June 13th, 2006 - A Million Bucks

Wow, not a lot of FOC articles left, you know? During this period I was keeping a lot of notes on the making of FOC2, which we had just wrapped up shooting.

June 13th

Ok, I'm gonna give ya a little inside information. And before you go thinking I'm buying a Ferrari and moving to the coast, understand that I don't necessarily see any of this money.

What you see above you is a tracking chart on how FOC has done from its release on Feb 28th up to June 6th. Yep, as you can see, it's made over a million dollars in rentals. Not too shabby for a film that cost under 50K and had NO none actors whatsoever.

What's interesting to me though is what's going on in the past two weeks. There's actually an UPSWING in viewers--I would assume a movie comes out and then decreases until it's no longer doing any business.

Sure, you could say a one-week upturn is just an anomaly. But FOC increased one week by 6% and then the following week by 29%--and there's been no press that I know of to spark the sudden re-interest.

But hey--my picture has made over a million dollars in RENTALS ALONE. Sure would love to get my hands on the sales figures though...

March 10th, 2006: Fuuuuuuuuck

This should be a wake-up call for those indy filmmakers dreaming of a real distributor giving them a bunch of money to distribute their movie.


Because, check out how my movie did for Lionsgate. I'm the highest LGF movie of the week in sales other than The Ultimate Avengers, a Marvel Comics movie. FOC outperformed a LOT of movies, not just this week, but in the next month.


And when LGF got the chance to acquire the sequel, they weren't prepared to even match the offer we got on the first film. Even though we had already proven that our movie was very lucrative for them. There was no reason to think the sequel wouldn't perform as well as the original--and since it's actually a better movie, I figure it might do better in the end.


So if you think a distributor is going to pay you a lot of money for your film in today's market, it's just not going to happen.

Pardon the language. I ain't happy.

Here's the thing: I've been watching the top 10 direct-2-dvd charts for months now. The rentals have been fairly non-impressive, so I had high hopes that FOC could crack the top 10.

Well, I just got the top 10 and FOC ain't there. You know why? Because every effin' sequel in the world(including some Disneys) came out in the past month and who can compete with that?

Stuart Little 3. Bambi 2(are you kidding me? Who needs a sequel to that?) The Prince and Me 2. American Pie Presents Band Camp. (essentially American Pie 3.5) Dungeons & Dragons 2.

I had assumed there would be a couple on the list, but not that many. I shouldn't be TOO unhappy. FOC was number 11, so it only JUST missed the list. But still.

March 2nd, 2006 FOC on imdb rankings

While imdb rankings are certainly no indication of quality, it was certainly very cool to see the level of interest in my flick rivaled some big movies.

March 2nd

I mentioned that FOC hit 192 on the imdbpro list--that may not sound impressive. I mean, 192 isn't exactly #1 now is it?

So I checked to see what else is on the list near my flick. If you want to see if for yourself, click on the picture above.

I'll give you the highlights though.

FOC is higher on the list than Rumor Has It(a $43 million dollar picture) and Derailed(a $36 million dollar picture starring Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston). Within 15 places of FOC is Steven Spielberg's War of The Worlds, starring the little-known Tom Cruise. The Fog and A History Of Violence(the film my buddy is nominated for an Oscar for) are all near FOC.

So it's amazing that FOC is near movies of that caliber(and when I say caliber, I mean, movies that cost roughly 1000 times the cost of FOC).

A little FYI.

March 1st, 2006 My Thoughts on FOC's release

March 1s, 2006

Please take note that any complaints I make here are totally overshadowed by the fact that my movie was released by Lionsgate.

$22.99 for a dvd at Best Buy that doesn't have recognizable stars is a bit much.

For that matter it appears that all of the Best Buys WAY underordered(about 3 copies per store)

The menus on the disc kind of blow, and there's a TON of extras they didn't include. But the movie is VERY high quality, and so are the extras they included. The "Making Of" is every bit as sharp as the film itself.

Blockbuster also apparently didn't go as heavy as I expected. Most of the ones in this area are carrying between 6-10 copies. My wife informed me of this when I woke up--she'd gone EVERYWHERE looking to see how many each store had.

In the cool news department, Hollywood Video seems to be the best outlet for FOC. The two stores near me had 32 copies and 20 copies. Yeah, you read that right. 32 FREAKIN' COPIES of my movie!

Very sweet. I'm holding my breath that the flick makes it on the top 10 direct-2-dvd movies of the week. If it does, you can bet I'll post it here.

February 26th, 2006: Imdb rankings

Quick update. There's a side of imdb(Internet Movie Database) called imdbpro, which has lots more details about films and people. It also rates people according to a Starmeter and movies by a Moviemeter--gauging their ranks on how often people search for their names/movies(including being linked from search engines)

The highest I ever saw my first movie "Hunting Humans" get was around 2000, and that was the week of its release.

FOC has been hanging around 14,000--yes, there are a lot of movies out there.

I just checked five minutes ago and it's 192.

Sweet! And if you've seen the movie, go rate it! If you haven't seen the movie, go rate it a 10!

It was like a 7 earlier in the week, and all of a sudden some bastards have been slamming me with a 1. I think they probably mean it's the best movie they've ever seen(hence, #1) and are just confused by the numbered system.

Yeah, that's it.

January 27th, 2006: Ad roundup

Just goes to show you...a lot of people tell me the FOC commentary is great. I didn't remember it that way but maybe I'll have to go listen to it...


Jan. 27

Well, at last count LG has had 1 TWO-PAGE SPREAD, 5 FULL PAGE ads, 1 half page ad, and 3 miniature ads in Video Business Weekly.

So I figured the ads would be trickling off. This week's VB just came out and there's another 2 page spread. It's crazy, the amount of money they're throwing behind this.

And they're now listing the extras--the "Making Of" and the Out-takes are definitely on there. My commentary is not mentioned, so I don't know if they scrapped it or not. Honestly, I wouldn't be that surprised since it wasn't all that great.

I have to think that the deleted scenes and the original ending are not on there, which is gonna be a bummer for the actors whose scenes were cut. The whole thing leads me to believe LG is using a single layer disc(which would hold about 4 hours of video, even less with the low compression they will probably have the movie playing at).

I wish they'd taken their advertising money and spent it on the dual layer, which would have held 9 hours and ALL of the extras. I mean, I spent a LOT of time on those extras, and to know they've blown them off...sucky sucky.

(but this just shows that perfectionist mentality I'm cursed with--it's like: Gee, your no-budget movie was picked up by one of the biggest horror distributors in the world and they're pushing the hell out of it; it's going to be in every dvd store in the country; and all I can do is complain)

Poor me. :)