Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner aren’t the only ones in town developing a vertically integrated film production/distribution business. Well, sort of. This morning, The Texas Theatre’s Eric Steele sent along word that the filmmakers who operate the theater will utilize that asset to launch a new series of “crowd funded” indie films. It is a way of leveraging the theater to promote the production of new films. Interestingly, the new project is not an investment initiative, as the filmmakers the theater will support will maintain 100% ownership and control over their work, according to the plan. Writes Steele:

This past year Barak, Adam and I produced “WUSS” directed by Clay Liford, which premiered at SXSW. During the production of the film, we consistently used the Texas Theatre (for production meetings, rough cut lab screenings and dailies). This, and Partner Jason Reimer, got us to thinking: how can we start to regularly launch more films from the Texas Theatre?

Well, the first step in that plan is here…

The Aviation Cinemas team (Barak Epstein, Adam Donaghey, Jason Reimer, Eric Steele) is excited to announce that we’ll begin launching “crowd funded” indie films and producing them directly from the Texas Theatre beginning with our April 22nd launch of “The Verdigris” – a music documentary on the path of Will Rogers (Exec Producer Bradley Beesley (Okie Noodling, Christmas on Mars) , music by Beau Jennings).

The plan is to start out grassroots – find projects we believe in and help that filmmaker assemble a production team and then build out a night to launch the Kickstater (a crowd funding website used by indie filmmakers to get funding: www.kickstarter.com). “The Verdigris” will be the first of several projects that we’ll be presenting in the next year. The date for the launch is Friday, April 22nd at 6pm at the Texas Theatre.

You can read the full release on the project here.