As Bleecker Street Turns 10, Indie Studio Stays Committed to Making Movies for Grown-Ups

Bleecker Street executives Kent Sanderson and Myles Bender can vividly remember their first time seeing “Eye in the Sky,” a drone warfare thriller starring Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman that premiered in 2015 at Toronto Film Festival with hopes of finding distribution. Not long into the Canadian screening, they were held rapt by film but quickly realized their contemporaries in the room didn’t feel the same way.

“Within 15 minutes, I started watching a lot of other buyers get up and leave. I guess they felt the film was too challenging,” says Sanderson, Bleecker Street’s president. He and Bender, head of marketing and creative advertising, pushed for their boss, the film company’s co-founder and CEO, Andrew Karpen, to watch the film so they could bid on the distribution rights. Bender recalls, “We were looking at each other and saying, ‘What are we seeing that they aren’t?’” 

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Karpen shared in the enthusiasm of his colleagues, none of whom were worried about scaring off audiences with a story that favors substance over flash. Bleecker Street beat out buyers like Fox Searchlight and the Orchard to land the movie. Their instincts proved to be correct — “Eye in the Sky” became one of 2016’s highest-grossing independent releases, generating $18.7 million domestically and $35 million worldwide.

“We had some successes in our first year,” Karpen says. Bleecker Street had early wins in 2015 with the Blythe Danner and Sam Elliott comedic drama “I’ll See You in My Dreams” ($7.4 million globally); “Trumbo,” a biopic by Jay Roach that scored an Oscar nomination for Bryan Cranston’s portrayal of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo ($11.4 million globally); and the music business redemption dramedy “Danny Collins” with Al Pacino, Annette Bening and Jennifer Garner ($10.8 million globally). But “Eye in the Sky” felt different for Karpen. “It was at that point I came to truly believe that we really could go the distance,” he says.

In the time since, Bleecker Street has released roughly 70 films and hasn’t strayed from its mission to deliver “smart, socially conscious” films. The company is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, a milestone that Variety will commemorate on Oct. 5 at the New York Film Festival and where Karpen will be honored with the Variety Vanguard Award for his consummate leadership and vast contribution to the indie film community.

This anniversary is especially meaningful in these tumultuous times for the film business, one that’s seen other players on the indie scene like Open Road Films and Solstice Studios either go bankrupt, shutter or be sold for parts. Employees believe that Bleecker Street has endured because their leader is levelheaded, responsible and mindful, especially when it comes to spending habits.

“Andrew has a tremendous sense of discipline, and sometimes that means not overextending ourselves on splashy film festival acquisitions but continuing to foster and build relationships with filmmakers and producers,” Sanderson says. “He doesn’t put all of our chips on one movie, where if it flops, we’re all done. He has a sense that every decision we make is not just about that movie, it’s about the company and the dozens of people who work there.”

Of course, not every release has scored with moviegoers. Films like 2020’s “Military Wives,” a dramatic comedy about British women whose partners are serving in Afghanistan, as well as 2021’s “Mass,” a somber story about a school shooting, were acclaimed but failed to achieve mainstream successes. 

“I wish that some of our COVID-era releases found wider audiences, but the challenges were inherent to the marketplace at that time,” Karpen says. With “Military Wives,” starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Sharon Horgan and Jason Flemyng, Bleecker Street was planning on opening the film in March 2020 but altered plans to a mostly digital release. “Mass” landed on the big screen in the fall of 2021 at a time when movie theaters had mostly reopened but patrons were still skittish about returning to the cinema. “‘Military Wives’ was a real theatrical crowd-pleaser. ‘Mass’ [was] a powerful movie that may have been embraced more during a less tumultuous time in history,” Karpen says.

Before he founded Bleecker Street, Karpen was co-CEO of Focus Features, the specialty division of Universal. In 2013, the company behind arthouse favorites like Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” and director Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right” moved from its New York headquarters to Los Angeles and received a mandate to release movies with more global appeal. Karpen was offered to stay with the company but didn’t want to move his family, including his three children, to the West Coast. So he decided to part ways and later formed Bleecker Street, with several Focus colleagues like Sanderson and Bender making the leap with him as the initial employees. His vision, he says, was to solve “a problem in the marketplace” — there just weren’t many homes for movies targeted at audiences over the age of 35.

Major studios tend to cater to teen boys, whose preferred genre of comic book movies are the four-quadrant blockbusters that prop up the box office. So, focusing on the subset of older moviegoers “gave us a niche and way of talking to CAA, WME or other agencies to say, ‘This is our land,’” says Tyler DiNapoli, the company’s president of marketing. “We wanted to establish a lane and eventually, in success, broaden out and grow it.”

Over the years, executives at Bleecker Street have learned to trust their gut when it comes to knowing what could resonate with people. Not that it ever gets easier or less stressful to play that particular guessing game. 

“There was a six-month gap from when we acquired ‘Eye in the Sky’ to when it came out in theaters. It’s hard not to wonder, ‘Are we crazy?’” Sanderson says. “There’s no way to make that go away. This is a subjective business.” 

Yet it’s the penchant for art over science that produces unexpected favorites and winners like crime comedy “Logan Lucky” with Daniel Craig, Adam Driver and Channing Tatum, the absurdist dialogue-free “Sasquatch Sunset,” platonic friendship dramedy “Together Together” starring Ed Helms and Patti Harrison, or the Toni Collette-led crime comedy “Mafia Mamma.” Sanderson continues, “Even as we all get better at analyzing patterns and histories and every data set imaginable for releases, that gut feeling remains the most important facet of creative.”

Karpen acknowledges there’s a tradeoff that comes with eschewing corporate overlords. He says although operating under a major studio like Universal while at Focus Features came with limitations of “a certain amount of oversight and restrictions,” they were also afforded the comfort of “enormous financial resources and worldwide distribution.”

“Bleecker has the luxury of being truly independent, and as such, enjoys all the creative freedom that entails,” Karpen says. “But with that comes inherent risk, and the precariousness of not having a century-old studio and its massive library and infrastructure to help a label like ours navigate not only the ups, but the downs.”

While this doesn’t necessarily give carte blanche, executives view these restraints as a license to get creative.

“There is more latitude for doing things that are out of pocket. Certainly, the poster for ‘Sasquatch Sunset’ is not something that I could have gotten away with at a bigger studio,” says Bender. That film depicts Bigfeet as they engage in sex, masturbation, vomiting and flatulence. “At the same time, you have to work smarter, because you simply don’t have the budgets to make mistakes. I can’t cut five trailers, pay five vendors to cut five trailers and hope that one of them works.”

In the 10 years since the founding of Bleecker Street, moviegoing habits have changed dramatically and films aimed at “grown-ups” have suffered the most from these box office shifts. Though it may be harder to get those patrons off the couch and into their local cinema, Karpen remains undeterred in the appeal and relevance of the big screen. 

“We use the word ‘urgency’ to describe the most important quality in theatrical marketing these days,” Karpen says. “YouTube is now the most widely viewed app on connected televisions, not just on desktops, phones and tablets, and I think that stat speaks very directly to the challenges in getting someone to leave the house to sit in a dark room with other people to watch a film. But it’s also clear that, when motivated, people truly embrace that shared experience.”

These changes in audience behavior have also required Bleecker Street’s executives to pivot and adapt to new means of promotional efforts for their movies. For one, TikTok is no longer just a fun marketing tool but a necessity for any film’s advertising campaign. 

“The ground is always shifting beneath our feet, which makes marketing exciting and challenging,” says DiNapoli, who is tasked with figuring out creative new ways to convey why the latest Bleecker Street movie is worth a trip to the multiplex. “It used to be that you could lean into reviews and critical acclaim to get people to go to the movies. I think that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole piece of the puzzle anymore. Now, we need to create a secondary factor that makes the film feel special or of-the-moment.”

As Karpen looks ahead to the next decade, he stresses the need for “companies like ours to get behind independent cinema in a big way.” That’s because there are “fewer theatrical indie breakouts like ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ popping up as viewers’ habits change,” Karpen adds. “So, finding ways to reach audiences across every form of distribution has never been more important.”

On the horizon, Bleecker Street will attempt to field the next arthouse hit with a slate that includes “Rumours” and director Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” which premiered to raves at this year’s Toronto Film Festival and has been granted a prime awards season release date of Dec. 6.

“Bleecker Street has managed to evolve with the times, and all I can hope for is that we continue to do so,” Karpen says. “The last 10 years of the film business has been perhaps the most tumultuous since the Lumière brothers, but I have the utmost faith in my incredible team to continue to find and share indelible stories with audiences no matter how much the world of cinema continues to shift.”

One thing is certain: Though Bleecker Street has a small operation in Los Angeles, the company — named after the street address of Karpen’s prior workplace, Focus Features — will always be New York City-based.

“There is an intangible quality to operating out of the city — an independent, indomitable, spirit that can only come from being 3,000 miles away from the major studios,” says Karpen. “Also, the pizza is much better.”