A Doc On How Amazon Workers Unionized Drew Critics’ Praise, But No Major Takers to Distribute
To someone not completely enmeshed in the state of the entertainment business, the documentary Union might seem like it has the trappings of an attractive nonfiction sales title: a dramatic story arc culminating in a history-making news event, close access to key players, a charismatic central character, glowing reviews and a premiere at a prestigious film festival.
And yet the film, which documents how an unconventional grassroots group organized the first-ever U.S. union at an Amazon warehouse, is coming to select theaters on Friday without the backing of any major entertainment companies. Months after the Brett Story and Stephen Maing-directed film screened at the Sundance Film Festival and won a special jury award there, the filmmakers announced they had turned to theatrical self-distribution in the absence of any major studio or streamer deals. With the move, a press release in June noted, the team was “recognizing the difficulties faced by political documentaries in distribution of late.”
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Social-issue documentaries have had a rough time of it lately, with longtime impact-driven company Participant Media shutting down in the spring and consolidations reducing the number of buyers interested in this kind of fare in the space. But Union, with its detailed portrait of a consequential American labor story, is an especially salient example. The filmmakers’ current self-distribution plan may ultimately target their intended audience just as effectively, or even more, than a conventional, mainstream release. But their story also offers a glimpse into the bind that some nonfiction filmmakers are facing in a cost-cutting, risk-averse market.
To hear the producers of Union tell it, they essentially stumbled into documenting the rise of the Amazon Labor Union. Producers Mars Verrone and Samantha Curley had independently contacted organizer former Amazon worker Chris Smalls, who was fired after protesting COVID-19 protocols at the JKF8 warehouse on Staten Island, in the summer of 2020. Smalls, a social media-savvy, stylish former rapper from New Jersey, was at the time making headlines for protesting in front of Jeff Bezos’ homes. Smalls put the two producers in touch, suggesting they might want to work together. The pair was still trying to determine the angle for a joint project when they filmed Smalls and JFK8 Amazon workers announcing a long-shot unionization effort on March 30, 2021. “We were like, ‘Well, I guess we have our movie,’” remembers Curley.
From an early point, the filmmakers expected that streamers might not be clamoring to distribute a film about labor organizing at Amazon. (The tech and e-commerce behemoth itself was, of course, off the table.) The group participated in some pitch markets during production in 2021 and 2022 and heard a “recurring chorus,” recalls producer Verrone, of “Who will possibly pick this up?”
But hopes began to build after the Amazon Labor Union improbably won its National Labor Relations Board election in 2022 following a gonzo campaign that involved providing free pizza, hot dogs and marijuana to workers. Media outlets descended on the group that had, as the New York Times put it, managed to pull off “one of the biggest victories for organized labor in a generation.” Smalls was appearing on The Daily Show, CNN+ and even Tucker Carlson Tonight. He met President Joe Biden, wearing a jacket that said “Eat the Rich.” In May of 2022, he and fellow organizer Derrick Palmer were named to Time’s list of the 100 Most Influential People of 2022.
Story began to receive calls from acquaintances saying a film should be made about the effort, after her team had already been on the ground with the union, filming the entire saga, for about a year. “At that point there was some idea that, yeah, this film is going to find a home. This is a big news story. It’s all over the New York Times,” she says.
But that vibe shifted again over one and a half years later, before the film’s Sundance premiere. As major companies were belt-tightening in the wake of the industry’s 2023 double strikes,a couple of big streamers, Story says, communicated that they were pivoting away from political and social-issue documentaries toward storylines like “brands gone bad.” At the festival the filmmakers began to hear a dual response: That executives loved the film but that their employers probably wouldn’t take it on. Story adds, “A couple of distributors said, really honestly, ‘We have a working relationship to Amazon Studios and we cannot risk that arrangement.’” (The biggest documentary sales titles out of the festival ended up being the celebrity bio Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story to Warner Bros. Discovery and buddy road movie Will & Harper to Netflix, both in eight-figure deals.)
By early spring, as it became clear that no major North American or worldwide rights deals were on the table, the group began seriously looking into self-distribution. The filmmakers had already retained the impact production company Red Owl Partnersand began working with distribution expert Michael Tuckman in April. They started creating an individualized distribution plan “that would be squarely in line with our values,” Maing says. The thought was, “At the very least, we’re not going to commercialize this and turn it into generic content.”
The plan the group has put in place is unabashedly pro-union; it’s unclear if it ever would have been greenlit by a major entertainment company. The film will screen once or a few times in cities chosen because of partners on the ground (in Detroit, for instance, the screening is sponsored the Metro-Detroit Coalition of Labor Union Women and several University of Michigan programs) and/or because these cities are in proximity to Amazon warehouses. Several of these screenings include post-film Q&As, such as in Columbia, Missouri, where the discussion will focus on local cannabis workers’ push to unionize. The filmmakers are offering reduced ticket prices to labor partners and union members in most markets. The strategy is “tied to where the impact was strongest,” says Tuckman.
There are also some cheeky components to the advocacy-oriented rollout. There will be an initial streaming release on the platform Gathr from Black Friday to Giving Tuesday, a period when Amazon typically racks up major sales, with the filmmakers working on a way to share half of proceeds with partners and labor organizations. (They’re currently finalizing the list and won’t yet specify which organizations could benefit; some existing major partners include the SEIU, the Athena Coalition, Delta Workers Unite, Jobs with Justice and Labor Heritage Foundation.) In the spring, the team is aiming to hold worker-oriented screenings near Amazon warehouses — or maybe even projected on them. Explains Tuckman, “There’s nice rectangular screens on the side of [these warehouses]. There’s four of them on the side of each fulfillment house.”
From Maing’s point of view, the lack of interest from traditional distributors was perhaps a blessing in disguise. “It’s actually been an opportunity to understand how you connect better with the audiences and have a more direct relationship that is unmitigated by these large monopolized media conglomerates,” he says.
The filmmakers make clear, however, that they are open to a major deal opening up down the line. Adam McKay, The Big Short and Don’t Look Up filmmaker, officially joined the project as an executive producer in late September, after the self-distribution plan had been announced. In a statement to THR, McKay notes that the film is taking a page out of the labor organizing playbook, maximizing “grassroots” relationships during its initial release. “At the same time the team behind Union is not saying no to the right kind of wider distribution,” he says.
McKay adds, “I would think on the most basic economic level there will be a studio or streamer smart enough to want the audience for Union. It’s an audience that is only growing and growing.”
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