Airplane Blogging – The End of the Road

Coming back to NYC from Kansas City, via Atlanta. I spent over a week in KC, from a trip on a whim due to bad weather out of Chicago. All in all I had a great time and Val and I (and Mikimoto, her pooch) got along swimmingly. And despite a few hiccups with work related stuff during the week, I basically had a very nice, relaxing week. KC isn’t exactly New York (hell, its not even St. Louis), but it was pretty cool, anyway. I worked all week out of the Screenland theater, arranging for My Brother to make its KC premiere there and playing matchmaker between the theater owner, Butch Rigby, and Slamdance, to set up a Slamdance in the Midwest screening series which both sides think is a dandy idea.

See, I am talking like them now.

Now, what you may or may not have been waiting for, which is the results on My Brother’s run in the theaters.

We had 28 screens in 18 markets the first weekend. The total advertising budget from the distributor, I am told, was about 100,000 dollars (prints and PR are extra). We didn’t have newspaper ads, either.

You see where I am going with this. Maybe, maybe not.

We did around 33,000 on the 28 screens for the opening weekend. One theater didn’t report, for some reason. Don’t know why.

So at about 1,200 per screen or so, we weren’t the weakest movie released that weekend, but we weren’t burning up the ticket window either, except in Houston, which did very nicely thanks to the Scott’s help and to some extent, Hampton VA (which is still going strong). Some markets, like Tallahassee, Jacksonville, and unfortunately, Chicago, did very little. And so, at the end of the weekend, AMC pulled the chain on 24 of the screens they had given us, and added only one replacement screen.

Funny thing, though, despite the weak opening, the movie began to do decent numbers during the week. Steady, not spectacular. We crossed 40,000 Thursday nite, but despite the decent performance during the week, especially in NYC and Norfolk VA (where Donovan lives), the decision from the prior weekend stood, and we are only on six screens this weekend, three in Houston, one in Columbus OH (which didn’t perform well during the first weekend), Dallas, and Norfolk. New York City was done with AMC.

From the distributor’s standpoint, they seem pretty happy with the release. The movie got reviews, some good (Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Kam Williams and NY Times being the best), and some not so good. There seems to be a lot of awareness in the market for the movie, and since they spent so little on prints and advertising, the money that will start to come in on DVD sales will recoup their expenditure very quickly Which means both CodeBlack and Liberty will start to see cash sometime fairly soon.

That’s all well, but we still want to get the movie out a little more broadly in the public consciousness, so I’ve made contact with some movie theaters, independent ones, to book the movie in cities where we never opened. Kansas City was the first (which also makes the trip a biz trip, tax deductible, yes). And working on San Francisco, and a chain of theaters in the south from Mississippi to Louisiana and the Carolinas. They have the movie, lets see. Still working on Philadelphia, but time seems to be running out on that.

Anyway, that’s the basic plan. There are still the same people circling about putting up some money to do a real movie campaign, but time is so short, and I’ve seen this song and dance a million times. We’ll just have to see where it goes.

The new Slaughter script came in, and it’s a big improvement, although we can leave that upto Heidi to determine. I’ll send her a copy so she can get grossed out again and complain about all the actresses taking their clothes off. The production team has been having its bumps and bruises, but the creative elements seem to be coming together, and that’s the key. We even slipped the script to a director who may be a good fit for the project. We’ll see if he warms to the material.

I haven’t been in NY for two weeks. And before that, I was gone basically all week in Washington, D.C., Arizona. California, Arizona, Houston, Chicago, Kansas City, all in the past month. Lotsa travel. And that followed up a January in Park City and the nine days I spent out there. My mattress is getting lots of rest.

Despite the title of this entry, I probably will head to LA for work within the next ten days or so. Slaughter is sitting squarely in the middle of my bloody plate. Its picked up momentum, and is getting good press from the bloggers and horror websites. Already seen a picture of Nathan and Bobby, the writers, on JoBlo. That’s pretty huge.

I have to see how we’re putting all these pieces together with all these partners, or say some goodbyes and get focused down to business. I am also going to start taking legal clients again –this traveling gets expensive. I’m looking at renting a cheap place in Hollywood to cut costs for when I go to LA, so that I can stay as long as I need to and afford it. The Sunsent Hyatt (or Riot Hyatt) just wasn’t worth three bills a nite, anyway.

Catch y’all in NY. And to those who went to see My Brother, thanks.