This has been an amazing week.
Our first HDNet Films day and date movie, Enron – The Smartest Guys in the Room was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Documentary Category! How cool is that !
This movie, which premiered in theaters (mostly Landmark and independent screens) and on HDNet Movies the same day, grossed 4mm plus in theaters to make it the 14th largest grossing doc of all time. Not too shabby !!! My only regret about Enron ? Is that we didnt have Magnolia Home Entertainment in place to distribute the DVD on the same day the movie was released. Although the release of the DVD has done incredibly well, reaching #5 on the Amazon top seller list, we left a ton of money on the table by not being able to release it on the same day it was released in theaters and on HDNet Movies.
It probably cost us hundred of thousands of units in sales, if not more. The number of DVDs of Enron we are selling now, just from our Landmark Theaters suggest that the sell through to people seeing the film would have been enormous. The sell through from all the excitement of the release, particularly in markets where we didnt show the film, would have been great.
Then we would have gotten a new bump from the Oscar nomination this week. And then another bump for winning the WGA Award for Best Documentary. Great job Alex. We live and learn.I cant wait to see the Hunter S Thompson documentary Alex is currently doing for us, and the Herbie Hancock Movie is increcible. The duet with Herbieand Christina Aquillar will be featured in the Grammys !
The bigger moral of the story is that when you have amazing people creating amazing films, like Alex Gibney and Enron, although people may choose to invest in different ways to watch each movie, they will want to watch it, and that is always what matters.
Which is exactly why we are thrilled about the Magnolia Pictures release of “The Worlds Fastest Indian“. This is a great family movie that will have you walking out of the theater laughing and cheering, whether you are 10, 20, 30, 40 or 80 years old. Anthony Hopkins gives an amazing performance that he called his favorite of any movie he has done. Weare so fired up about it, we decided to buy an ad in the Super Bowl for it !
The movie opens today. So go see it. The commercial will be shown in the third quarter (lets hope its a close gamein the 3rd quarter and the Steelers blow them out and pull away in the 4th !)
And of course there is no doubt everyone will let me know what they think about all of the above !