For independent producers, it is the worst of times. The pandemic has shut down or emptied cinemas, new COVID-19 protocols have added 5 percent-10 percent to the budget of every production — provided you can even find a place safe enough to make your movie — and financiers, insurers and bond companies are running scared, none willing to cover the losses that would ensue should the world enter a second lockdown.
But then, there's After We Collided. The young-adult erotic drama, the sequel to the 2019 sleeper hit After, produced and sold by Voltage Pictures, is on track to gross $50 million at the box office, almost all of it from still open theaters outside the U.S.