Thrillerwork- Distribution

Distribution


Warner Bros wouldn't distribute our film as we are first time film makers with no previous experience and there is virtually no budget behind the film. So we decided to use Vertigo Films who are a British production and distribution company who have produced and distributed a crime revenge thriller called WΔZ with Tom Hardy and Selma Blair about a female killer. This film is similar to our film therefore Vertigo is more likely to distribute our film. We decided if Vertigo accepted our film, we would have to distribute it through promotion and other forms of marketing the film. Possibly, one of the best ways of promoting a film is through word of mouth hype and to create the hype, our film would be played in around 60 cinemas for free for a limited time and ,through word of mouth, help promote our film. People would then naturally become excited at the prospect of seeing a free film due to the prices of seeing a film these days. However, we would still get a budget as the cinemas would have to pay us to show the film. The prospect of the free film would entice more people to see our film and with the film showing at cinemas spread over Britain, the film’s popularity would hopefully grow. 

 Other ways of promoting our film were to have the posters on the sides of buses or on the Underground. These methods of promotion are typically reserved for films that are already known to be successful so advertising them in this way, will hopefully persuade people to research and watch the film as they believe it will be a competitor with summer blockbusters. Once we have a certain budget, we would probably need to distribute our film further than the UK. Again, we wouldn’t be able to give our film directly to America as it has only been successful in one country. Therefore, we will attempt to distribute our film through Europe. We knew that it was unlikely a European company would pick up our film straight up, so we plan to take our film to different European film festivals using part of the budget made on UK releases through DVD’s and TV releases. Film festivals we intended to release our film at included Berlin Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival where small films such as Antichrist and Only Lovers Left Alive which have all been successful in box office and reception. We planned on promoting our film here in the hope a European film company such as Pathé would pick up our film and wish to distribute it through Europe if we sold the distribution rights to them. Pathé, who are well-known distribution company of thrillers, having distributed films such as Trance, Memento, Centurion and Crash. We later hope that should any American companies see the success of our film in the UK and through Europe, an American company (maybe not Warner Bros but a small studio like Summit Entertainment) would offer to buy the rights to the film and would distribute the film through America and maybe internationally with a portion of the box office money being passed to us.