Update: Jones has calmed down and hit Twitter one time saying, “Shouldn’t try to understand revenue reporting. didn’t have all the info. Being assured it’s all as it should be… Will stick to directing!” We guess Sony and Jones are friends again.
Duncan Jones is not happy.
The director hit Twitter this morning to voice his displeasure at Sony USA’s handling of the DVD release of “Moon.” Sony, which reps the film in most major territories worldwide, had already come under fire from fans of the film for not giving the film enough of an awards push and now Jones is accusing the studio of pissing away revenue from potential sales of the film in U.S.
Here’s a rundown of what he posted this morning (read bottom to top):
Im actually quite upset right now.
UK DVD sales of Moon a healthy 120,000+. US numbers? Less than half that… due to huge number of “free” copies given to rental companies.
then they can split rental revenue with those chains, and pay the film makers… you guessed it… nothing.
Did you know that sometimes, when a studio wants to screw an indie film, they actually “give away” the DVD to large rental chains? …
Just learned how we got “got” by the studio on Moon, and wont be getting any revenue from it. Very angry.
Parsing what we can from Jones’ tweets, it appears Sony U.S. more or less gave away the film to rental companies essentially cutting the director out of any potential revenue from sales. That said, it appears Sony UK sold the film as usual to rental outlets.
While we don’t think Sony U.S. actively tried to cut Jones out of any revenue — more likely, by providing free copies it helped get more units of the film in Blockbuster shelves and in Netflix envelopes — it is not entirely aboveboard to tell the director after the fact about the approach to the DVD rollout. Chalk it up to a lesson learned for Jones. You can bet that for “Source Code” he will be watching the ledgers very carefully.