“Movies that rise above, like A Single Man or Bright Star, will have a theatrical life for quite a while,” Apparition‘s Bob Berney tells Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson. “For financial reasons, not enough good films were for sale for buyers. A lot of films were misses. If a film is not really special, there is no in-between. It will not get a theatrical release. If it’s a halfway movie, audiences will skip it and watch it at home.”

You know what isn’t a halfway or an in-betweener? Chris Smith‘s Collapse. Where’s the disribution announcement on this one?

Producer Jonathan Dana provides the money quote in Thompson’s piece. “It’s a massacre…the end of funny money,” he says. He means funds “for anything above a micro-budget level that is too risky or daring or global,” Thompson explains, adding that “small-scale local productions will prevail, without counting on a North American theatrical release.”

I love the last part of the Dana paragraph in which Thompson summarizes his belief that “by dint of Darwinian forces of survival, movies will get better and stronger.” Oh, I see, I get it — filmmakers were holding back on their best efforts before? They were being…what, creatively whimsical as they psychologically cruised along on funny money, but now that it’s sink-or-swim, do-or-die season they’ll get real and try harder?