In the epilogue to the book's first edition in 2006 I suggested that American independent cinema should stop being examined in isolation from other types of niche filmmaking and considered instead as part of a larger category of specialty cinema that would also include films not produced or distributed by the conglomerated Hollywood majors, in particular non-US film imports. My rationale for this suggestion stemmed from the fact that the label ‘independent’ and its derivatives, especially ‘indie’, were being questioned severely by numerous institutions that contribute to definitions of independence in American cinema, prompting consideration of other, less charged, alternatives such as ‘specialty’ or ‘niche’. At the same time, non-US films such as La vita è bella [Life Is Beautiful] (Benigni, 1999), Wo hu cang long [Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon] (Lee, 2001), Ying xiong [Hero] (Zhang, 2003) and El laberinto del fauno [Pan's Labyrinth] (del Toro, 2006), all handled by the same specialty film divisions of the Hollywood majors (Miramax, Sony Pictures Classics, Miramax and Picturehouse, respectively), which were also producing and/or distributing ‘independent’ films, were breaking records in terms of theatrical box office success and enjoying unprecedented visibility. Together with more modest but still significant critical and commercial successes such as Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain [Amélie] (Jeunet, 2001), Monsoon Wedding (Nair, 2001), Y Tu Mamá También (Cuarón, 2002), Diarios de motocicleta [The Motorcycle Diaries] (Salles, 2004), Kung fu [Kung Fu Hustle] (Chow, 2004) and Volver (Almodóvar, 2006), they were pointing to the presence of a very strong niche film market for international (commercial) productions, which looked like it was complementing the market for American independent (mostly indiewood) films, especially as both markets were dominated by the majors’ specialty film divisions.

At that time, these divisions (which included Miramax, New Line Cinema, Fox Searchlight, Paramount Vantage, Focus Features, Warner Independent, Picturehouse, United Artists, Screen Gems and genre labels such as Dimension Films and Rogue Pictures) were at the peak of their power and there seemed to be little that could threaten their domination. This is especially as low-budget digital production had yet to make its mark culturally or in terms of box office success (with the exception of a small number of films such as The Blair Witch Project that had become runaway hits), despite representing a very substantial percentage of all production in the sector.