For Overture, being part of Liberty Media gives it the kind of distribution typical of giant studios but which independents usually lack.

Hollywood’s six big studios are built to produce blockbusters aimed at “four-quadrant” success—attracting audiences young and old, male and female.

Independent filmmakers shoot for a narrower appeal with smaller-budget movies and less spending on targeted advertising.

“If you make a $20 million movie that breaks through and hits two of those quadrants, it turns out to be a profitable movie,” Taylor said.

One of Overture’s competitors for midbudget movies, Summit Entertainment LLC, put out the 2008 teen-vampire movie Twilight. It reportedly cost $37 million to make, and it grossed more than $191 million at the U.S. box office alone.

Overture’s ministudio status gives it the potential to make money even when its films aren’t that kind of hit.

The heist movie Mad Money from 2008 starred Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes and is said to have cost Overture $6 million for domestic distribution rights.

The movie brought in $20 million at the U.S. box office. DVD sales through Anchor Bay added more than $14 million. Overture sold the rights to cable rebroadcasts in 2010 to Lifetime for $4 million, according to Variety. Viewers could also see Mad Money as a pay-per-view offering of Liberty Media-owned Starz cable-TV movie channels, which pay licensing fees to Overture.

The ability to cross-promote the movie through Liberty Media’s relationships gave Overture a cut of at least $38 million instead of just the movie’s break-even theatrical box-office haul.

Success at Overture won’t make it more than a minor financial part of Liberty Media, which generated $10 billion in revenue in 2008. But its role of securing original content for the parent company adds value, said Matthew Harrigan, a Denver-based analyst who tracks Liberty Media and other large media conglomerates for Wunderlich Securities, based in Memphis, Tennessee.

The economic climate since the 2008 stock-market collapse may give Overture chances at better movies to promote than it could have expected a few years ago.

Hollywood used to be filled with hedge funds and private financiers backing movies, but that money has largely dried up.

“There’s been such a contraction of private equity in film financing that Overture is in good position to pick up some films,” Harrigan said. “It certainly improved their position, but it’s still a risky business. Even though they’ll have more people clamoring for their attention, they’ll still have to be careful.”