That’s an interesting idea and since vlc is even able to play files that are still downloading I guess it could also stream a screen grab file that is just temporary?

Do you know how to forward ports?

I don’t see how this would work with additional network setup if you want to stream to devices outside your LAN. You’d need to at least set up port forwarding on your router to allow your friends to access your stream, and then you’d still be limited by the upload rate of your local network, which might not be fast enough depending on the movie quality. A centralized version of this, where the movie resides on some server that you all “download” the movie from would be more reliable, but I don’t know of any from the top of my head that would do the trick.

EDIT: now that i think of it, w2g.tv allows streaming any movie file from any server via direct link to file. So if you figure out any sort of hoster where you can upload the movie, or if you find a streaming platform that hosts a direct .mp4 file already, you can copy & paste that into a w2g lobby, invite your friends, and start watching.