Early on in “The Substance,” the physique horror movie starring Demi Moore that has been nominated for 5 Academy Awards, Dennis Quaid grotesquely consumes an infinite quantity of peel-and-eat shrimp whereas firing Ms. Moore’s character for the crime of turning 50. Shells fly and sweat collects on his higher lip whereas he gesticulates wildly with a crustacean wobbling in his fingertips.

It was this scene that satisfied Efe Cakarel, the chief government of the area of interest streaming service Mubi, that he had to purchase the audacious horror movie. The film had been left for lifeless by Common Footage after the director, Coralie Fargeat, refused to recut it to executives’ tastes.

“This was one thing extremely distinctive,” Mr. Cakarel stated. “This was going to be our first world acquisition. I had by no means been this certain about something.”

What adopted was a $12 million buy for the worldwide rights to the movie, and a uncommon success story in the course of the doom-and-gloom occasions of the Hollywood movie enterprise. “The Substance” has now earned over $82 million worldwide and is up for finest image and finest director, and Ms. Moore is the heavy favourite to win finest actress at this weekend’s Academy Awards. And it has catapulted Mubi, as soon as an organization misplaced within the morass of innocuous four-letter phrase streaming companies, into an actual Hollywood participant for the primary time.

The corporate has made the leap with an uncommon enterprise mannequin. Subscribers to the service, which begins at $14.99, get a curated number of unbiased movies, from classics to new releases. Subscribers to the next tier, the $19.99 Mubi Go, additionally get a weekly ticket to a theater in the US, Britain or Germany. The corporate, which is predicated in London and has 400 staff worldwide, declined to disclose how many individuals pay for the service however stated 16 million folks had registered on the positioning.

“In some way they’ve managed to drag off the inconceivable,” Eric Fellner, producer of “The Substance,” stated about Mubi. The corporate, he stated, was in a position to get “an enormous viewers globally to come back out and watch it — which isn’t any small feat lately — and nonetheless find yourself with a premium piece of labor for his or her members.”

For Mr. Cakarel, a 48-year-old Turkish entrepreneur with an engineering diploma from the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise and an M.B.A. from Stanford, this was the plan all alongside.

He based the corporate in 2007 — the identical yr that Netflix began streaming films and tv reveals — as a service for film lovers. The objective was to help the theatrical moviegoing expertise and curate high-end movies on its service. Initially referred to as the Auteurs, the service started by providing subscribers a brand new movie a day, with every film staying on the service for 30 days. However Mr. Cakarel didn’t need simply any movie. He was desirous about solely the perfect movies from essentially the most acclaimed filmmakers.

“Mubi, from Day 1, has at all times been actually opinionated about cinema,” he stated.

It took years to get any of the Hollywood studios to purchase into his concept.

“I might go to a significant studio, and I might say, ‘These are the 32 titles that I want to get,’” Mr. Cakarel stated. “They might say: ‘No, this isn’t how this enterprise works. In the event you’re getting these titles, you have to additionally get these titles.’”

“They might actually throw me out of their places of work,” he added.

Then in 2015, each Sony and Paramount agreed to present Mubi movies for its subscribers in Britain. In 2017, the corporate signed its first multiyear, multiterritory streaming cope with Common Footage, giving Mubi entry internationally to movies in its library like “A Severe Man,” by Joel and Ethan Coen; “Being John Malkovich,” by Spike Jonze; “Double Indemnity” from Billy Wilder; and a handful of movies from Alfred Hitchcock.

In 2016, the corporate began distributing films in theaters in choose markets, ramping up in 2022 with movies together with Charlotte Wells’s “Aftersun,” which it launched in Britain, Latin America and Germany, and Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” which it launched in the identical territories.

In 2022, Mr. Cakarel said he spent an “irrational amount” to amass the U.S. and British theatrical rights to Park Chan-Wook’s “Choice to Depart,” which grew to become the Korean filmmaker’s highest grossing film in the US. Its function “The Lady With the Needle” is a nominee within the academy’s finest worldwide movie class.

“It’s been about regular incremental progress over time,” stated Jason Ropell, Mubi’s chief content material officer. “Hiring the appropriate folks. Elevating cash. All of that has occurred incrementally. We have been prepared when this chance arose.”

The chance to leap on “The Substance” arose after Common Footage advised Ms. Fargeat that it could not launch the movie in its present kind, which had been within the works for almost 5 years, however she was allowed to buy it elsewhere.

“Nobody was taking my calls anymore,” she stated on the Santa Barbara Worldwide Movie Pageant this month. “Everybody thought my film was lifeless.”

However she entered the film within the Cannes Movie Pageant, which accepted it into its 2024 competitors.

Mr. Cakarel had been monitoring Ms. Fargeat’s work after her 2017 movie, “Revenge,” carried out properly with Mubi audiences. Whereas vacationing in Vietnam, he noticed the announcement of the Cannes lineup; reached out to Working Title, the producers behind the movie; and days later was sitting in a screening room in London watching the film.

“I left the screening room and was punching partitions from pleasure,” he stated. “I hadn’t seen something like this in a very long time.”

Mr. Cakarel outbid the guy indie distributor Neon and acquired the worldwide rights to “The Substance” forward of its Cannes debut. The movie has since reached heights that maybe solely Ms. Fargeat thought attainable.

When Ms. Moore received the perfect actress award on the Display Actors Guild awards on Sunday, she thanked Mr. Cakarel. “I believe because of the reception of this movie, different daring authentic movies will probably be made,” Mr. Cakarel stated.

This yr, the corporate purchased the U.S. rights to the Hollywood satire “Lurker,” one of many few acquisitions at this winter’s Sundance Movie Pageant. And it not too long ago introduced the acquisition of the North American rights to “The Historical past of Sound,” a homosexual romance movie starring Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal.

“The platform itself is a fan favourite with filmmakers,” stated the WME Impartial agent Will Maxfield, who bought Ira Sachs’s “Passages” to the corporate in 2023 and negotiated the “Lurker” cope with Mubi at Sundance. “And so they have been constructing their model as a filmmaker-friendly distributor.”

The streamer is venturing into authentic productions for the primary time this yr with three movies, Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” a virtually $20 million heist movie starring Mr. O’Connor; Jim Jarmusch’s “Father, Mom, Sister, Brother,” starring Cate Blanchett and Adam Driver; and “Rosebush Pruning,” with Riley Keough and Elle Fanning. Mubi remains to be tiny in contrast with different streaming companies, however it intends to launch some 20 movies this yr theatrically — a welcome addition to the unbiased movie area that has been struggling to attach with moviegoers.

“The previous 18 years have been actually good,” Mr. Cakarel stated. “The following 18 years are going to be unbelievable. I really feel prefer it’s Day 1. All the pieces is coming collectively.”