Posted July 19, 2010
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: July 18, 2010
LOS ANGELES — The little business of documentary film just got bigger.
SnagFilms, until now an ad-supported online aggregator of documentary films with a journalistic adjunct in its IndieWIRE news service, is expected on Monday to announce a series of deals that will make it a significant distributor of documentaries through a half-dozen on-demand services.
The plans include fee-based channels through Comcast and Verizon’s FiOS service, as well as deals to allow the sale or rental of films on iTunes, on YouTube’s premium program, and on the Apple iPad, SnagFilms executives said in interviews.
A similar deal with Netflix has been in the works, but was not set as of late last week. An accompanying plan to distribute some films through mobile carriers — and the addition of Peter Bogdanovich and his new blogdanovich.com to IndieWIRE’s film-oriented Web sites — added heft to a company that has been assembled in the last two years around nonfiction movies and news about the often wobbly world of independent film.
“I think it’s going to be a very, very big business,” said the entrepreneur Ted Leonsis, who spoke by telephone on Friday.
Mr. Leonsis founded SnagFilms in 2008 with about $10 million in backing from an investment group that includes himself; Steve Case, with whom he worked at AOL; and, among others, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a nonprofit group that was attracted by Mr. Leonsis’s plan to build a company with what he calls “a double bottom line.”
Essentially, that means doing well by doing good.
Continue the article about SnagFilms on the New York Times
SnagFilms to Expand Distribution of Documentaries
