Saturday, September 29, 2007

Things don't always work out / Weirdsville


I was contacted by a distributor named Equinoxe about playing a Canadian film called Weirdsville. Apparently it is aimed at the student type market. It stars a couple somewhat well-known guys, Wes Bentley who was in American Beauty and Scott Speedman who was in the Underworld movies and Felicity. The trailer made it look like a quirky black comedy, I was looking forward to seeing it. It's about a couple of stoners who try to hide the body of a woman who overdosed, involves Satan worshippers as well.




I was going to play it as it looked interesting and I try to support Canadian films when I can.




However playing it would have been a bit of a risk. The release date is Oct 5th so I would have had to commit to the movie for that week without knowing what else might have been available. There hasn't been a lot of promotion and when they contacted me there wasn't a lot of time left before it was supposed to come out. Playing a movie that hasn't been promoted enough is a guarantee of an empty theatre. They did send me a trailer which a few of you may have seen, it played in front of a couple shows of Hairspray. They also sent me some posters. The posters were a clue I might not want to play the film. They were smaller than the standard movie poster size. It may not seem like a big deal but it signals a low promotion budget to me.




The sticking point was the admission price. This would have been a first run showing which normally carries a higher admission price. However I tried charging $7.50 for a first run movie called Paper Clips once and it didn't work very well. Even through I tried to make it clear as possible the price was different for Paper Clips only. I still had people thinking we had raised our prices for all movies. I also had people showing up expecting to pay $4.25. As a result I don't want to try that again so I told Equinoxe I would only charge our usual $4.24.




Equinoxe decided they couldn't open the film at $4.24 so we won't be playing it. I pulled the trailer and posters.


I think they probably shot themselves in the foot. Unless the film does well in the larger cities or the Hyland picks it up it probably won't play in theaters anywhere in London now.


Who knows maybe we'll end up playing it later if it does get some press, but I doubt it.




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to say, that while i understand you're buisness conflicts with this type of 'risk' i don't understand why you say u support Canadian film. You don't. They'r always low budget and will always need help from theatr owners likee yourself to reach an audience. 'If you buid it they will come'. If you would help push this movie out there it will fly on its own. Cult classics run forever

WesternFilm said...

A couple things. I was willing to play the film but at my usual price of $4.24. It was the distributor that didn't want to play the film at that price. I tried raising the price to $7.50 for a first run film once and it backfired with many people thinking we were raising all our prices.

A couple other things.

Western Film can only tell people what we are playing, we can't really make them want to see it. People won't see a movie they haven't 'heard' of anymore.

Cult classics may run forever but on DVD these days. That doesn't help movie theatres.