastating tragedy. Andrew Karpen, the veteran indie executive who launched Bleecker 12 years ago, died in 2025 at the age of 59 after battling brain cancer. Many companies can’t survive the loss of their founder, and Karpen, who was widely respected for his business acumen and personal warmth, was synonymous with Bleecker.

“Andrew’s ethos and the way he treated filmmakers and the way he valued the theatrical experience is always a part of our lifeblood,” Sanderson said. “We wanted to continue and extend that mission in his honor.”

And the company has figured out ways to pay tribute to Karpen. “The Liberation” includes a dedication to the Bleecker Street founder. Karpen’s wife Pam, his two sons, and his grandchild were at the film’s Telluride premiere to see it unveiled.

Tyler DiNapoli, Bleecker’s president and chief marketing officer, says Karpen’s approach to management remains in place.

“We have a lot to fight for,” he said. “It’s not just about making sure that the brand endures and continues. It’s a great culture here. We always want to get to the why of something, and that really drills back to something that we learned early on with Andrew, which is always try to trace the root.”

That has meant Bleecker has been forced to alter its output to meet the tastes of a different audience. Older moviegoers were the linchpin of arthouse cinema, supporting past Bleecker hits like “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and “Eye in the Sky.” Now, those older viewers are shifting to streaming as younger consumers are embracing the theatrical experience.

“One of the best stats that I saw this summer is that 90% of Gen Z saw at least one movie in the theater,” DiNapoli said. “Moviegoing is based on habit — the more you go, the more you remember what a great experience it is. It’s our responsibility to keep servicing this new audience, because now that they’ve been, we need to make sure that it’s not a one-and-done kind of thing.”

That’s led Sanderson and DiNapoli to develop CrossWalk. The bespoke label was designed to release “event cinema,” and has distributed a filmed version of “Waitress: The Musical” and “Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience,” a concert film of the K-pop group’s performances at SoFi Stadium. Last summer, it had its biggest hit yet with “Hadestown: The Musical.” Released for just a few weeks, the film grossed more than $20 million, overtaking “Hamilton” as the highest-grossing live theater capture. CrossWalk’s upcoming slate includes a George Michael concert film and a documentary about Def Leppard.

“After ‘Hadestown,’ there was no shortage of phone calls from people looking to try this model,” Sanderson said. “There’s a bunch of things that are going to be announced over the next couple months that we’re doing across various genres. Spoiler alert: there will be more K-pop coming.”

Bleecker remains nimble, with roughly 30 employees in New York and Los Angeles, and has a reputation for doing its best to rein in costs. But the film business can be unforgiving — many companies operating when Bleecker launched, or founded shortly thereafter, such as Broad Green and Relativity, have closed shop. And the consolidation in Hollywood, which recently saw Warner Bros. merge with Paramount, will likely lead to a clash of titans. How will Bleecker navigate all this disruption?

“We’re growing,” Sanderson said. “Our goal is to scale the company. We see opportunities out there. And we’re going to do what we always do, which is focus on the moviegoer and not on the corporate landscape. The question that guides us is: how do we best serve people that love cinema?”