In The Screener, which premiered in the festival’s episodic section, Cummings and McCabe depict a niche corner of the Hollywood ecosystem. The action takes place after an indie feature gets uploaded by her agency, without permission, onto its internal server.

The movie, which includes nude scenes with the actor-director, leaks onto the internet. The entire case gets brought up to Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, which makes the unusual choice to pursue a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) case against the big agency.

After a rep told an anecdote about seeing the Coens’ 2007 thriller zNo Country for Old Men months before it was released in theaters, the duo started to thnk of what they describe as “screener culture.”

Screeners are the pre-release copies of film and TV shows meant for promotional use, festival submission, sales or other business reasons. But screener links can get distributed and shared for reasons outside of these purposes.

Screeners as social currency

“Screener culture,” Cummings and McCabe assert, happens when these films act as a type of social currency. “Screeners really are everything when it comes to satisfying a workforce that has a desire to feel important,” says Cummings.

When indie filmmakers agree to have their projects sent as screeners, it’s for a specific viewer. Says Cummings, “I’m thinking it’s a programmer that’s watching this stuff, and instead, it’s some hoo ha cheese dick in Hollywood that’s using my property for social currency with their friend group.”

Leaks have ended up online after being ripped from festivals’ online platforms, which debuted after the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the 2021 Toronto Film Fest, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (which would become an Oscar winner) ended up online.

Out of last year’s Sundance, sex scenes from Twinless, featuring Dylan O’Brien and director-actor James Sweeney, were leaked onto the internet.

Cummings became disconcerted by what he sees as cavalier attitude Hollywood takes toward the sharing of unreleased films. Screener sharing is so ubiquitous in Hollywood that even seasoned professionals rarely stop to think about the potential consequences to filmmakers should leaks happen.

“These movies cost millions of dollars, and we’re being told by people who lock their cars at night to be loose about our property,” says Cummings. On the criminal implications of intellectual property theft: “It’s less sexy on paper. It’s not robbers going in and taking money from a bank. It’s stuff that’s just a couple clicks on the internet.”

“I’m interested in how office politics can get in the way of realizing that you’re committing a crime. There’s this illegal marketplace taking place inside of this building,” says Cummings.

The question became how to make all of this interesting for general audiences as a Hollywood satire and a courtroom drama. They insists that The Screener is “a comedy, not a documentary.”

Cummings and McCabe decided to produce TheScreener outside of the Hollywood system.

McCabe says, “I think the note sessions on a show like this would have been pretty extensive. It would have been in development for years.” Having done nearly a half dozen indie features, they tapped into investors from their last projects, and the budget for Screener was raised in five and a half months.

The space of independently produced series has been growing. Mark Duplass is big supporter of indie episodic projects, and Mubi acquired the Mark Ruffalo-starring series Hal & Harper last year out of Sundance.

Cummings and McCabe are talking to distributors but would consider taking  direct-to-consumer approach to release, having already found success with that strategy on past films.

After a buzzy festival premiere, buyers’ screenings are planned in NY and LA, but have been slow-going as they are committed to asking buyers to watch The Screener in person. To submit to Sundance, the filmmakers rented screening room in Eagle Rock’s Vidiots theater for programmers.

“I can’t tell you how many people we’ve had just be like, ‘Well, if I don’t get a screener link, I can’t see your thing,’” says Cummings.

Source: Hollywood Reporter