All posts tagged: indie

Together Producer Lia Buman on the State of Indie Film Production

Together Producer Lia Buman on the State of Indie Film Production

Published by skeptic

The 2025 Sundance Film Festival was largely seen as a mutated affair, with a line-up focused on discovery over commerciality. But for producer-financier Tango Entertainment, where credits run the gamut from Oscar-nominated Aftersun to Weird Al Yankovic movie Weird, and its head Lia Buman, the festival was particularly notable. With three films in the line-up, Tango landed the most moneyed deal to date out of Sundance, when Together, the supernatural horror starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco, sold to Neon for a reported $17 million. Another title, Sorry, Baby, the directorial debut from Eva Victor, became one of the best reviewed movies of the festival and landed distribution with A24. And then there was the Chloe Sevigny starrer Magic Farm, which was acquired by Mubi ahead of the fest. At a time in the industry, in particular in independent production, when market forces are causing many to pull back, the six-person team at Tango doubled down, financing and producing a slate of five features in 2024. Aside from Together and Sorry, Baby, there is the …

The Creators of ‘Palworld’ Are Back—This Time With a Horror Game

The Creators of ‘Palworld’ Are Back—This Time With a Horror Game

Published by skeptic

Pocketpair, the company behind last year’s viral game Palworld, has a new venture: publishing indie games. Its first project, scheduled for release later this year, will be an as-yet-unnamed horror game from Surgent Studios, the developer behind 2024’s Tales of Kenzera: Zau. Palworld, jokingly referred to as “Pokémon with guns,” was a breakout success last year, drawing in more than 25 million players in its first few months. The company’s step into publishing comes at a turbulent time for video games, especially smaller studios; last year, Among Us developer Innersloth announced its own move into publishing to help push projects forward. Pocketpair’s Palworld success, it seems, is allowing them to do the same. “As the games industry continues to grow, more and more games find themselves struggling to get funded or greenlit,” John Buckley, head of Pocketpair Publishing, said in a press release announcing the new division. “We think this is a real shame, because there are so many incredible creators and ideas out there that just need a little help to become incredible games.” …

The Best New Books of November, According to Indie Booksellers

The Best New Books of November, According to Indie Booksellers

Published by skeptic

Masquerade by Mike Fu Between Shanghai and New York, a curious story involving an artist and a bartender takes place. Let’s start with Meadow Liu, who is newly single, the aforementioned bartender, and house-sitting for his artist friend Selma. When he stumbles upon a book titled The Masquerade, about a masked ball that took place in Shanghai in the ’30s, suddenly all these weird things start happening. For one, the author’s name is the same as Meadow’s in Chinese (Liu Tian), and over the summer, Meadow encounters strangers speaking riddles, a potentially haunted apartment, and other strange happenings. Then Selma goes missing from her artist residency, and Meadow’s understanding of reality starts to feel like it’s giving way. —Erica Ezeifedi Source link

The Watch World’s New Indie King

The Watch World’s New Indie King

Published by skeptic

Rexhepi is handsome with a strong jaw, permanent stubble, and boyishly pointed ears. If Hollywood ever catches watch fever and decides to give Rexhepi a biopic, Tom Hardy would fit the bill. He is meticulous about everything, not just watches—even the workbench he uses is of his own design. His desk is stacked with notebooks filled with drawings of watches and mechanisms. He designed the notebooks too. On the day of our meeting, he is wearing a camel-colored knit polo and matching sport coat. He cares so much about his clothes that he’s talked about designing his own one day. On his wrist is the vintage Rolex Milgauss he’s known for, but he tells me he also has several of the brand’s Daytonas at home. The Chronomètre Contemporain II is Rexhepi’s current masterpiece, considered by many to be one of the finest modern watches in the world. Rexhepi’s office is decorated with objects that pass his smell test: samurai swords and a handmade knife from Emmanuel Esposito that clicks into place so smoothly, like those …

Indie artist Washed Out’s new music video was fully AI-generated

Indie artist Washed Out’s new music video was fully AI-generated

Published by skeptic

A chillwave musician last week uploaded the first entirely artificial intelligence-generated music video created by OpenAI’s text-to-video model, Sora. Washed Out’s latest song, “The Hardest Part,” was released Thursday, complete with a four-minute music video following a couple’s romance from high school through the rest of their adult lives together — speeding through scenes alluding to a wedding, child-rearing and eventual death. The video’s director, Paul Trillio, wrote in a statement shared by Washed Out’s record label, Sub Pop, that he had wanted to film such an “infinite zoom” concept for a decade now but never attempted it because he believed it would be too ambitious. “I was specifically interested in what makes Sora so unique. It offers something that couldn’t quite be shot with a camera, nor could it be animated in 3D, it was something that could have only existed with this specific technology,” Trillio wrote. “The surreal and hallucinatory aspects of AI allow you to explore and discover new ideas that you would have never dreamed of.” Sora, which is not yet …

Rachel Chinouriri on her heart-wrenching debut album: ‘I’m a Black girl making indie music – people didn’t know what to do with that’

Rachel Chinouriri on her heart-wrenching debut album: ‘I’m a Black girl making indie music – people didn’t know what to do with that’

Published by Sam

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free When indie singer-songwriter Rachel Chinouriri recorded her explosive and heart-wrenching debut album What a Devastating Turn of Events, it felt like catharsis. The 25-year-old has been signed to Warner’s label Parlophone for six years, and put out a series of lovesick anthem EPs over that time, but it’s only now she’s been able to release her first record. Why the hold-up? Chinouriri cites various factors today, including the pandemic, internal label politics and issues in her personal life. But really, nobody knew how to market her. “I’m a Black girl making indie music and I don’t think people knew what to do with that,” she says. “Whenever I put myself out there as indie, I’d constantly get miscategorised as R&B or urban.” In January 2022, Chinouriri had an encounter with someone from the industry that tipped her over the edge. “He was like, ‘I love what you’re doing,’ …

The indie gaming scene looks extra fun in 2024 | Kaser Focus

The indie gaming scene looks extra fun in 2024 | Kaser Focus

Published by skeptic

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the gaming industry’s top leaders? Learn more about GamesBeat Summit sponsorship opportunities here.  Sometimes it’s hard to be in the games industry and maintain your sense of joy and discovery. A lot of what’s coming out are iterative franchise entries and triple-A titles. That’s great — who doesn’t love chocolate ice cream? But sometimes it’s nice to have the joy of tasty butter pecan for the first time. I felt joy like that this week when Xbox held its ID@Xbox Showcase this week, which showed off some of the fun indie games coming to Xbox and Game Pass in 2024 (and beyond). Between that show and the Nintendo Indie World showcase earlier in April, I’m feeling very excited for the weird indie games that are coming out this year. The games shown at the ID@Xbox show include bizarre horror-adventure game Centum, silly co-op shape-based puzzler All You Need is Help, “snack ‘n’ slash” RPG (the dev’s words, not mine) Hangry and the turn-based rhythm PRG …

Indie developer behind Deliver Us Mars shuts its doors

Indie developer behind Deliver Us Mars shuts its doors

Published by skeptic

KeokeN, makers of the acclaimed video game Deliver Us Mars, has ceased operations entirely and laid off its entire staff. In a post to X on Tuesday, the studio said it was shutting its doors because it couldn’t find any publisher for its ongoing work. The studio said its representatives visited Game Developers Conference 2024 in San Francisco, a convention where publishing deals are often brokered, but came home empty handed. Heartbroken, we’ve had to lay off our team at KeokeN because of nothing substantial materializing directly after our visit to GDC. We’ve unfortunately exhausted all our possible options for publishing, work for hire, and co-development. It is our utmost priority to make sure our… pic.twitter.com/3QHzJzgCfl — KeokeN Interactive???? (@KeokeN) April 30, 2024 Deliver Us Mars, which launched in February 2023 for Playstation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X, was well received by game critics and featured in the prestigious Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Network monthly gaming offerings that year, which makes the studio’s closure all the more surprising. …

Next ID@Xbox Showcase will air on April 29, showing new indie games

Next ID@Xbox Showcase will air on April 29, showing new indie games

Published by skeptic

The next ID@Xbox Digital Showcase, spotlighting independent games on Xbox and PC, will be held April 29 at 1 p.m. EDT. The event will be carried by IGN as well as live on all of its apps and social media channels. In a post on Xbox Wire, Microsoft said it anticipated updates on games like Dungeons of Hinterberg, 33 Immortals, Lost Records Bloom & Rage, and others. Dungeons of Hinterberg is an action role-playing game that also includes social simulation elements. It will launch sometime later this year with day-one availability on Xbox Game Pass. 33 Immortals, by Thunder Lotus (pictured above) is an action-adventure with co-operative multiplayer and roguelike features. “Play a damned soul, and rebel against God’s final judgment,” reads its product page. Players will have to fight for survival against challenging bosses and hordes of monsters. The show will be carried at IGN.com, as well as over IGN’s Twitch and YouTube channels and Facebook channel. The last ID@Xbox Digital Showcase was also the first crossover event with IGN, and was held in …

Xbox puts up Dungeons 3, Eiyuden Chronicle for free play weekend

Xbox puts up Dungeons 3, Eiyuden Chronicle for free play weekend

Published by skeptic

Three games are coming free to all Xbox Game Pass subscribers for the weekend, starting April 18 and going to April 21. Subscribers at all levels will get to play Dungeons 3, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, and I Am Fish. Dungeons 3 – Complete Collection This real-time strategy management game, published in 2017, is a twist on the usual dungeon crawler. Instead of being the heroes invading the creepy-crawly torchlit realm, players are actually the demon in charge of the lair, and therefore building up its defenses against all that above-world gallantry. It’s not exactly Diablo, but it is still very evil indeed. The complete collection boasts a ton of maps and more than fifty hours of gameplay to get invested in.   Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a 2D Metroidvania side-scroller with a lovely aesthetic. It is a step away from the usual Japanese role-playing games series it takes its name from, like Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. Your task in this 505 Games-published adventure is to rebuild the land of New Neveah, which is struggling …