Making Every House an Art House
IFC Benefits From Same-Day Release of Indie Films. But Does An Independent Theater?
By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld -- Multichannel News, 5/6/2007 6:00:00 PM MT
Only about 200 art house cinemas, where independently produced films typically appear, are sprinkled around major cities, by best guess timates.
Meanwhile, in the past year, millions of homes became art houses.
Each month, two new low-budget art films are released to these homes at the same time they begin to appear in the cinemas. For the theaters, the program is called “IFC First Take.” For TV viewers, it's called “IFC in Theaters.”
And, unlike the fears of big movie studios that the same-day appearance of films on home video would keep movie fans from going to the theater, creating a national art-house system may well prove to be a market-expanding move for independent producers. For art-house cinemas, it may be a different story.
That millions of new home theaters will benefit independent producers is the contention of Rainbow Media CEO Josh Sapan. His Independent Film Channel has for the past 15 months teamed up with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Insight Communications and other cable operators to create an every-house-is-an-art-house marketplace using on-demand technology.
| First Take, Best Take | ||
|---|---|---|
| Box-office receipts for independent films shown in art houses at the same time they were shown on cable and satellite via IFC. | ||
| Movie | Release Date | Total Gross |
| Russian Dolls | 5/10/2006 | $326,095 |
| An Unreasonable Man | 1/31/2007 | $155,816 |
| Three Times | 4/28/2006 | $151,922 |
| I Am a Sex Addict | 4/7/2006 | $115,694 |
| Darshan, The Embrace | 7/28/2006 | $66,032 |
| Family Law | 12/6/2006 | $38,605 |
| Princesas | 8/23/2006 | $29,472 |
| Exterminating Angels | 3/7/2007 | $22,490 |
| Close to Home | 2/16/2007 | $20,464 |
| Matthew Barney: No Restraint | 12/20/2006 | $16,136 |
| Private Fears in Public Places | 11/24/2006 | $14,391 |
| Wild Tigers I Have Known | 2/28/2007 | $9,946 |
| Solo Con Tu Pareja | 9/20/2006 | $9,915 |
| Requiem | 10/20/2006 | $9,600 |
| Coastlines | 5/31/2006 | $7,883 |
| Source: Nash Information Services |
||
“We've always said that on-demand needed to be about more than just being just another DVR. It needed to present content that wasn't available on linear television,” said Page Thompson, senior vice president and general manager of video services for Comcast, which provides on-demand programming to 12.7 million customers. “And we've always also been advocating shorter windows for movies” than the traditional 45 days after release on DVD.
The first IFC in Theaters release was a Spike Lee satire, CSA: The Confederate States of America, that played out documentary-style what would have happened if the South had won the Civil War. And from there it went on, through American Gun, I Am A Sex Addict, the Taiwanese love story Three Times, and on.
One generally unknown film, called Unknown, managed to pull in 150,000 viewings. Comcast gave its customers a free preview of several minutes of the movie and generated 87,000 purchases, at $5.99 each.
With about 15 million households able at that point to access the IFC In Theatres library, that's the equivalent of a 1 rating for broadly distributed cable programming services, as far as Rainbow is concerned. And, in this case, each viewing ostensibly costs $5.99, although in some cases, like in Cablevision Systems markets, subscribers get to watch all the in-theater films they want for a flat fee of $4.95 a month.
For the independent film producer, the $5.99-a-shot or $4.95-per-month pricing is not the same as when someone walks into a theater and buys a ticket. Even a matinee now pulls in $8 a ducat. And in the TV world, a family of five can watch a single showing of a movie for the six bucks, instead of $40.
“I think it will definitely hurt the theaters, because why go out to the movies if you can watch something at home?” Barbara Selznick, an associate professor in the Department of Media Arts at the University of Arizona and author of the 2001 history, Sure Seaters: The Emergence of Art House Cinema.
“More and more we're becoming a society where we watch things in our house,” she said. “I can see how IFC is benefitting, but I am not sure what it will do for the film theaters.”
For IFC, the first 13 months worth of films generated 1 million viewings. At an average price of $5, that's only $5 million. Not a lot of money. For a big studio, that would be a lousy weekend for a single movie.
But for independent producers this is revenue they've never had before, IFC and Comcast contend.
“For an independent film, those are very strong numbers. In fact, on many films we're generating revenues that are fairly comparable if not greater than the theatrical release of the film,” Comcast's Thompson said.
That could, over time, help motivate the production of more independent films. At this point, that producer can reach 40 million homes. IFC in Theaters is now distributed through Comcast, Cablevision, Time Warner, Cox Communications, Insight Communications and DirecTV.
After all, a typical independent film only generates about $1 million in revenue, Sapan said.
The on-demand viewing can spur word of mouth that will drive indie fans to see the film in theaters, according to Jonathan Sehring, president of IFC Entertainment. “For the art house crowd, that is critical,” he said.
That is hard to track, however. “Most of our audience doesn't seem to know they're day-and-date films, because they're not heavily promoted as that; and we don't promote them that way,” said Jeff Yanc, program director at The Loft Cinema in Tucson, Ariz. Most of the time, he notes, IFC doesn't take out any local ads to promote a First Take film; and he relies wholly on his own promotional efforts.
His way of getting people to come to the theater instead of staying at home watching the same film at the same time on cable? Build a communal experience around the topic of the film.
This month, The Loft was presenting the indie film An Unreasonable Man, about activist Ralph Nader. The art house invited a local Nader group to come view the field and audience to discuss issues raised in the film, after a showing. In the lobby, signed copies of Seventeen Traditions, the Nader biography, were on sale.
Based on research and two markets where it is testing the release of movies on the same day as they appear on DVDs, Comcast believes same-day releases do not hurt theater-going.
“The audience that is going to see the films in the theaters is going to go anyway. They're there for the theatrical event; they're there for the big screen,” said Thompson.
Yanc is not convinced, though of the converse, that showing independent films on cable or satellite at the same time they appear in theaters will actually increase his ticket sales. Neither is Selznick.
“It's possible that this IFC plan will allow us to see more” independent films in theaters, said Selznick. “But in the long run I'm not sure about that. Especially if the theaters end up going out [of business], because people are staying home and watching cable.”
The success of cable and satellite may in fact be at the expense of theatrical showings, she says, around the world. Theaters overseas look to the box office take in the United States to judge whether to take a film, she notes. Cable and satellite receipts don't count.
But the count can be significant to film producers working on a string. Picking up 150,000 viewings, like the amnesiacs-in-the-chemical-warehouse suspense film Unknown generated, is not chicken feed, for them. If it's all at $5.99 a showing, that's $900,000 of found money.
On-demand technology, Sapan says, “could rather fundamentally change independent film distribution, but also independent film production.''
The 1-million viewings is about three times what Sapan had expected, going in. “It makes my mouth drop,” he said. “You don't know until you do it, whether [what you believe] is true or it's B.S.”
But that hasn't rippled through to The Loft, at least. “The films that we've booked through IFC, that were day and date, haven't had much of an impact on the box office,” Yanc said.
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