Alamo Drafthouse's movie recommendations brand has led to major box-office bumps for indie movies

• Alamo Drafthouse founder and CEO Tim League talked to Business Insider about his Drafthouse Recommends series, which has given a box-office bump to some of the most popular independent films of the last year.
• The last six titles that have received the "Recommends" tag, including "Eighth Grade" and "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," had a dramatic increase in per-theater average box-office gross at Drafthouse theaters compared to the national per-theater average.
• The latest Recommends title, "The Favourite," is continuing that trend as Drafthouse's per-theater average is +123% compared to the national per-theater average, according to figures Drafthouse provided to Business Insider.

Theaters recommending movies to patrons is nothing new. But like most things done by the independently owned movie chain, Alamo Drafthouse, its recommendations have proven to be a major success. Drafthouse's recommendations initiative has led to a nice spike in business and more box-office coin in the pockets of distributors releasing the movies.

"Drafthouse Recommends" was the brainchild of the chain's founder and CEO, Tim League. In the last two decades, League has expanded the company to 36 locations in 10 states. But he said he wanted to keep a sense of authenticity and give independent films more exposure, like when Drafthouse was just a single theater in Austin, Texas.

"Drafthouse Recommends is the driving factor of me feeling comfortable and getting excited about expanding Alamo beyond Austin," League told Business Insider.

In those early days in Austin in the late 1990s, League said the goal was just getting the distributors of smaller films to do more than play a one-week run of the movie. But as Drafthouse began expanding to other states, so did League's ambition. In 2012, he said he was so knocked out by the mix of insanity and beauty in Harmony Korine's "Spring Breakers" that it inspired him to finally pull the trigger and start a series in which the chain put its stamp of approval on unique titles.

"It was coming up with a brand that hopefully would be meaningful over the years," League said. "Only movies that we were passionate about and thought were special would ever have that branding."

Since then, the handpicked Drafthouse Recommends tag has grown to become a sign of cinematic excellence to the rabid Drafthouse patrons across the country.

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Titles that have gotten the honor over the years include "The Grand Budapest Hotel," "Boyhood," "Anomalisa," "Swiss Army Man," "Get Out," and "The Florida Project."

And the last six straight Drafthouse Recommends titles have performed better on a per-theater average than the national per-theater average, according to box office figures Drafthouse provided Business Insider.

Here's a breakdown, starting with the Oscar-winning "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" and ending with Amazon's "Suspiria."

League attributed the success of Recommends in the last year to the authentic way the brand has been built. There are no dedicated times a Recommends title is chosen. It's only when League and the five others who make up the selection group are passionate about an upcoming release and believe it's worthy. Drafthouse has certified about half a dozen titles on average the last few years.

"We haven't led them astray," he said of Drafthouse's patrons. "It's like, 'I trusted them on "Anomalisa," so I'm going to trust them now.'"

That seems to be the case with the most recent title given the Recommends stamp, "The Favourite." Yorgos Lanthimos' Oscar contender starring Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz has brought in a $34,644 per-theater average at Drafthouse versus the $15,537 national per-theater average (that's +123%), according to figures sent to Business Insider by Drafthouse.

League said he hopes going forward this continued trust will lead to Drafthouse audiences extending further from their comfort zones. The one type of film League wants to champion more with Recommends is foreign-language films.

"I think those are the toughest films we do," he said. "I'm passionate about getting a younger audience into foreign-language films."