Update, May 2025.
We’re now supporting FAN FILMS. Yep, Fan Made films and television programs like the kind of thing produced at the Neutral Zone studios. You may have watched Star Trek Continues on our Star Trek Continues “Martian Poop” Roku channel. No? Well, you should watch STC because it’s a classic in the fan film arena. Not to mention, well, okay, yes we’ll mention The Verse by Julian Higgins, and his other work like DeadPool (the Musical –haa! you just gotta see this show!)
Forgive me, I ramble sometimes when it comes to great stuff that you may watch FREE and AD-FREE. New films like Dreadnought Dominion, and stuff from the Alien, Predator, and Witcher series are also supported.
Look for the submission guidelines soon on our FilmFreeway festival page. It will tell you all about our FREE streaming services, designed just for NON-commercial programming. Plus, this year we have a venue set up at our local church. So the Fest is going to take a “public” listing status on FilmFreeway. It’s a very cool opportunity because now the winners and runner-ups will have the chance to be screened to a live-audience, and then screened on our Roku channels. If you’d like to get more info while I put our new project together, then I’m on Facebook.com/DeanLach.
Contact Dean or submit your film via the Fest to get your content streamed on , Roku, and Amazon FireTV.
Outside of the fan-film arena: Distribution and promotion of indie film/TV-shows.
We stream Hollywood content on connected TV via our Movies Plus branded TV-Apps on FireTV and Roku. See MoviesPlusTV.com for links.
We’d like to announce the release of our Android TV app on GooglePlay, here’s the link. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=quickcast.tv.movies_plus
We also have a connection with an Over-the-Air broadcaster, but we don’t use it very often. It’s worth a brief mention because if you have produced a “commercial” film or TV project then you could possibly sell it to our broadcast partners. That’s something that we can do for you, and it’s not really our main thrust — that is to say, we’re not a sales agent specifically. We are connected to Apple Pie Films, LLC – a company that produces all sorts of apps, and APF acts as a “pre-distributor.” In other words, if you stream your content on a APF Roku or FireTV channel, and your content gets a large amount of viewers, then APF can present your “commercial” product to other people, like broadcast partners. (OTA syndication is something we do on a case by case basis, talk to Dean on FB or at the monthly Royal Starr “Michigan Community Filmmaker” film mixer’s in Hazel Park, Michigan.
Older Blog material is below…
About CTV or “Connected TV” on Smart Television’s and TV-App’s
Our Roku and FireTV presence has expanded since we started in 2015.
We started with independent VOD films on our first channel: Movies Plus on FireTV. Now we stream Indie films from our Metro Film Festival, and we have “live” channels that run 24/7.
In 2016 we expanded to Roku with MPTV (Movies Plus TV) at this link on Roku. Movies Plus channels are cornerstones in our organization.
The Movie Network (TMN) is our second largest channel on Roku. And we have Niche channels on Roku that target audiences, and these are changing from a VOD to an all Live broadcast this year. (So please check our channels every week to see our updated content-feed.) Here’s the links for two of our favorite Niche channels: “Badass TV” only on Roku (for Boxing and Sports fans.) Also “ArtHouse Movies” is geared towards Filmmakers and film festival attendees — again only on Roku.
Fast aka Live and “Simulated Live” Television
We’re adding more “FAST” channel partners! You’ll find the selection of “Sub-Channels” is expanding this year. Tune into any of our Roku and FireTV channels, and you’ll find everything from Mavericks Baseball to Sci-Fi favorites like “Logan’s Run” and “Dreamscape.” 
Studios, and Streaming Platforms, we’re very open minded and we’d love to talk about partnerships.
Our broadcast (syndication) partners do content buyouts quarterly, and we look for family friendly films because our content must be FCC (Free Antenna TV) tolerant.
How the Metro Film Festival helps filmmakers get exposure
Metro aims to help filmmakers get exposure and distribution for their films. No matter what your release window is, we are here to help you. Trailers and Teasers are always free to submit and we offer entry fee waivers whenever possible. (Note that our first quarter of 2024 has fees as low as $7 – yes, 7 dollars!)
Below is a snapshot taken from our film festival. The article was taken from a newspaper. It writes of Alex, an indie filmmaker who streamed his film on our Movies Plus Amazon Fire TV channel for 6 months. Alex is a proactive filmmaker. He took the Movies Plus statistics to a venture capitalist who decided to finance the filmmaker’s next feature film. Alex may be a little more driven than some filmmakers, and his success proves to you that determination and good filmmaking skills can lead you to distribution on services like Hulu. That’s right, Alex’s film(s) made it to Hulu. We’d like to think that you can do so too!
Apple Pie Films, LLC uses FilmFreeway for our Metro Film Festival. The MetroFilmFestival is a great way to get your film/show on Television. Click on over to FilmFreeway and enter your film, we’re judging films every month. It’s always free to submit trailers, and you may ask us for a film submission fee-waiver for movies, TV-shows and webisodes. Also soon you’ll see links to our partners who are hosting films at Michigan film festivals. Look for more information on area festivals and events like Metro sponsored film-screenings.
A personal note…
Indie filmmakers, at Metro we are film advocates including Dean Lachiusa, who is one of our curators and a cinematography buff. If you are thinking about a film festival campaign or film or TV-program distribution please reach out to us. We’d love to hear about your work.
If you’d like to directly talk with Dean Lachiusa, then please reach out to Dean on Twitter @Dean_Lachiusa or FB (www.Facebook.com/DeanLach.)
Our Connected TV website is here: www.MoviesPlusTV.com
The Metro Film Festival is represented on FilmFreeway, enter your film, web-series or TV-show here (trailers are usually free.)
A reminder: Metro is open to giving FREE submissions to indie filmmakers like you, just ask for an Entry Fee Waiver.
REMINDER: Filmmakers/Studios might like to ask Dean about how you may get your film or TV program Streamed or Broadcast on one or more of our OTA or Connected TV Channels…We accept most formats including Promotional Featurettes and Proof of Concepts, and most genres (horror is limited to Roku and Fire.)