After the release of the Hollywood movie ‘Coming 2 America’, it has been reported that some local television stations have been showing it for free.
This is goaded movie director Peter Sedufia to write about how marketing movies online is not perfectly a viable venture as compared to them premiering in cinemas.
Read his article below:
I’ve seen how creative industry folks are flooding social media with shots from local TV stations illegally showing the just-released “Coming 2 America”.
This is exactly the practicality of what I keep telling folks who keep denigrating our local film producers, especially, during this COVID 19 period when cinemas are closed and we have to hold on to our movie releases.
A lot of folks think filmmakers holding on to the release of their films and blaming it on COVID 19 were not creative enough to explore other means of distribution, which largely are online. I just laugh over such theorist comments and forgive them.
Is this what we wanted to see?
A producer gives his new title to a VOD platform and 24 hours later, it’s on everyone’s computer, free-to-air televisions, and even YouTube?
I remember one film director, I think, wrote on Facebook “If you feel your movie can only make you money in the 5 movie theaters that we have, maybe the cinemas being closed isn’t the real issue here”. I’ve been waiting for further clarification to this post since, but, I guess it ends there as another impracticable grammar.
So now, we’re all beginning to understand the reasons why many Hollywood blockbusters are on hold, pending the opening of cinemas.
They could have decided to release them on VOD, but, that’ll not be smart business thinking. It’s just rhetorics and plain English without any practical business sense.
Amazon bought the right to Coming 2 America as “Amazon Original”. For this reason, this piracy blow may not affect the economic fortunes of the producers in any way. They’ve made their bulk cash.
Amazon is the victim of this unfortunate incident.
So, just imagine that your entire new film is not bought as “Original” but just a 2 year limited right acquisition for USD 25,000, but, you spent USD 100,000 on the production. Are you sure you’ll recoup your investment after this widespread piracy?
Sometimes, people who claim to know it all talk as though producers don’t know their ways to these Amazon Prime, Netflix, Canal+, and the rest, that’s why they can’t have their unreleased films on VOD platforms, but, keep waiting for the cinemas to open.
Practical experience will humble you and teach you lots of lessons!
The cinema is your primary source of revenue for your film. Unless a platform is offering an amount that can pay my production cost plus some profit, VOD will always be the last but one on the distribution channel for me!
