Utopia Distribution Exec on Shifting Releases Towards Eventification to Cater to ‘Fandom’ and Younger Audiences: ‘Everything Is Being Destroyed to Be Rebuilt’
Popular on Variety Sextro, who served as Sundance Film Festival’s senior film programmer and curator for 13 years before joining Utopia in March of 2025,...
Key points
- Popular on Variety Sextro, who served as Sundance Film Festival’s senior film programmer and curator for 13 years before joining Utopia in March of 2025, said it is a “very difficult time right now” for releasing films.
- “In the United States, it is maybe as tough as it’s ever been to really connect and get traction, but I feel like everything is being destroyed right now to be rebuilt into something new.” “What I love is that it really feels like it’s based on young audiences falling in love with arthouse movies and going to independent films,” he added.
- “The independent film world has always been driven by older audiences — that was the cornerstone of releasing a foreign language or arthouse film.
- We want to be transparent, and we need to change the way we release.” Sextro said that, although it remains incredibly hard to “stick in movie theaters” with a small indie run, they can have success in “creating really cool events and eventivizing releases.” “What we’re doing now as a company is that we are going to release about four to five movies a year, where we are releasing only one movie at a time, and we’re willing to do a complicated roadshow style of release that most companies similar to us won’t do because it takes a lot of work.
What happened
Popular on Variety Sextro, who served as Sundance Film Festival’s senior film programmer and curator for 13 years before joining Utopia in March of 2025, said it is a “very difficult time right now” for releasing films. “In the United States, it is maybe as tough as it’s ever been to really connect and get traction, but I feel like everything is being destroyed right now to be rebuilt into something new.” “What I love is that it really feels like it’s based on young audiences falling in love with arthouse movies and going to independent films,” he added. “The independent film world has always been driven by older audiences — that was the cornerstone of releasing a foreign language or arthouse film. We want to be transparent, and we need to change the way we release.” Sextro said that, although it remains incredibly hard to “stick in movie theaters” with a small indie run, they can have success in “creating really cool events and eventivizing releases.” “What we’re doing now as a company is that we are going to release about four to five movies a year, where we are releasing only one movie at a time, and we’re willing to do a complicated roadshow style of release that most...
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