Private equity eyes indie films in the age of streaming

Indie films, long viewed as too risky and niche for private equity, have attracted a wave of equity investments from prestigious funds traditionally drawn to predictability and scalability.

Founded in 2012, New York-based indie film production and distribution company A24 raised $225m equity investment led by Stripes in 2022, valuing it at $2.5bn. Two years later, it secured an undisclosed amount of equity led by Thrive Capital, with backing from investors participating its previous round such as Neuberger Berman, at a $3.5bn valuation, a 40 percent increase.

London-based Mubi, a global streaming platform, film producer, and distributor specialising on arthouse films, just raised $100m growth capital led by Sequoia Capital in June 2025 at a valuation of $1bn, according to Variety. Prior to this, it raised an undisclosed amount of minority growth investment from Summit Partners in 2021.

Indie films are emerging as a compelling alternative in today’s ever-changing entertainment landscape

In 2024, Fortress Investment Group acquired Curzon, a UK-based arthouse film company, for an undisclosed amount of capital. Curzon operates across three business units: Curzon Cinemas, which operates 16 cinemas and 46 screens across the UK, its film distribution business Curzon Film, and streaming platform Curzon Home Cinema.

Box office hit

There is significant growth potential in the indie film market. Once seen as marginal, indie films are delivering both box office results and critical acclaim. According to Efe Cakarel, founder of Mubi, one third of the biggest 200 films over the past three years in the box office were specialty films. At the 97th Oscars Awards in 2025, six of ten Best Picture nominees were indie films, up from four in both 2024 and 2023. Moreover, the market is far from saturated. A recent study conducted by Keri Putnam, fromer CEO of the Sundance Institute, estimates that 77 million Americans are open to pay for a streaming platform focused on indie films and documentaries, compared to only 36.7 million Americans who currently engage with such content. As she told IndieWire, “people are looking for alternatives.”

Anime has already emerged as a major alternative to mainstream Hollywood blockbusters. Netflix reported that more than half of its 150 million household subscribers watched anime on the platform, tripling over the last five years, and the number of anime titles featured in the platform’s rotating Global Top 10 (Non-English) list in 2024 rose to 33, more than double the number from 2021. Dentsu, a Japanese advertising company, claimed that nearly one third of US anime fans watch them due to “fatigue with Hollywood sequels and remakes”.

Netflix reported that more than half of its 150 million household subscribers watched anime on the platform

Indie films are emerging as a compelling alternative in today’s ever-changing entertainment landscape when traditional big-budget model turns increasingly risky. Anecdotally, a manager of a major Hollywood film studio once said that their business could go on if they have at least three profitable movies each year but if they don’t have one single profitable movie for three consecutive years, they will go bankrupt.

When Disney grossed $2.8bn from Avengers: Endgame at a production cost of $356m and a marketing cost of $200m, it also only earned $205m from Snow White, barely enough to cover the production cost of $270m. In contrast, indie film economics offer greater resilience and the freedom to take creative risks. As the poster child of indie films, A24 have redefined the playbook by leveraging creative and cost- efficient distribution strategies. One example is the pop-up shop they launched in Manhattan in 2017 called A Ghost Store to promote A Ghost Story. They eventually grossed nearly $2m at the box office from this film with only a $100,000 production cost, a 20x return. As Cakarel said to Financial Times, the indie film industry are not competing with Netflix as they are completely different businesses.

We’re going to need a bigger boat

That said, the exit paths for investors in indie films remain uncertain. In the post-Covid M&A boom, Hello Sunshine, a studio that puts women in the centre of every story and is founded by actress Reese Witherspoon in Los Angeles in 2016, raised an undisclosed amount of majority investment from Blackstone-backed Candle Media. The deal reportedly evaluated Hello Sunshine at $900m, signalling strong investor interest in this sector.

However, as central banks hiked interest rates and geopolitical risks escalated, this path became less viable. Founded in 2017, another New York-based arthouse film studio Neon, often viewed as the strongest rival of A24, has distributed every Palm D’or winner since 2019’s Parasite, which has earned both box office success and critical acclaim. Despite its strong track record, a sale to the owner of Criterion Collection, Steven Rales, rumoured at over $100m, collapsed in 2023 amid the tightening M&A market.

The more systematic challenge for the industry lies in carving out audience engagement in a landscape dominated by major film studios and streaming platforms. Putman observes that one key obstacle for indie content to is the lack of a centralised platform. When audience browse different streaming platforms, the front pages are full of blockbusters, while niche titles are difficult to discover.

Two door cinema club

A24 and Mubi exemplify the potential paths for content-rich but capital hungry indie film studios. By tapping external capital, they are expanding beyond traditional production and distribution to build a direct-to-consumer platform. A24, for example, offers $9.90 monthly membership that includes a ticket to each new release, among other perks such as a quarterly magazine. Similarly, Mubi’s $19.99 premium membership delivers one cinema ticket per week across the US, the UK, and Germany.

Indie film economics offer greater resilience and the freedom to take creative risks

According to Variety, Cakarel sees this strategy as a way to bring people back to cinemas. A24 also bought the Cherry Lane theatre in New York for $10 million in 2023, in the hopes of building an integrated and omni-channel network.

If the platform narrative proves successful and replicable, we may witness a structural shift in the media and entertainment landscape, which could catalyse a new wave of indie film studios and more strategic M&A activity in the foreseeable future.