SimultaneousDistribution Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A Landmark Business, moderated by indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez, brought together representatives from all aspects of Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's vertically integrated filmmaking factory, now called Wagner/Cuban Companies: Ted Mundorff, film buyer for Landmark Theaters; Tom Quinn, acquisition exec for Magnolia Pictures; Eammon Bowles, President of Magnolia; Elizabeth Glass, buyer for HD Net and HDNet Movies; Bill Banowsky, head of the new distribution initiative, Truly Indie; and Wagner himself, who easily stole the show by spouting his party's platform. Wagner's rhetoric was probably pre-packaged but undeniably convincing nonetheless.

Wagner/Cuban's various distribution revolutions were the order of the day. In all the hype surrounding the conglomerate's groundbreaking day/date strategy, their equally ballsy Truly Indie program has been somewhat overlooked. Banowsky described it as a "producer empowered distribution alternative." The concept came from the exhibition sector: Landmark shows a couple hundred films on its 300 screens a year, but half of its profits come from about 20 titles. In fact, the bottom 50-70 films, as Banowsky explained it, actually lose money for the chain. So the various sectors of the company got together and came up with Truly Indie, which essentially allows producers to pay a single fee to rent space at a Landmark Theater, and simultaneously hire Truly Indie to market and promote their film. It's sort of a second (last?) chance, for filmmakers who, say,  come off the festival circuit without a viable theatrical option. Truly Indie will allow such filmmakers to buy themselves a brief theatrical run, and still have the opportunity to cash in on the DVD rights. Wagner elaborates on the mission:

"We should be listening to the voice of independent cinema. I'd go to fests like this one [and hear filmmakers say], "I'm shut out of the system!" So what we're trying to do is open up the system. If you believe in your product, you should have a chance to release it."

The conversation soon, predictably, turned to day/date, and the company men are, rightfully, defensive. Here's where the Wagner quips really start to heat up. Some excerpts after the jump.

 

The most shocking moment of Sunday night's Oscar ceremony came early in the evening, long before Three 6 Mafia or Crash scored their twin victories for mediocrity. An hour or so after losing the night's first award to George Clooney, Jake Gyllenhaal trotted out on stage to ostensibly announce one of the night's many disposable montages. "They're called epics," he near-monotoned. "Extravaganzas. Spectacles." With that last one, Jake's voice took an unexpected up-turn. He went on to list a few (oddly amalgamated for mass cross-generational appeal) examples of the genre in question – "West Side Story. Star Wars. Ben-Hur." – before delivering the kicker: "You can't properly watch these on a television set, and good luck trying to enjoy them on a portable DVD." Gyllenhaal punctuated that embarrassingly over-scripted slice of Academy propaganda with a desperate, self-referential giggle – a composure break that lasted long enough for an insert shot of Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams, Gyllenhaal's Brokeback Mountain co-stars, just two members of what sounded like a large chunk of the audience laughing along with him. It was rather amazing, a pure, bumbling moment of transparency that neatly struck down whatever was left of Sid Gannis' sad house of cards. The new takeaway for the evening: If Hollywood can't take its own last-ditch propaganda seriously, how can we?

 

Steven Soderbergh – who shot to fame 17 years ago, when sex, lies and videotape took the 1989 Sundance Film Festival by storm – won a Best Director Oscar for Traffic and immediately used his newfound Hollywood clout to cast George Clooney in a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. That didn't turn out so great, and some of us – well, okay, probably just me – spent one or two sleepless nights worrying about Steven Soderbergh's career. Though he'd surely never speak to it, perhaps Soderbergh was worried, too, because after the lackluster reception to 2004's Ocean's 12, he went out looking for a kick in the ass. So let's get the business part out of the way: Bubble is the first of six films that the director plans to make, on high def video at a budget of about $250,000 each, for Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment. 2929, in turn, plans to release all six films on DVD, in theaters, and on HD Net cable – simultaneously. Going in, it's hard to brush off the worry that the deal – and, particularly, its emphasis on technology and speed – might dictate, or at least influence, the way Soderbergh approaches his form and content. What's immediately striking about Bubble, however, is its apparent lack of desire to conform to ... anything. Bubble is not a commercial film, and as such, it in some ways seems like the ideal test case for 2929's simultaneous distribution gambit. If there's any film in today's marketplace that needs to blow its wad all at once to get noticed, it's this.