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EXCLUSIVE: Gathr, a film and event tech firm, has launched a “partner TVOD” service aimed at helping films seen as problematic by major tech platforms connect with commercial audiences and supporters.
The new offering will be used during the fourth quarter by a number of notable features, including festival breakout Union, Deadline has learned. The documentary about a labor organizing effort at an Amazon warehouse on New York’s Staten Island won acclaim at the last Sundance Film Festival, and was given a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for the Art of Change.
Due to its subject matter, distributors shied away despite the buzz, but Gathr’s solution allows the transactional video on demand (TVOD) window to unfold on terms set by affiliate partners. They can integrate a film’s TVOD presence into their own websites, with rights holders establishing terms that could include minimum and maximum retail pricing, territorial restrictions, and sales windows.
According to Gathr, affiliates earn a profit from the difference between the film’s booking fees—a flat rate per rental—and their retail price. They can also add custom elements to the rental checkout, including the sale of their own products, charity donations or a questionnaire to enhance their data on customers who opt into the process.
Along with Union, which is directed by Stephen Maing and Brett Story, the initial roster for the Partner TVOD rollout includes Vanessa and Ted Hope’s Invisible Nation; Rebecca and Pete Davis’ Join or Die; Matthieu Rytz and Jason Momoa’s Deep Rising; Stephen Gyllenhaal and Dan Pallotta’s UnCharitable; and Ruth Leitman’s No One Asked You.
UnCharitable had been among the films to take advantage of Gathr’s “pay-it-forward” ticketing setup, which Deadline revealed last June. The company said its tool offers greater visibility than the one promoted by Angel Studios on releases like left-field 2023 hit Sound of Freedom.
In an interview with Deadline, Gathr CEO Scott Glosserman said he sees the new TVOD initiative as enhancing the company’s focus on what it calls the “direct-to-audience” window. “An effective go-to-market strategy for many startups is to partner with supply aggregators – trusted brands that already have relationships with their customers,” he said. “We now provide the technology for filmmakers to do the same.” He added, “We want filmmakers to control the rights and not just hand over rights to the aggregators.”
In addition to being more flexible with rights, Gathr charges a 15% fee, Glosserman said, compared with the 30% to 50% taken off the top by Apple, Amazon or Google.
The initial films using the tool are “ones that global streamers don’t want to touch,” for various reasons, the CEO said. While the case of Union is straightforward (it is logical to imagine the tech behemoth not wanting to promote a movie about an insurgent movement against it by its own employees), Glosserman said a lot of films can be flagged for a host of reasons. Gathr is aiming to harness the power of the larger direct-to-consumer shift in the economy to the benefit of the film community. “If you’re AllBirds, you don’t need Foot Locker the way Nike did,” he said.
Despite the accolades at Sundance, Union didn’t find a distributor after its festival premiere. Producers Samantha Curley and Mars Verrone looked to turn that outsider status into a positive, setting out to distribute the film in the spirit of the story at its core. Through grassroots organizing and a collaboration with impact producers at Red Owl, Curley said in a statement provided to Deadline, “We’ve built partnerships with several of the largest unions in the country, with access to millions of active and retired members. By distributing the film directly to audiences and enabling our partners to offer streaming to their members, we’re enabling profit-sharing opportunities for the film and our partners, quicker cash flow, and network building through access to data that streamers don’t provide to filmmakers.”
Stephen Gyllenhaal, director of UnCharitable, said Gathr’s “unique affiliate model has elevated TVOD to a new level, providing a sustainable self-distribution method that’s unparalleled.” The outlet has helped the film across global markets, he added, connecting us with diverse audiences and charities.”
Since the pay-it-forward setup started, Gathr has added a way for those ticket purchases to be tax-deductible, Glosserman said.
