People have talked about indie movies and how they have no choice but to go to Hollywood to help them get exposure. My impression is that film-makers depend on

People have talked about indie movies and how they have no choice but to go to Hollywood to help them get exposure. My impression is that film-makers depend on Hollywood not only for the distribution but also for the funding to make the movie. If indie movies go to Hollywood not for the funding (because they're already good at making quality movies for cheap) but for distribution, then I think we have an opportunity. We should offer an online way to distribute these indie movies. Say I built a website that offered to host indie movies online for pay-per-view. The distribution system would be transparent. Say you've made an indie movie. You let me host it online and charge viewers to watch it, and I give you 80% of the revenue (or whatever is necessary for me to cover costs and make a small profit) I'd probably screen movies for quality and hand-pick the movies I allow for viewing on my site (like literary magazines or existing film festivals). It doesn't matter if I have relatively few movies on my site if they're all good (and I keep releasing more of them). The site will market itself: people will constantly check back for good movies and tell their friends about this site. This won't stop Hollywood from churning out blockbusters, but we can keep indie movies from falling into their hands. One problem is bootstrapping the site but we might be able to convince good indie film-makers who don't want to be part of Hollywood to allow us to distribute their movies (and thus establish the site). It turns out a website like this already exists (possibly others): http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/ http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/ There are several problems with their site which I think can be improved. They don't provide enough "buzz" for their movies. No trailers. No big pretty posters. It looks kinda like Youtube. They also give out the movies for free. Summary: I think with proper execution it's possible to create an online pay-per-view indie-movie website without too much effort (except you need to contact filmmakers). Such a site would provide an alternative to Hollywood for certain niches.