Distribution
Justin Benson: Resolution, our first movie, was made completely in a vacuum with us not knowing anyone or anything. Somehow it got into the Tribeca Film Festival. The lore is it was actually in a garbage can at one point, and someone thought the rejection notes were interesting. And then somehow it got into the festival. And we were lucky enough to sell to Tribeca Film, and they were great. We had a great relationship.
I’ll fast forward. Spring was made roughly the same way. No pre-buys. It somehow got into the Toronto Film Festival. It sold. We found a distributor at Drafthouse Films and lots of other distributors all around the world. The Endless, we found a financier on that one, but again, we just went and made it, somehow got into a big film festival and it sold at the film festival.
Synchronic was a little bit different.
Aaron Moorhead: In this case, because it’s got a slightly larger budget, rightfully so, the financier wanted to try to guarantee some of the investment up front. And so there was a domestic and partial international presale, just based on the script and the actors. Normally when you make a movie, your premiere night is nerve-wracking, because if nobody bids on it, nobody will ever see your movie. It’s really scary.
So knowing that your film has distribution in advance is an incredible relief. But I don’t think it is very common for anything that doesn’t have movie stars. I could be wrong — maybe it’s dierent for super celebrity directors — but I’m pretty sure foreign and domestic presales only really exist based o of movie stars, with very rare exceptions.
The only thing that’s strange about it is that all of the ideas about how to distribute the film are decided before the film is made. It seems to us if you could modify the plans based off of what the film is, or what people love about the film, or what audiences are going to be attracted to, that would be ideal.
But also, we live in a world that has unique circumstances. And we live in a world where if you need to secure investment, you should pre-sell. If I were an investor, that’s what I would do.
Features from Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson include Resolution, Spring, The Endless, and now Synchronic.
Benson: With every distributor we’ve ever been with, we’ve had an amazing relationship, where they’ve taken almost all of our input for all of the marketing materials, all the posters, all the trailers, anything that’s ever gone out to the world.
Interestingly, we also travel with our films a lot to film festivals, where we get to see people’s reactions. We’d ask festival goers, “Of all the things, why did you pick this movie? Why did you pick The Endless?” And we thought the answer would be because it’s mind-bending. We thought people loved mind-bending stuff. Actually they said, “No, I just love stuff about cults.”
And so we got to be able to turn around to the distributors, and this happened many times…
Benson: All over the world.
Moorhead: So we got to turn around to the distributor and say, let’s not make mind-bending posters, let’s make a cult poster. And they said, “That’s a great idea.”
David Lawson: Make sure the company that you’re thinking about signing a distribution contract with understands your film, because that’s something the three of us have talked about, and we’ve passed on opportunities because they didn’t quite get what we were saying. If they don’t get the film, it’s tough for them to understand how to market the film and make sure the film finds the correct home.
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Moorhead: We often speak to young filmmakers. People DM us on Twitter. We’re open about that. People who want to reach out, we’ll talk. We’re just on Twitter. We will totally talk to you about making movies.
Benson: You get really excited by the first theatrical release of your movie. Oftentimes, the theatrical release is very small, but it is exciting, and it’s great. But then it goes to physical media, or video on demand, and then all these other people see it. And there’s another wave at Blu-ray and DVD — all these are exciting waves. But now, the biggest wave is obviously streaming, and it’s sort of the last stop, and the day your movie comes out on streaming…
You wake up one morning like, “I guess the movie hit Netflix or Amazon because there’s a million tweets about it now.”
Moorhead: One day Guillermo del Toro was sick and was drinking a lot of cough medicine and watched Spring, and then sent out a bunch of effusive, beautiful tweets about Spring. And it was like the movie got re-released. It’s really cool that your distribution never actually ends.
Synchronic, from co-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, opens in theaters this Friday. As told to Caleb Hammond
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Another great and informative interview/article. Having seen all of their films, I don't always like or agree with their execution, but I love their ideas and filmmaking ethic.