Hollywood doesn’t care about your movie. You already know this. You spent years making something real, something that matters, and the studios either ignored you, lowballed you, or buried you under a mountain of superhero sequels and IP reboots nobody asked for. The system wasn’t built for you — it was built to keep you out.
Joey Vasatka and Brian Wendel know exactly how that feels. The two filmmakers went through the Hollywood wringer firsthand when they tried to distribute Protocol Seven, their documentary exposing fraud at one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Studios and distributors were intrigued — until they weren’t. “Wow, you guys have balls,” they were told, before the doors quietly closed. “This conversation never happened. Good luck.”
So they stopped asking for permission and built Yow.TV instead.
The platform — which the duo discussed in a wide-ranging interview with Film Threat’s Chris Gore and Alan Ng — is a direct answer to everything broken about how indie films get seen, or more often, don’t. While the major streamers drown filmmakers in fine print and microscopic royalty checks, Yow.TV was designed from the ground up to actually work for the people making the films. Vasatka came up through the camera and lighting world before pivoting to directing. Wendel spent years in unscripted television before burning out on the LA grind and heading east. Together, they’re done playing by Hollywood’s rules.
Scene from The Coffee Table. Now available on Yow.TV for free.
“…we wanted to create a place just for indie film that is curated by our team of indie filmmakers.” — Joey Vasatka
The terms alone make the case. Where Amazon and Apple offer a standard 70/30 split — and then promptly make sure no one can find your film — Yow.TV gives filmmakers an 80/20 cut on transactional VOD and a 50/50 split on ad-supported content. Even better, filmmakers can submit directly to the platform without a sales agent or aggregator skimming off the top first. As Vasatka put it, “You can cut those percentages out right away, and you can choose your monetization model.”
The platform currently hosts around 600 curated titles — a fraction of what the major streamers carry, and that’s entirely the point. While Tubi drowns you in 300,000 titles and Netflix serves you whatever the algorithm decides it wants to push this week, Yow.TV is built around discovery and visibility. Every Friday brings at least 10 new films. The library includes sharp picks like Coherence, The Resurrection of Jake the Snake, Kill Your Friends, and the wickedly unsettling Spanish horror film The Coffee Table. Everything is currently free to watch with just an email or phone number — no subscription required.
Coming soon is the “Artist Portal,” a filmmaker-facing dashboard that automates reporting and delivers transparent, real-time earnings data. Think Spotify for filmmakers. That comparison is intentional. Vasatka sees the music industry’s disruption as the blueprint — streaming blew the major labels’ stranglehold wide open, and he believes film is about ten years behind. “If you look at something like Spotify, ultimately that’s one of our aspirations — to become the home for the independent artist who can monetize and gain recognition based on the community who is watching their material.”
To keep things from going the way of every other platform that started small and got bloated, Yow.TV is betting on community. Shared watchlists, rotating featured titles, and a forthcoming “Indie Social Club” subscription tier — modeled on a monthly book club, where a notable filmmaker picks a title and then hosts a Q&A with subscribers — are all designed to make discovery feel human again, the way passing around a great film recommendation used to feel before the algorithm took over.
Hollywood had its chance. It chose franchises. It chose IP. It chose the sure thing over the real thing, and it’s been creatively bankrupt ever since. Vasatka and Wendel aren’t waiting around for it to course-correct. As Wendel put it: “It just stems from the place of wanting our friends to stay working. We wanna make cool s**t with our friends. This is what we do. So let’s keep the art alive — and if this is the beginning wave to that, jump on. Let’s ride the wave in together.”
The revolution has a home. It’s at yow.tv. Filmmakers can submit directly at [email protected].
Watch the full Film Threat interview with Joey Vasatka and Brian Wendel on the Film Threat YouTube channel.