Day Zero & the American Film Market Explained.

[yeuxdebleu.livejournal.com]

On October 3, sssneaking posted an item here about Day Zero being on the AFM's list of of films. As she pointed out, "The AFM is one of the big industry markets where films get sold internationally."

I thought you'd be interested in the producer's comment in reply to that entry (which was locked) because it explains quite a bit about film distribution...indies in particular.



"As you may have surmised, DAY ZERO is being distributed in a "split rights" scenario, as opposed to cases where a single distributor acquires and distributes (and/or sells) the film around the world. Split rights deals are extremely common, particularly for indie films. For American films, the rights are typically split into: North America, and "the rest of the world."

As you probably saw from the press release and coverage in Variety, First Look Studios is our North American distributor. They will be releasing the film theatrically in the U.S. in January (January 18, 2008 to be precise), followed by DVD and other media. Other media, especially cable and TV, will be something they re-license to whomever pays the most at that time :-)

For the rest of the world, we're working with New Films International. NFI is a long standing foreign sales/distribution company. They attend all the major film markets with a catalogue of films and try to sell the films to buyers for distributors in territories around the world. Those distributors - not us - get to choose how to release the film (i.e. theatrically, straight to DVD, cable, etc.) The major markets are AFM, Berlin, Cannes, and a couple others, and AFM just happens to be next.

Overall the timing worked out nicely. Whatever sales NFI makes at AFM in November won't result in any releases until after the North American release on January 18 - the distributors in the territories around the world typically need at least a little more time than that. You'd want (and try to contractually guarantee) that it's not released prior to the U.S. release, though in this case it simply and nicely worked out that way.

As far as the festival tour, that was pretty much going to happen one way or another. Again, it just worked out nicely that we were able to line up several Fall festival invitations, heading right into AFM, and closely preceding our U.S. theatrical. It's great exposure for the film, an additional sales tool for NFI, and nice graphics fodder for artwork (I'm sure you've all seen DVD boxes covered in festival laurels...)

By the way - keep your eyes out for 3 more U.S. festival announcements very soon :P

Finally, the push back from the leaked November 2 date to January 18 has nothing to do with any of this. It's another story for another day, but nothing particularly fascinating. The short version is that it was simply "too fast" for all the required pieces to be put in motion.

Oh, as it happens, NFI is also representing one of my prior films, TURNING GREEN, at the upcoming AFM."