New York City, NY, USA, September 10th, 2026, FinanceWire
Obluda Films and MavenApt have announced a strategic partnership to launch private theatrical and virtual screenings of work-in-progress independent films for credentialed media buyers, distributors, and sales agents.
The partnership will begin with a pilot program featuring a limited number of titles from Obluda Films’ slate. The initiative is intended to give acquisition executives access to selected films before their final cuts and public festival premieres, allowing distribution discussions to begin earlier in the production process.
The invitation-only screening events will be hosted both in person and virtually through MavenApt’s platform. Participating buyers will be able to preview unfinished films months before their festival submissions or premieres, while filmmakers will have an opportunity to receive industry feedback and explore potential acquisition interest while changes to their projects may still be possible.
Through the program, the companies aim to establish a private market window before a film’s public release. Under the conventional festival model, buyers often encounter a completed film for the first time at or shortly before its premiere. The new screening format moves that engagement earlier, giving approved industry participants structured access to projects under development.
“Theatrical distribution has always had one property that streaming structurally lacks: scarcity. A theater has a fixed number of seats, a fixed number of showtimes, and a closing date. That scarcity does real economic and cultural work. It creates urgency,” said Kaustubh “Vick” Singh, Creative Executive at Obluda Films and co-founder of MavenApt. “Streaming eliminates all of that. A film drops onto a platform with effectively infinite capacity and no closing date, and the only signal a distributor gets back is an opaque, platform-controlled viewership number that is rarely shared with anyone outside the platform itself.”
“A blockchain-based digital theatrical window can bring both scarcity and information back, without requiring anyone to sit in a physical room,” said Shivay Lamba, Lead Engineer of MavenApt. “The mechanism Kaustubh and I’ve been developing through MavenApt starts from a simple substitution: instead of an unlimited streaming license, a filmmaker issues a fixed number of digital premiere tickets, tokenized on Ethereum using the ERC-1155 standard, priced and time-boxed by the filmmaker or rights holder. Say 10,000 tickets, a fourteen-day access window, priced at $35.”
The companies are announcing the partnership amid increased industry interest in modestly budgeted and culturally specific independent films. Through earlier screenings, Obluda Films and MavenApt intend to give participating buyers more time to evaluate selected projects and give producers an additional opportunity to present their work before entering the festival and wider acquisition markets.
MavenApt will provide the digital infrastructure for the virtual portion of the program. Its Ethereum-based system uses time-limited, access-controlled screening credentials designed to restrict work-in-progress films to verified participants. The companies say this approach offers an alternative to conventional watermarked screener links and embargo-based access for filmmakers sharing sensitive unfinished material.
Singh co-founded MavenApt with Shivay Lamba and Muhammad Ali, in addition to his role at Obluda Films. The companies have disclosed this relationship to participating parties. According to Obluda Films and MavenApt, the partnership developed from their efforts to create a distribution tool suited to the production company’s own slate.
The pilot will include work-in-progress projects connected to the Philippines, the Balkans, China, and the United States. Obluda Films and MavenApt will announce the participating titles, eligibility requirements, and initial screening calendar in the coming months.
Founded by Jeff Lichtenstein and based in New York City, Obluda Films is an independent production company that highlights stories from underrepresented communities around the globe. Its films have screened at festivals including Cannes, Slamdance, and Busan.
MavenApt is a digital distribution platform built to give independent filmmakers new tools to distribute and monetize their work directly, using verifiable, time-limited access windows.
About Obluda Films
Obluda Films is a New York-based production company run by Kaustubh “Vick” Singh, Guang Ren, and Jeff Lichtenstein, developing film projects from communities often left outside the center of the global film industry, with a focus on authentic, culturally specific storytelling.
About MavenApt
MavenApt is a blockchain-based film distribution platform built on Ethereum, creating a digital theatrical window between cinema and streaming. Using ERC-1155 ticketing, MavenApt gives independent filmmakers a scarce, time-limited release for engaged fans and industry buyers alike, with controlled access and audience data available through its platform.