An ugly trend has begun to emerge among a select group of film bloggers, where Sony Pictures Classics has unfairly been labeled as a studio that has no idea how to release a film. /Film have been particularly vocal, wringing their hands anytime Sony Pictures Classics decides to release a film. Edward Douglas over at ComingSoon seems to be piggybacking on the sentiment, topping it off with a particularly longwinded, and somewhat nonsensical rant entitled “The Battle Cry.” Published in August, the piece outlines many of the arguments that seem to crop up around the web anytime Sony Pictures Classics announces an acquisition or is set to release a film. In his tiresome piece, Douglas makes ludicrous box office comparisons and in general criticizes many aspects of the longstanding film company’s practices without really an understanding of the studio and its films differ from many of the other players out there.
With that in mind we decided to reach out to Sony Pictures Classics to hear their side of the story, and co-president and co-founder Tom Bernard graciously gave us his time to talk about the company, their strategies and their overall vision of their role in bringing films to market. What emerged in our conversation was a better understanding of the overall industry and in particular the studio’s particular niche. What will be instructive for many of the studio’s detractors is that not only do Sony Pictures Classics know how to platform and market their films. Its interesting to note that, in our nearly one hour talk, there wasn’t a single mention of opening weekend numbers or overall theatrical totals, but that Bernard spoke enthusiastically about the ongoing cultural legacy of the films he represents.
“I liken it more to what it was like in the music business in the ’70s, ’80s and even today where a band has to go and create a reputation for itself around the country. They don’t just show up and they’re a hit. They gotta go find their audience, speak to their audience, have their audience speak to each other and they become part of the culture. And Sony Pictures Classics has always taken that approach with distributing their movies. You look at a movie like “Moon” [we built up to about] 700 playdates, and [we were] on the screen all summer. That movie has become part of the culture. If we had opened on 700 screens for one week, and maybe we got the traditional 2 week play and out, the movie would not have the reputation it has today. So our goal when we release a film is to try and establish that movie as something that is in the culture, part of the culture and will continue to be something that people want to see as each generation comes into their own.”
And looking back at their track record, it’s hard to argue with this approach. As he points out, films like “Run, Lola, Run,” “Kung Fu Hustle” and “Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown” are still highly regarded, benchmark films. By comparison, films like “Juno” or “Napolean Dynamite” already faced backlash while still in their theatrical run, and are now tired pop culture relics. Just try and breaking out some quotes from those films at the next party you attend and count how many eye-rolls you get if not outright hostility. Moreover, what bloggers like Douglas also forget, is that studios like Fox Searchlight also have soundtracks, t-shirts, toys and other ephemera to push as they rollout their “indie” films. Fox Searchlight’s methods aren’t just about getting the film seen, but also making sure their licensors and partners are happy as well.
But perhaps the biggest complaint leveled at Sony Pictures Classics has been their limited rollout strategy. In recent years, the measured success of a film seems to have become more and more dependent on how big the numbers are on opening weekend. This strategy certainly plays well for big studio films, who carpetbomb the pop culture world with trailers, virals, posters, fake websites and other marketing material in order to guarantee a huge audience on opening weekend, which will ensure lots of free press on the following Monday. Of course, the other part of this model requires that once the opening weekend is over, all marketing for the film effectively stops while the studio focuses on the big picture for the next weekend. This approach, which seeks to squeeze the most amount of money out of a film in the shortest amount of time, has made things interesting for boutique and independent studios. Unable to command the staff and dollars required to play in the same sandbox as the big boys, these studios have engaged in smart, small rollouts that build out from limited release dates, and strongly engage social media promotion and word of mouth to drive interest in their films. Of course, the studio who seems to have the this strategy down to a science is Fox Searchlight, who have done wonders with films like “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Wrestler” and “Juno” driving them to box office, critical and awards acclaim.
Bernard discussed with us in great detail their approach which balances economics and real marketplace expectations. The first thing Bernard notices, is that buzz about a particular film, while it can be rampant on the web, is something quite different as it fans out in real time geographically. “What we’ve noticed is there is a relationship between the way information travels and geography. We’ve developed a release pattern that we feel helps facilitate the word of mouth in a very strategic way. For instance, New York City and LA open at the same time. That information between those two cities travels very quickly. A place like Washington, DC, it takes three weeks for that New York City information to connect there. Boston works one week after New York. Chicago is usually two weeks after New York. And then after Chicago you open Milwaukee a week later and then you open Minneapolis a week after Milwaukee. It seems the information flows that way. There is this whole [information] matrix when you open a movie [and that drives] the way it [opens].” For those who believe because information is online, that everyone must know about a film, and thus a strategic rollout is binding a film to failure, Bernard says that’s simply not case. With the films Sony Pictures Classics represents, “….you eventually can break them regionally after you’ve established the film in each [major] marketplace. There are certain people that are in the know that are real fans of the film and want to see it right away, but they’re the minority.”
However, this isn’t to say that Bernard isn’t interested or that Sony Pictures Classics aren’t engaging non-coastal cities or social media outlets to promote their films. Part of their ongoing process does very much involve trying to reach as many hub cities as possible, but in a way that is smart and financially levelheaded.
“One of the things that has been a great asset to us is that every major city and even some of the minor cities, have film festivals. We’ve found a great relationship to playing a festival in an individual city and helping the awareness of a movie. If you can find a festival that fits the timing of the release of your movie it’s important. Playing that festival creates a certain awareness that you can’t buy. One of the other ways we connect with a lot of these audiences is we use Facebook extensively. We’ll do screenings across the country, regionally, with Facebook. We do special screenings with websites like Nerve.com around the country. We find right now, the biggest outreach we have is through the web and that the newspaper is a tool that’s important, but not as important as it once was.” But at the end of day, getting a film on screens is matter of dollars of cents, and Sony Pictures Classics has long realized they can’t play the same game as the major studios. “The basic 101 in movie distribution – and always has been – is never spend more than you make. If you open a film and spend a lot of money that’s a heckuva gamble, and it takes a lot of money now, because of the competition, to get somebody’s attention. So if you’re going to go [into a wide release] you’re basically competing with studios that are spending $50 and $60 million dollars [on marketing] and going on 5000 screens and that’s just not going to happen. I don’t think you’re going to get the audience’s attention to make that work.”
While the difficulty in getting the word out about foreign or independent films in the noise of mainstream marketing is a pressing issue for independent studios, in a rather surprising response, Bernard says the closing of non-chain arthouses has actually allowed for better organized rollouts for their films. “Right now, Regal Cinemas has a whole chain of independent screens within their circuit. They’ve got an independent film buyer, they’ve got an independent marketing team, they’ve got a magazine that’s distributed in all the theaters that just deals with the independent films they have booked for the quarter. AMC has the same. So you have the two largest theater chains in the country with a fleet of screens that play independent films.” The problem with independent arthouses in the past, Bernard had found, was that while some were very savvy others weren’t, and overall there just wasn’t the opportunity to send a unified, national campaign out with the coordination that chains like AMC or Regal offer. “The theaters are certainly as abundant as ever [but] it’s easier to interact with them in a sense. [For example] next week we’re having a teleconference after we screen four of our movies for Regal, where our marketing team is going to talk to them about the different angles and ways that we’d like to try and have them work with us in marketing each film.”
Another avenue some have criticized Sony Pictures Classics for not exploring, are VOD options like IFC Direct or Magnolia’s service. However, the problem Bernard sees is that in the eyes of the cable company, it’s less about the films than about offering another service that can gain them subscribers. “There are a number of cable companies in the United States. You cannot put together a national cable release because there are so many different companies that have different agendas. And what’s happened with this pay per view is that the cable companies have said ‘This is great. For specialized movies we’ve got a well to do audience, that’s educated, they like these movies, let’s put them on pay per view.’ And what’s their motivation? You can’t watch it on pay per view unless you subscribe to the cable system. If you remember in the past HBO for a long time ran a lot of specialized product – foreign films, independent films – you don’t see that anymore. You couldn’t see those movies on HBO unless you subscribed and they pretty much hit that level where they are [filled up with subscribers]. They reached their goals in that area. With the cable system, pay-per-view certainly generates [and] throws off some cash, but it’s not the main business of the cable company,” says Bernard. For Sony Pictures Classics, their platforming strategy outlines five very clear, successive windows: theatrical, DVD, pay-per-view, premium cable and network television. For Bernard, the theatrical with day-and-date digital release essentially knocks out word of mouth, and kills the earning power of the film. “You have five times to make your movie available in the marketplace. If you [release it day-and-date on pay-per-view] you basically closed all those other windows because a lot of the other distribution venues will not take the movie after that. So you’re basically knocking the revenue power out of the film.”
The other issue brought about by digital releasing is the problem of piracy. In fact, for Sony Pictures Classics, it was their release of “The Wackness” (the very acquisition of which caused widespread grumbling among bloggers) where the issue first reared it’s ugly head.
“We became aware of it with “The Wackness.” We bought “The Wackness” at Sundance and liked it a lot and put it out into the marketplace and…at its peak we were on 600 screens and we couldn’t understand why more people didn’t go. We found out through the producers that they had submitted a unique cut of the film to the Sundance film festival. And that version left the Sundance office where they were evaluating what to put in the festival and went up on the web before the festival. So that movie was actually being passed around [online] the whole time we had it in release, which destroyed us.”
And while Bernard understands that often the day-and-date strategy is often executed to stymie the effects of piracy, he believe that it ultimately it is a detriment to a film finding its footing. “A lot of these very concentrated releases are to prevent piracy…and certain movies I think need time [to find an audience].”
It’s that time to allow the movie to find an audience, that has allowed Sony Pictures Classics to survive the DVD downturn. As we noted in our interview with Jonathan Turell of the Criterion Collection, both major and indie studios are having difficulty releasing their specialty, indie or foreign films on DVD because of the changing marketplace. However, for Bernard, the interest in Sony Pictures Classics films is still there, even if people aren’t buying.
“Our movies are still doing well in the ancillary market on DVD. What we found is that there’s been a big shift from buying to rental. So the revenue streams have stayed similar its just the dollars have switched into another area.” And again, it comes back to Sony Pictures Classics platforming strategy that allows their films to continue to grow even after they leave cinema screens. As Bernard notes, “Having a solid theatrical release, and branding the movie, I think pays off tremendously for us in the ancillary marketplace. We have “Tyson” [coming out on DVD] and its going to ship 500000 units which is huge, but its because the movie has been branded in the marketplace. Whereas if that had come out day and date on pay-per-view and in the theaters it would’ve been over.”
At the end of the day, when discussing platforming and strategic roll outs, you can’t paint every studio with the same brush. “You have to look behind the business and each one of these companies is very different in how the business works. You would never think of Focus as a foreign sales company, but they have a huge foreign sales division. We actually buy movies from them. Fox Searchlight makes most of their movies. They’re a big production company. They have 300 people, Sony Pictures Classics has 25. We’re all in the same ocean, but we’re completely different fish.” They all differ in size, scope and focus. Fox Searchlight, succeed with their system in no small part because their films have broader appeal. What is often forgotten in these discussion is that Sony Pictures Classics are often representing films that would otherwise not be represented at all in the North American marketplace. “The Lives Of Others,” Donnersmarck’s acclaimed film, was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics in the Cannes marketplace for a measly $100,000 because no else was interested. And they drove that film all the way to a Best Foreign Film Oscar win. Moreover, Bernard isn’t just another executive sitting in an office barking orders around without an understanding of changes going on in the industry. The longtime veteran is active in all acquisitions and marketing for every film the studio handles. In fact, following our conversation, he was going to be heading into a meeting to discuss print ad placements for the upcoming weekend newspapers.
The fallacy in this day and age is measuring film and studio success by simple dollar amounts. What Sony Pictures Classics has done for almost twenty years, and what they will continue to do, is give a home to films that aren’t just demographics fillers and money generators. Just take a look at some of the titles on their fall slate of films – Michael Haneke’s Oscar contender “The White Ribbon”; Lone Scherfig’s celebrated (and also contending) “An Education”; the Audrey Tautou led biopic “Coco Before Chanel”; Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces”; dude rock doc “It Might Get Loud” and Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited “The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus”. What the blogging world needs to consider before firing up another piece about the studio’s supposed ineptitude, is consider the following: would any other of the other indie studios even consider touching these films? How long did “The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus” remain unsold until Sony Pictures Classics acquired it? When was the last time Fox Searchlight repped a foreign film (and sorry, “Slumdog Millionaire” doesn’t count)? These are all smart, adult films that despite the flapping of blogging world, are unfortunately of interest to a very limited and specific audience. What Sony Pictures Classics has excelled at is continually finding that audience despite the shifts in the marketplace for nearly twenty years. One only has to look at the list of repeat directors who continue to work with the studio — Haneke, Almodovar, Allen, Morris — the list goes on. What these directors understand is that Sony Pictures Classics aren’t just building box office returns, they are building a legacy and reputation for these films that will last for years to come.