by Cate Montana
Foreign distribution is a funny thing. It seems like such a simple idea. You make a film. People love it. You ship it out to different countries. They release it in theaters, then they distribute DVDs. Easy right? The short answer to that is … no!
Sitting back at BLEEP Central offices in Washington State, fielding thousands of international requests and questions about when What the BLEEP Do We Know!? and What the BLEEP!?- Down the RabbitHole will make their way to eager international audiences – it’s hard to explain the foreign distribution process because … there doesn’t seem to be one.
Oh sure, there are big international film shindigs like the Cannes Film Festival (and smaller affairs) where everybody gets together to view and sniff out the year’s best offerings, and the foreign distribution reps line up to buy rights to show the movies in their country. But aside from that, the methodology is kinda loose
Depending on the screening schedule and what’s “hot” (and that can mean everything from the weather, to the party schedule, to what sign Mercury is in) you can get the distribution reps to a screening of your film and sometimes not. If you do get them to a screening, it then becomes a matter of whether they “get it” or not. With BLEEP, the “getting it” part was a problem. Sometimes even the ones who did “get it” didn’t buy BLEEP because they didn’t think their countrymen and women would “get it.” But then the flip side was also true. Some foreign reps didn’t get it, but didn’t care as long as the box office numbers back in the States looked good enough.
After crossing those hurdles, then there’s the translations and the sub-titles and the format differences and all the production to figure out, and the screening rights and all the contracts and the negotiations that have to transpire before a single frame of a film can make its way to a foreign shore. And we haven’t talked about DVD sales rights yet.
Yes - foreign distribution is a lot of work. But so far, consciousness – and our ace agent in the field - has brought The BLEEP into 19 nations, with another 10 on the way. If you live in Germany or Mexico, Australia or Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Israel and…well, a lot of countries, Richard Guardian is the man to thank for getting the movie to your doorstep. If BLEEP hasn’t made it to a theater near you – it’s not because he hasn’t tried! For an inside look at WTB’s global journey, keep reading…
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