For Cooper Raiff to Build a Market for Indie TV, He Needed to Make ‘Hal & Harper’ ‘Undeniable’

Cooper Raiff‘s film “Cha Cha Real Smooth” sold to Apple for $15 million in 2022, but his wasn’t the first, nor the last to notch such a deal at a festival. That’s not to say it was easy, but with Raiff’s new project, he doesn’t even have that track record to fall back on.

Raiff’s latest project is “Hal & Harper,” an 8-part dramedy series being presented in Sundance‘s Episodic section. The series stars Lili Reinhart, Mark Ruffalo, Betty Gilpin, and Raiff, and is one of the higher profile series to ever play in Park City. The rub is, there’s very little precedent for an Episodic project to find a distributor on the sales market at Sundance. People aren’t coming to Sundance with a pot of money set aside to buy shows the way they are with movies. And for all the idiosyncratic series out there, the way in which television is financed today means, for the most part, “Indie TV” is just not a thing.

“It’s not a new model, it’s the same model. The independent movie model is a great model that works, and then you say, why don’t you do it for TV? A lot of people, including myself, really believe in it. It’s only been since the past year or so that I’ve actually had this awakening,” Raiff told IndieWire. “There is no reason for a network or streamer to buy an independent TV show, and I definitely did not say that to anyone when I was trying to get financing for the show.”

Raiff hopes to change that, but it will take a big swing. Indie filmmakers can make the daring projects a studio never would and do so on the cheap. Why shouldn’t the same logic apply to TV. Raiff made “Hal & Harper” for under $10 million, a number that producer Lionsgate TV heard and said, “That’s fucking great. It’s smart, it sounds smart.” Raiff even shot “Hal & Harper” like a 4.5 hour movie, filming scenes in the pilot back to back with something that appears in the finale.

But he came to realize that a streamer or network is thinking only in terms of whether or not this show will get them more subscribers or retain them. Even if the show is good, they have no proof that buying a show rather than making it themselves will actually work. So if “Hal & Harper” was going to sell, he needed to make his show “undeniable” to buyers. It has to be so good that an executive needs to choose it over the dozen other passion projects on their slate they could make instead.

Cooper Raiff attends the ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ premiere during the 2022 Tribeca FestivalGetty Images for Tribeca Festiva

“I thought I could make a show that was just for me, and it was all that I’ve ever wanted to see on TV,” Raiff said. “But about a year ago when I was in the edit, I realized I’ve got to make this thing undeniable so that they have to buy it.”

Raiff says “Hal & Harper” was originally set up at a network, but he came to realize amid development that the executives were fitting the show into a box he didn’t want it to be in. A producer saw him in a Zoom meeting and told him, “I can tell we’re not enjoying this.” He wasn’t, and the producer fought to get the rights back.

The pivot to make it independently didn’t mean Raiff could do whatever he wanted. “Hal & Harper” still needed to feel like something a streamer would’ve made itself. So it has binge-friendly cliffhangers, commercial flourishes, and was cut from 10 episodes to eight. Raiff trimmed a six-minute opening sequence of Ruffalo and Gilpin that was merely slice of life world building. The opening needed to “go harder.”

Raiff also told Sundance he needed to present the whole series, not just a pilot, to let buyers know exactly what they’re getting. Only the first four episodes will screen in a theater at Sundance, but all eight episodes will be available via Sundance’s online portal in the second half of the festival.

“They think they know what works for them, and they’re really holding tight on to that,” Raiff said. “I would have thought two years ago that you just go and show a slice of life TV show that’s nothing like anything anyone’s ever seen before, with Mark Ruffalo and Lili Reinhart, and they’ll buy that. But I’ve realized in the past year, no, they won’t. They won’t because they have no reason to break what they’ve been doing. It’s absolutely not broken. It’s working really well for them.”

Megan Stott in ‘Penelope’Courtesy of Fusion Entertainment

Non-scripted shows like “100 Foot Wave” have had more success on the indie TV market, but it’s harder in the scripted space. “Penelope,” Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn’s series that sold to Netflix after a SXSW premiere last year, spent a week in the US Top 10, but is a slow burn series unlikely to jumpstart a larger market for indie TV. “Animals” got a two-season order from HBO after screening two episodes at Sundance in 2015. “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer” both started as highly personal, independent projects before a streamer made them hits. But some agents IndieWire spoke with were skeptical such success stories were anything more than one-offs. The lack of activity among Episodic titles dates back to when Sundance launched the section in 2018.

The good news is, Raiff has left the door open for a second season of “Hal & Harper,” that is if someone buys it and audiences want more.

“I hope people just love it. I hope people really see themselves in the characters and get a sense of the healing that they get,” Raiff said. “The dream would be to go to any place: Apple, Netflix, HBO, Amazon, FX, Hulu, all these places. I would die for the show to be at any one of those places. And I’m gonna try to manifest it.”

“Hal & Harper” premieres Sunday, January 26 at Sundance and will be available for streaming via Sundance’s online portal.