Word: swanberg
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Director Joe Swanberg went to bed in Austin, Texas, last Friday evening excited about the world premiere of his new movie, Alexander the Last, the following night at the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival. But by the time he woke up - still more than 12 hours ahead of the debut - his inbox was already flooded with e-mails from colleagues in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, congratulating him on the movie they had just finished watching and the reviews they had read in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and the New Yorker. Within a single...
...Swanberg's breakthrough with Alexander the Last was largely a result of a nationwide video-on-demand venture undertaken by distributor IFC Films. For several years now, the studio has programmed two separate on-demand initiatives that can be accessed by home viewers across the U.S. via their cable system's movies-on-demand platform. One venture, IFC in Theaters, reaches 55 million U.S. households, offering viewers the chance to buy and stream movies currently in limited theatrical release. Festival Direct, meanwhile, offers 37 million households six films a month that the studio has picked up from film festivals around...
...many filmmakers say the disadvantage of those distribution plans is that they fail to generate the press and word of mouth that accompany even a limited theatrical release. "I think it's gotten to the point where distribution companies are organizing theatrical screenings solely to generate reviews," Swanberg says. "It creates a scenario where studios are basically paying for these reviews, taking a huge loss on one or two weeks of poorly marketed screenings just to get the New York Times and Los Angeles Times reviews...
...with Alexander the Last, Swanberg and IFC Films set out to see if they could bridge this gulf. Under the old model, Swanberg would have taken the film to festivals to drum up interest among distributors and then waited a year or longer for a theatrical campaign to reach major cities. A few months later, the DVD would hit shelves in smaller markets. But with Alexander the Last, which opened in every major market via Festival Direct at midnight on Saturday - along with four other South by Southwest titles - Swanberg says he's eliminated the window between his festival screening...
...more filmmakers consider unorthodox release strategies - Wayne Wang premiered The Princess of Nebraska last year on YouTube, and Soderbergh agreed to a simultaneous video-on-demand release for his Cannes selection Che - Swanberg says it's the media's acceptance of these nontheatrical debuts that has the potential to alter the economics of the independent film industry. "It's so palpable for me to remember that frustration I felt growing up in the suburbs of Chicago," he says. "I remember reading Film Comment and reading about these movies I really couldn't see because they never came to the theaters...