Something had been holding up the "Thumbsucker" deal. The week following the Sundance Film Festival, Sony Pictures Classics kept trying to close the acquisition. What was going on? "Two words," says one person close to the deal. "Bob Yari."

You can't turn a corner in Hollywood these days without seeing Yari's name on a movie. He had three of them at Sundance alone. He executive produced "Thumbsucker," a teen drama that won a special acting prize for its young lead, Lou Pucci. And he also exec produced the $15 million thriller "The Matador," starring Pierce Brosnan, which Miramax scooped up for $7.5 million, and the dark youth comedy "The Chumscrubber," starring Jamie Bell and Ralph Fiennes, which was co-financed with DreamWorks and will be distributed by Newmarket Films.

This year's festival was a big improvement from a year ago, when Yari's sole entry, "Employee of the Month," took the fast train to video.

Three years into his foray into Hollywood, the 43-year-old real estate mogul is plunking his own money down into about a dozen indie movies a year, costing between $4 million and $60 million each. His 20th film, the $17 million period drama "The Illusionist," starring Edward Norton, starts filming April 1.

Yari cuts his risk by hiring stars who are willing to share the back-end on low-budget films and who boast foreign appeal so that the films can be presold in foreign territories. Although so far the results have been mixed during a time when most distributors demand to see a finished film before they'll cough up dough, indie producers from Ted Hope to Michael London are lining up to partner with Yari. (One recent morning, Kevin Costner was waiting to meet with him.)

Still coming down from his Sundance high this week, Yari conducted a tour of his Westwood offices, where his five companies occupy the entire floor.

They include his foreign sales operation Syndicate Films International; Bob Yari Productions, a discretionary fund; El Camino, a partnership with William Morris Independents, which has assembled such films as Lions Gate's "A Love Song for Bobby Long," starring John Travolta; Stratus, in which he is partnered with Mark Gordon to produce higher-budgeted films like Miramax Films' $60 million "Hostage," starring Bruce Willis; and Bull's Eye Entertainment, with partner Cathy Schulman, which produces indie films (such as "Crash" and "Thumbsucker") to be sold at film festivals. "He put his money where his mouth is," says entertainment attorney Linda Lichter. "He's taken all the risk, he's done a lot of movies with no distribution."

The mogul dragged his heels on the "Thumbsucker" deal, he admits, because in reality he would like to have released the movie himself. There are few controls built into a distribution deal. You can ask for minimum screens and P&A, but you can't guarantee theatrical success.

Yari isn't thrilled by how his films have performed so far. Most distributors, he finds, use the domestic release as a test run that determines how much to spend on the video. "The more a distributor is invested in a project," he says, "the more attention they pay to it. We want to make a strong deal on 'Thumbsucker.' This is not one that we can let go very easily. It's not just another film a distributor takes a shot at."

As Yari realizes, if he creates his own distribution outfit, then he will get to keep the pot of gold that goes to the distributor when a movie hits big. He is currently finalizing a new video label to go out through a studio, which he plans to announce in a few weeks, and then, says Yari, "the next step for us is domestic theatrical, having the ability to release a film on 400-500 screens."

Yari is "very much aware" of the pitfalls of starting a distribution company. It's expensive. But, he insists, "For $1-2 million in overhead, you can manage a small distribution company." And it's also risky. He's familiar with the graveyard of releasing companies: The Cannon Group, DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, Vestron Releasing, Avco-Embassy, Cinecom, Savoy, Studio One, Orion, Destination and Shooting Gallery. And the fact that Yari doesn't possess an existing library, which would ensure cash flow, further raises the bar.

Yari explored partnering with Samuel Goldwyn Films and Roadside Attractions in their IDP distribution partnership, but he rejected that option. "I came to the conclusion that I should build from the inside," he says. "Why not do it ourselves, if we have the internal product to support the infrastructure, and we can acquire like everyone else? Distribution works well with a volume of pictures. The pitfall is when producers get into distribution who don't have enough films."

The market has changed in his favor, Yari contends. "The domestic distributors have migrated toward smaller slates per year and bigger pictures, so there's more room for smaller independent films the studios don't want to finance, and more distribution slots available."

Having reached the threshold of 12-15 films a year, Yari suggests, self-distribution makes sense. If one out of 10 movies break out, why not roll the dice? "If you roll enough times," he says, "your chances are better of rolling a double six or a double five."

In a world in which the multinational distributors stand toe to toe with the mighty theater chains to get their rightful share of the gross -- Newmarket Films had to sue Regal over its returns on "The Passion of the Christ" -- many industry players wonder how Yari can pull off distribution himself. He has already faced his share of financing nightmares, including one that hit "Chumscrubber," which threatened to shut down several times for lack of funds, according to sources close to the production.

The bottom line is -- even though Yari might be able to cut his risk by covering his budgets from international presales -- going into distribution adds enormous marketing costs and overhead. "Do it yourself," says Newmarket president Bob Berney, "and you'll know how hard it is. It's not for the faint-hearted."

Anne Thompson can be reached at athompson@hollywoodreporter.com