We just asked yesterday, who the hell is tending the ‘Che’ house? No one seems to be doing publicity for the film. No one in the industry seems to know how to contact anyone about its appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival in less than seven days.
Well, According to Anne Thompson, Steven Soderbergh’s two-part, four-hour-plus ‘Che’ Guevarra epic is currently negotiating a final distribution deal and we should all expect an announcement soon (maybe this is why no P.R. company has been picked to represent the film yet).
Its length makes the film a hard sel as it isl, which is why no one’s picked it up for distribution yet. Regardless of that, the pic was met with a mixed response when it made its world premiere at the Cannes film festival in May.
Thompson still thinks HBO would be the smart look for ‘Che’ – “where smart audiences who would best appreciate the movie could settle down with its full running time on their own terms,” but she put her money on Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures, the guys who backed Soderbergh’s also-difficult, “Bubble” in 2005. Magonlia puts all its films on Video OnDemand and usually early from their theatrical release date.
This also good for audiences who don’t live in key markets like New York and L.A. It’s not a bad educated guess on her part and one that many of us should have thrown out there long ago. It makes total sense. Though Magnolia do seem to botch a lot of their theatrical releases and film are basically straight to VOD, but maybe that’s the whole point especially if they want to show the film entirely uncut or at least it it’s full 2-part four hour length. Either way, she said to expect an announcement soon.
