Even though the theatrical event of 2025 — if not the year’s true moment of poetic cinema — has come and gone, IndieWire must continue being a website and writing about obvious things like the VistaVision print of “One Battle After Another.” But it is worth reflecting on the former, by which we, of course, mean the limited theatrical run of The Onion mockumentary, “Jeffrey Epstein: Bad Pedophile.”
The 20-minute short is now available for any American idiot to watch YouTube, but the team at the Onion recently screened it, along with the classic Onion limited series “Sex House,” in over 25 independent theaters across the country, from Birmingham, Alabama, to Duluth, Minnesota, and beyond.
The success of the one-night-only, self-described “Historic Cinematic Night of Film at the Movies” speaks not just to the credibility of America’s Finest News Source, but of the increasing ease with which projects and exhibitors can directly collaborate to get around the usual film distribution channels — and any risk-aversion that may or may not come with them.
Over the summer, The Onion team observed the staying power of the Epstein files as a news story and decided to commit the whole of their Onion News Network resources to creating a mockumentary around it and trying to make that film as big, ambitious, and wildly funny as the Chicago-based satire team could. The script came together in a matter of days. “I remember walking into the writers’ room and seeing [the outline of the film]. On [beat] number eight or nine, it said ‘He went to heaven’ with a frowny face. That’s when I knew it was gonna be truly great,” Onion CEO Ben Collins told IndieWire.
They’d even secured release for the short mockumentary through a major distributor. But in the wake of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, the distributor decided to walk away from the project. “Their PR team [must have] refused to watch the movie because they kept asking if Donald Trump was in it. And we were like, ‘Yeah. But he’s on the Knicks.’ Like, it’s not [real]… I think it’s weird that you would see the name ‘Jeffrey Epstein’ and immediately associate it with the president and all of his friends. But it is what it is,” Collins said.
Luckily for The Onion team, they didn’t have to leave one of their most ambitious video projects at “it is what it is.” CMO Leila Brillson was determined to pursue independent theatrical screenings, partnering with indie theaters across the country. “What’s exciting about this process is that it was a bummer to find ourselves holding the bag on something, but we also created our own pipeline, which was really exciting. We created our own relationships with these theaters that we were able to pump this out without relying on anyone except the technology that exists to send this to each other,” Brillson told IndieWire.
It was as simple as emailing [email protected] for independent theaters to request the DCP (Digital Cinema Package, the kind of file used to play movies on digital projectors) on Friday, October 2. Both Onion CEO Ben Collins and CMO Leila Brillson told IndieWire they were blown away by the response and by what building their own distribution pipeline could unlock for The Onion in the future.
“There is a feeling that there’s not a lot to rally around right now. Providing that kind of catharsis is so important to our readers and our audience. And once we took a look at this thing and laughed our faces off, we knew we had the opportunity to bring people together and have a rallying cry, flashpoint moment that we can point to this single, particular date and give people something they can all go to as a group,” Brillson said.
Once The Onion team put out the call, they found out they had friends (with access to independent theaters) everywhere. “Within 24 hours, we had dozens of requests all throughout the world to show this thing locally,” Collins said. “We’re letting [the indie theaters] keep the gate. We’re letting them donate it to charity, do whatever they want to do with it. We’re doing it exclusively so people see the film and to support a difficult ride indie theaters [have had] in the last few years as well.”
“Three cities in Missouri are screening this film, and I just think that’s really exciting and really speaks to the pockets of interest that you kind of forget about when you’re subsumed into this mass mediated space,” Brillson added. “But there are people who are ready to watch something like this that is a little out of left field.”
The motto of The Onion is “Tu stultus es” (roughly, “You are stupid”), but both Brillson and Collins told IndieWire that screening something like “Jeffrey Epstein: Bad Pedophile” proves you don’t have to over-engineer “content” to be value-neutral slop in order to garner an audience, whatever the demographic breakdown.
“I actually say this all the time to Ben — because there is that anti-woke crowd that is so loud, we feel like there’s this massive shift and we are watching theater chains and people making the economic decisions — marketers, media buyers, whoever — make this huge shift to the right. And you know, it doesn’t make a tremendous amount of economic sense,” Brillson said. “Actually having some values works. And the nice thing is, all of the people going to this are supporting indie theaters. They’re giving their money directly to these people who get to keep it.”
“The comedy that you see that’s very paid for, that’s very expensive? The, you know, Riyadh Comedy Festival thing that’s going on? Those people have pretended to be censored and had a really hard time, like their speech is being taken away, but they’re being paid millions of dollars by the richest people in the world to protect the status quo. And most people want something like [‘Jeffrey Epstein: Bad Pedophile’],” Collins added. “Actual people will drive out of their way, will beg their theaters to air something this stupid. That’s where the actual populace is. That’s where real America is. It’s not with this other, very contrived, anti-woke thing that’s been going on for the last few years.”
As it so often is, The Onion is right — We are stupid, and the key to making good things is in figuring out how to come together with other (stupid) people. “We feel like we had a cheat code, I think, with rebuilding the newspaper last year. We had to do the same thing. We didn’t even know there were middlemen that would go and make you a newspaper and cut off, you know, half your profits. We just went to the place out by O’Hare Airport that makes newspapers and asked, ‘Would you guys print something for us?,’” Collins said. “The whole thing feels kind of charmed.”
“Jeffrey Epstein: Bad Pedophile” is now available to stream on YouTube.