Day and Date is Dead - Long Live the 9 Month Theatrical Window

Or How I Learned to Trust My Audience Instead of Amazon, Apple and Google

We are excited to be handling the theatrical releases for two films coming out this month 1-800-On-Her-Own and The Body Politic and are handling impact and social on a third film Food and Country (more on these latter 2 releases later in the month).  In this post I want to dive a bit more in depth of the strategy behind the release of 1-800-On-Her-Own where we are working closely in collaboration with the intrepid producer Amy Hobby and the super talented director Dana Flor.

1-800-ON-HER-OWN follows groundbreaking indie musician/feminist Ani DiFranco, founder of the first “woman-run non-corporate queer-happy” label, Righteous Babe Records, on a wild road trip from her punk-folk past to her life today as an activist and rock star.

It is rare for an independent film to launch a theatrical release so soon after their initial festival premiere (in this case Tribeca, June 2024).  Traditional strategy has been for films to wait for more festivals and some kind of sale before diving into distribution - but Amy and Dana are very savvy about the current state of the industry and are not going to be dependent on the increasingly fewer gatekeepers in a world either too mired in old methods or skewed to middle-of-the-road conservative algorithms.  Instead, they are taking their destiny into their own hands and (with us) crafting a unique distribution strategy. Since this is a collaborative effort from now on I will refer to 8 Above and the filmmakers as the “distribution team”. 

We had our first official meeting at DC/Dox, and identified the teams' top two goals: earning revenue through direct access to their audience and striving to mobilize the film’s fan base for the election.  A third goal is to experiment with alternative models to see what might work in our current broken system and report their/our findings to the rest of the field. This post is a first step in that reporting - announcing the intentions and plans for the release. 

For a variety of reasons, we immediately agreed that we wanted to tease out a long slow theatrical window. I have been espousing a return to a version of the very old school strategy for at least the past year as has Ted Hope and others.  It provides so many advantages including both long term audience development and a way for you as a filmmaker to directly experience the film’s effect on audiences.  

Instead of focusing on giving the film away for free to festivals, the distribution team is engaging a lean mean theatrical release (hitting swing states first: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska (split electoral votes!) moving onto North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.  Note that the film will still play in festivals where flat fees and split box office is paid.  I have been a proponent of this type of mixed windowing strategy of festivals, theatrical and community for some time and while time consuming, it is a way to maximize all of the event capabilities of  a film.  Depending on the film, the strategy requires a delicate balance and ordering between festivals, event theatrical and community and educational screenings.

Knowing that Ani Di Franco has a fan base, the film team created a spreadsheet of her previous concerts and we targeted locations where her biggest gigs have taken place.  If only there were more arthouses outside of major cities! 

Note nearly all the bookings are one night events - because according to Hobby: "We didn't want our film playing in empty theaters and we honestly didn't know for sure that the demand was there.  Better to sell out an event and if we saw more demand in a community, we could come back and play again." I first wrote about the power of one night events in Think Outside the Box Office and will be writing about it more in the future.  Generally - more fun - more audience - more money.   

For fall swing state screenings the film team are coordinating with a variety of get out the vote and political groups such as Emily’s List, Headcount and Rock the Vote.  Voter registration tables will sit side by side with the merch table in the lobbies of theaters! As an activist, the team knew we could count on Ani to get out to engage with audiences in the lead up to the election. So we got her locked in for 4 crucial screenings in Wisconsin and Michigan.  Tickets on sale here.

Besides trying to boost progressive turnout for the election, and earning money from ticket sales and the fun merch (more on this in a later post), the side benefit of this approach is that it allows time to build audience for a wider release that will launch in December/January and will coincide with Ani Di Franco’s tour dates through April dovetailing with her performances in cities across the country.  

So this is not just a 90 day theatrical window, but will be a nine month + theatrical window.  These days with traditional platform TVOD (rentals and purchases) revenue for most films is in the toilet - there is no need to rush to TVOD if you have a smart alternative strategy. (It is better anyway to develop audience and buzz and want-to-see prior to a TVOD launch anyway - and why not experiment with Kinema/Jolt/Gathr/Eventive film drop prior to letting the impersonal monopoly platform throttle your sales and give you peanuts on the dollar.)  

In addition, several sales agents have told me recently that when a film spends the time and money to develop and demonstrate an audience (including a robust event strategy), streamers who would have initially rejected a film as too “niche” or too “whatever” have perked up and acquired films for license fees.  While these fees are much lower than old school blockbuster acquisitions (which are very rare these days) they allow a film team to still exploit all the other rights, since all that is being licensed are limited SVOD rights.  

In addition to the partner group engagement mentioned above, the butts in seats strategy is going straight to the audience mobilizing the existing fan base through smart organic social being supervised by Dor Dotson, utilizing the Ani DiFranco, filmmakers’ email lists,  some targeted regional press that will turn national as the release expands, but not spending any money on tech monopolies ad purchases. 

In the spirit of Ani DiFranco and her

Righteous Babe Records, this release follows an ethos of DIY/ Punk/Activist and I love it. But I would never call the release DIY!  That is for next week’s post “Self Distribution Does Not Exist”.