Evaluation task 3- Who would distribute my product ?

Our thriller is called “Mistress”. Personally I believe that our thriller has a good story-line, a good plot and I think the idea behind it is very good. At first I would have chosen a big name like Warner Brothers or Paramount. As they have enough money to distribute and market our movie to a wide range of people all over the world and that would make us more known. The money would also help us increase the quality of the thriller.

                However our thriller is very low budget as we do have to set up from scratch and we have a limited amount of space and we are restricted to a limited amount of shots because we have a limited amount of cameras and it will be very time consuming for us to do all possible shot angles and time is what we do not have. Also we are using low quality props as it would be too expensive to get the more realistic ones.

                As well as that we are also using unknown actors who do not have a fan base already so it is not likely that warner brothers would want to distribute our movie because they will be looking for a movie that has elements that would assure success for example more popular actors like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Unfortunately we cannot offer those two because we are running a low budget thriller. Also my group is not known so we don’t have previous movies that were successful that we could use to argue that our thriller will be successful. So we do not have enough facts that will assure that these companies will make a profit. So because they do not want to make a loss they would be quite discouraged from investing/distributing our movie.

                Also we cannot offer any other merchandise apart from DVDs which would bring additional revenue for Warner Brothers or Paramount so we do not have any post selling elements. This means the main source of revenue for us and for the production company would be just the movie. And the movie itself is not assured to bring in a large amount of revenue So this might discourage Warner Brothers and Paramount even more. Also our thriller is based in Britain. However Most if not all Warner Brothers and Paramount Films are based in America and more exotic/tropical countries.

                To now be more realistic I believe that if anyone would distribute our thriller it would either be Vertigo or BBC. Reasons being because Vertigo and BBC deal more with British based movies as they are European production companies. They also deal with the production of lower budget movies and only a small number of the movies they’ve distributed have been shot in exotic locations away from the UK.  And although it is still a long shot their history show that they have been giving unknown writers a chance by distributing movies with very little fan base which eventually became successful for example the movie “Bend it like Beckham.”  That movie was successful however most of the actors were unknown and it had a very little fan base so it was more or less a gamble. However if I wanted to link a movie that was like ours I would say the movie “Monsters” which was produced and distributed by vertigo. It was a success even though it was directed and written by a first time director named Gareth Edwards. He did not have an existing fanbase and it was his first-time and even as it was not guaranteed that his movie would be a success vertigo still distributed it and it generated £348,577 (5^th December 2010) in its opening weekend in the UK and it was distributed in different cinemas as it was showing on 164 screens. And 2 weeks later (19^th December 2010) it had generated £847,442 so it had gone up by more than double  in 2 weeks  and it had a budget of $800,000  and like ours that is a low budget movie compared to other. Although the movie was distributed first in USA (31^st October 2010) it was only distributed on 3 screens in its first weekend of distributed and therefor only generated $20,508 in its first weekend so it did not generate as much money as it did in the UK but that could be because it was not distributed in as many cinemas as it was in the UK but by the 26^th of December it had generated $237,301 which was still not as much as was made in the UK but that too is because it was not distributed on as many screens. By 2011 the film had won an award from the academy of science fiction, fantasy and horror films for the Best international film. This movie ended up very successful and we hope to get the same recognition as we are coming from the same type of background as the director. Unfortunately Vertigo and BBC are not as successful and wealthy as Warner Brothers and Paramount but their distribution would have a big effect on our movie.

Vertigo have distributed about 47 different movies and they have done this via DVDs and through the use of UK based Cinemas. Vertigo Films is a UK Film and Distribution company founded in 2002 by Allan Niblo and James Richardson. The following year Rupert Preston and Nick Love joined and became partners. The company’s mission is to create and distribute commercially driven independent cinema and since inception it has produced 28 films and distributed a further 35. The Films span a range of genres and audience taste and include the box office smash hit Streetdance 3D, the biggest independent UK DVD of all time The Football Factory, the multi award winning Monsters, Vertigo co-production Ajami (nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film), smash hit family film Horrid Henry The Movie, audience favourite The Sweeney, and the hottest director of the moment, Nicolas Winding Refn's first English-language film, Bronson. In 2013 Vertigo has eight films in production including Pudsey The Movie – a co-production with Simon Cowell’s company Syco, Walking on Sunshine – a feel good musical in partnership with IM Global and Monsters:The Dark Continent from hot new director Tom Green. Championing new talent has been key to Vertigo Film’s production strategy and it continues to pride itself on being at the forefront of breaking new talent, including Tom Hardy (Bronson), Scoot McNairy (Monsters), Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist), Gareth Edwards (Monsters), Paul Andrew Williams (London to Brighton), Ben Gregor (All Stars) and Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson).

Monsters premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival, as part of the SX Fantastic screenings, on 13 March 2010. On 17 March, Magnet Releasing acquired the rights for the North American distribution. In May, the film was screened at the Cannes Film Market. Monsters had its UK premiere as part of the 64th Edinburgh International Film Festival, on 18 June 2010. The Los Angeles Film Festival also held two screenings, part of the Summer Showcase, on 23 and 26 June. The film's theatrical release took place in Russia on 30 September, distributed by Volgafilm. Magnolia Pictures released Monsters in US theatres on 29 October 2010. The Canadian theatrical release was on 5 November, after DFilms acquired the rights on 24 May 2010.

                So in conclusion I believe  BBC and Vertigo will distribute our movie I chose them both because they are not that wealthy and we would need more than one source of distribution for marketing.