Oscar-nominated director Pablo Larrain and his brother and producing partner Juan de Dios Larrain have launched Pijama, a streaming platform for independent and undistributed films.
The TVOD platform allows filmmakers and producers to upload their films directly to pijama, select release territories, set prices, and run digital marketing campaigns.
“We’ve been active[as filmmakers]for 25 years…traveling all over the world, not just to the major film festivals, but to film festivals everywhere,” Pablo, known for directing Jackie, Spencer and Maria, told me. “There’s a huge frustration because literally most of the movies (80-90%) are not distributed. Access has become the key word in this process, this concept.”
For a flat fee of $100, filmmakers can upload, encode, store, and stream their films for two years. Rental prices can range from $3.99 to $9.99, and viewers get a 72-hour viewing slot over 30 days. Viewers can rent movies around the world, and 80% of the proceeds, excluding transaction costs and applicable taxes, are paid directly to producers, sales agents, and distributors.
“Streamers can’t buy every movie. That’s not possible,” Pablo says. “They have to make a choice, and they have to shelve the Latin American reality, the Asian reality, the European reality, and of course the American reality, because there are so many movies that just stay on the hard drives of filmmakers and producers. Very few movies actually get seen.”
Christian Joffre
The Larraín family has founded the new business with award-winning executive creative director Christian Joffre. “We want to be more transparent about all the metrics, like how many people are watching our movies and how much money they’re making,” Joffre said. “They can go to their pajamas every day and they can see all of it. It not only tells them what country the user is coming from, but it also gives them access to control their own narrative and control their promotions.”
“Most streamers aren’t very transparent about how many people are watching your movie or how much money they’re making,” he continues. “But again, as Pablo says, it’s all about access. We’re giving the pajamas almost complete access.”
The platform is currently available on Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, smart TVs, iOS, and Android.
The user interface is also simplified. “When you go to a platform, you usually spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to watch, scrolling down, down, down, down, and sometimes you end up not seeing anything,” Huang says. “We’re working on building a community, it’s going to take time, but for now we’re building a catalog and we’ll have a place to post what to watch and we’ll watch the most viewed movies. These will be the five most watched movies, the top five movies on the list, but that’s it. We’re never going to go down, we’re not going to go down infinitely, because we don’t like that experience, that experience. We want to turn off search and turn on movies.”
Pijama welcomes AI projects. “We are also a place for new experiments, new works that need to reach an audience,” says Huang.
The platform comes at a time when creators are concerned that mergers like the one Netflix is attempting with Warner Bros. Studios and HBO Max will hurt small independent projects. “It’s hard to know what will actually happen,” Pablo says. “I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing. Maybe there’s an upside…We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”
For more information, visit pijamafilms.com.
