09/02/2026
A potential for filmmakers - many thanks to The Dailies for this info: The world's largest theater chain just launched Leawood Films, a distribution label for indie and mid-budget movies that are already finished and paid for but have nowhere to go (think: festival titles that got a standing O but never found a home). Here's the plan:
This is a finished-movies-only operation. Leawood isn't developing or financing anything, and filmmakers keep their IP and most of the money on the back end.
AMC handles the marketing. Variance Films books it in North America, Piece of Magic handles overseas.
Movies get at least 45 days in theaters before hitting premium on demand, and 90 before streaming.
Why now? Theater owners have been griping for years that there aren't enough movies to fill their screens. Meanwhile, a string of recent hits skipped the studios and went straight to theaters: Taylor Swift cut the 'Eras Tour' deal directly with AMC ($260M worldwide), and Markiplier self-distributed 'Iron Lung' in January and turned a $3M horror movie into $51M. So AMC figured, why not be the middleman?
Quick history: after a 1948 Supreme Court ruling, the Paramount Consent Decrees forced the major studios to sell off their theaters and largely kept distributors and theater chains in separate businesses for 70-plus years. A federal court scrapped the rules in 2020, and everyone assumed the studios might start buying theaters again. Instead, the biggest theater chain is going the other direction and becoming a distributor.
To pull this off, they're bringing in some heavyweights. Former Warner Bros. chairman Toby Emmerich and ex-Disney marketing chief Ricky Strauss are advising, alongside Kyle Davies, who's leaving Bleecker Street's top distribution job to join. All three report to AMC CEO Adam Aron.
Looking ahead… Don't expect anything on screens soon. Leawood hasn't acquired a title yet, and Aron says the earliest release lands in 2027 or 2028. Presumably that means a lot of festival lanyards in the Leawood team's near future.
