How is that for self promotion and being a shill ?
Selling is part of the job. Any job. If you want to get good results, you better believe in your product. I certainly believe in Steven Soderbergh. I believe in joanna and jason at HDNetFilims.
I believe in the management of Landmark Theaters. I believe in my partners at 2929, HDNet, Magnolia. the Mavs, I could go on and on.
When any of them is criticized, I am quick to try to learn from the critique, but also quick to defend. This blog has a long history of standing up for many of the above companies.
The point in all this is to emphasize my shock in reading EVERY SINGLE COMMENT about the day and date release strategy of Bubble and the many films we will release this way behind it.
Go through every article. Hollywood Producers, Directors, Theater owners from big chains and honchos from theater trade organizations.
NOT A SINGLE PERSON. NOT ONE stood up and said, “screw him, our product is great. We dont care what he does”. Not a single person said “It could hurt our business, but we will just have to work harder to bring people in to our theaters”. Not a single person said, “It will make us have to work harder and create a better value and experience for our customer”
THe overriding majority said the theater business needed protection. They needed windows.
No one even remotely associated with the industry even attempted to spin the situation. No one attempted to leverage the publicity (except for us of course) to their advantage. No one used it as a platform to say a single solitary positive word about theaters and the theater going experience.
They stood up and indirectly said….OUR PRODUCT SUCKS WE CANT SURVIVE WITHOUT HELP.
My goodness. Never in my 20 plus years of investing in and running businesses have i seen this happen. There always was someone who wouldtry to turnthe situation into positive press.
Not this time. I really believe this is a business first. The first time and industry basically admitted that a single step by content producers would, not could, would put them out of business.
Thats pretty damn stupid if you ask me. Every major movie studio head should be thinking to themselves….”Self, if i compress windows to nothing, they are going to give up. I can then walk in and buy those screens for pennies on the dollar. Its happened to them before, it will happen again. Then i can promote my own films in a way that maximizes our distribution and return. Heck, if i sell enough DVDs in the theaters, i can give away the popcorn !. Good thinking self”
Will the theater biz just give up ? Who knows.
Personally, as I wrote, we know that the theater going experience has to improve. Thats a problem for them. Tous at Landmark, thats an opportunity.
As in most industries, change is difficult to accept. So while some theaters wont be able to respond and will die, hopefully Landmark will continue to grow and take up the slack for them.
Landmark isnt perfect, but theater by theater, we are working to make it better. Its a challenge we are excited by. Slowly but surely you will see us add innovations that will improve the experience and value.
We have offered free soundtrack downloads to a movie. We are working on offering Ipod/speaker connectivity from each seat. There are more things behind that. Theaters can increase the value we offer customers considerably through digital offerings. We can make movie going a great experience, that is fun and fulfilling to movie fans. But we have to be innovative to do it. We have to know what business we are in.
If you are a film fan, hopefully you will go to a theater showing Bubble starting on friday (even if its a non landmark theater. And thank the manager of the theater for having the balls to go against the rest of the industry.) Its a film for people who love independent film.
The reviews have been all over the place, but Rotten Tomatoes has it 63pct fresh. Epert and Ropert called it a Masterpiece. A.O Scott and others wrote positively about it.
See it for yourself. Whereever you will have the most fun watching . Of course, i think its most fun at a theater, after a good dinner, with friends. However you see it, let me know what you think