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THE LONG ARM OF LONG TAIL
Checked out the Cyan Pictures site and discovered several new postings, the most interesting of which is the announcement of Long Tail Releasing, the Manhattan-based production company’s new distribution arm. Long Tail plans to release from 15 to 25 films in its first year and gear up to the release of an astounding 250 films annually, all by economizing and compacting the costs of distribution.
Writes Cyan’s Josh Newman:
“Long Tail started from a simple question: what costs make up that $250,000 [the initial releasing costs of a low-budget arthouse film], and how can we drastically reduce, share or eliminate them? If we can get the initial release cost of each film close to zero, we can release as many films as filmmakers will let us. Some, likely, will only find very small niche audiences. Others, the strongest ones that acquisition execs (who are, contrary to popular belief, human after all) didn’t recognize, will likely be able to scale up on their broad appeal, assuming we rally resources behind each as it begins to succeed. Aggregate all the releases of various eventual sizes, and collectively we have a profitable business, and therefore a way to keep releasing films.
This is Not a Film, directed by Michael Nickels, is the company’s first release.
Also on the same page is an update on a story we blogged about previously, the release of Adam Goldberg’s I Love your Work. Newman relates a distressing tale about how a producer and a defunct sales agent can both hold exclusive sales rights to a film in the same territory. The good news is that he says the film should be in theaters within the next few months.
