What This Summer's Films Can Teach Indie Filmmakers

Let's take a look at the near future, our crystal ball being the summer movie slate... which happened to be a topic of discussion on a recent episode of The Ankler's Prestige Junkie podcast with Katey Rich.

Sam Sanders (of KCRW’s Sam Sanders Show) joined Rich to look ahead at the calendar. What should indie filmmakers learn from their discussion?

Check out the full pod below.

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Being "Good" Isn't Enough

What makes a movie a hit? A hit requires star likability, smart marketing rollout, and some intangible cultural electricity—in addition to just, like, being a good film.

Sanders and Rich cited The Fall Guy as a cautionary example of a film that had all the components on paper and still didn't connect with audiences. Everyone definitely thought that was going to be a blockbuster, but it simply didn't land. It was truly confounding at the time.

"I think it's not just if a movie is good," Sanders said. "If a movie is good, if the stars are really likable and do good press, if the marketing rollout feels weird and cool enough—there are so many things that have to happen to make a movie that's on the edge a hit. And then you compare that to, you know, the ones that we know are just going to be massive no matter what. I think The Odyssey is going to be that this summer, and I find that less interesting because there's less they have to get right."

Sanders is most interested in films where the outcome isn't predetermined.

"I love to see a movie that could have been a hit or could not have been a hit, and then it manages to be a hit. I like that. How does that work?"

__Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma could be that this year. The slasher from Jane Schoenbrun looks weird and intriguing.

As an indie filmmaker, there are a few parts of this thing you can control. That includes your premise, your hook, and how clearly you can articulate both. Sanders is describing the full studio package, but the underlying principle applies at any budget level.

Our podcast on Why Indie Film Distribution Is About to Go Punk Rock is worth a listen.

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Original Stories Are Still Breaking Through (Barely)

Sanders complained of Star Wars and Toy Story fatigue. And, look, I get it. We've had a lot from both IP, and sometimes the results haven't been the most standout work. Do we actually need The Mandalorian and Grogu? Some might say it's debatable. But then you also have breakout genius like Andor , so.

Either way, Sanders yearns for more original storytelling.

"I mean, Weapons just happened this past summer. We know that it's possible that something brand new can grab people," Rich agreed.

Original screenplays led the box office only seven times across 36 weekends in 2025. That's a sobering number, but Weapons was one of them.

Earlier in 2025, original movies were in trouble. Weapons and a handful of others showed the appetite is there when the hook is sharp enough.

Is God Is and the Playwright-to-Filmmaker Pipeline

Sanders highlighted Is God Is as his most anticipated non-IP film of the summer.

"The best way to describe it is, and I've been saying this to friends, it is For Colored Girls meets a Quentin Tarantino film," he said.

Written and directed by Aleshea Harris, it's an adaptation of her own award-winning 2018 Off-Broadway play and her feature directorial debut. The play won the American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award and three Obie Awards, and spent years in development at A24 before landing at Orion/Amazon MGM.

Martin McDonagh spent nearly a decade writing plays (The Beauty Queen of Leenane , The Pillowman) before directing In Bruges , and even then admitted to worrying about making what he called "a playwright's film," or something wordy and uncinematic. He figured it out.

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Kenneth Lonergan came up the same way, writing and directing for the stage before You Can Count on Me announced him as one of the best American filmmakers working.

John Patrick Shanley wrote and directed the film adaptation of his own Pulitzer-winning play Doubt.

Celine Song is an acclaimed playwright who wrote and directed the 2023 Oscar-nominated film Past Lives.

Years of writing for the stage, where you survive only on character, dialogue, and structure with no camera tricks, helped hone these filmmakers' skills. The stage can be a legitimate development path for feature material. Learn 3 Ways to Adapt a Stage Play for the Screen.

See also our interview with The Whale playwright Samuel D. Hunter on making his first screenplay from his own play.

Theatrical Still Creates Community

Sanders made the case that summer movies matter because they're communal events in a way that Oscar-season films aren't.

"I remember as a kid when everyone was going to the movies to see whatever Will Smith movie or Julia Roberts movie was a summer blockbuster that year. It felt as communal as like the small-town sock hop or dance back in the day where the whole town just gathers."

Whether the movies are good or not, the experience is worth it to him.

He continued, "I don't even need to talk to strangers before after the movie, but just seeing a bunch of strangers gathered to do something ... I'm always a sucker for movies as community-building."

And summer movies are unique, where we see tentpoles and event films. Remember Barbenheimer? That was a good time.

"I like it when people get excited about summer movies," Sanders said. "It feels so much more communal than Oscar season movies. Oscar season movies play to a rarified crowd. You get a big blockbuster, it's for everybody."

For filmmakers, a theatrical release could be a community-building event. That community can do your marketing.

We also covered how CinemaCon talked about theatrical windows this year. Amazon MGM pledged 15 theatrical films per year, putting them on par with legacy studios. So longer theatrical windows are coming back.

For years, we've seen the contraction of theatrical windows, with streaming-first deals taking precedent and a general post-COVID malaise. This made the math hard for mid-budget original films to justify a theatrical release at all. A new major player committing to 15 theatrical films a year changes the available slots. Which is good news for all of us.