TORONTO - The road to releasing a film is full of traffic and competition but more distributors are taking a quick pit stop in hopes of standing out: the one-off event screening in movie theatres.
Instead of just going straight to disc, download or TV broadcast -- or risking a longer-term theatrical run -- a growing number of films are now screening just once or twice in movie chains across the country. In some cases, the filmmakers and/or stars also attend.
"By doing it, you're test screening in a sense," says Kyle Moffatt, communications director for Cineplex Entertainment.
"It gets people's interests in advance before it airs on TV or the day the DVD or the Blu-ray comes out."
Cineplex Entertainment has held one-off screenings for years now with "The Met: Live in HD" program, the Classic Film Series and the Most Wanted Mondays showcase. It also does live broadcasts of WWE matches and sports and various arts events.
But in 2011, several new films also had one-or-two-day runs in Cineplex theatres, including "Pearl Jam Twenty" by Cameron Crowe, "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop," "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne," William Shatner's "The Captains," and "Mulroney: The Opera."
Cineplex also sub-licensed some of those films to Empire Theatres, Landmark Cinemas and other independent theatres for one-night-only presentations.
Other venues for one-off screenings include TIFF Bell Lightbox, the home of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Limited screening engagements Cineplex has lined up for 2012 -- besides its Met Opera series and other programs -- include "Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos," an anime film showing Jan. 15 and Jan. 19.
And on Feb. 2, Cineplex will broadcast "Kevin Smith: Live From Behind" live from Toronto's Scotiabank Theatre to movie screens across North America. Smith will be at the theatre with longtime co-star Jason Mewes, hosting their "Jay & Silent Bob Get Old" podcast and taking questions from fans in the audience and on social media.
"If you know that the film will be there for only the one time and you're experiencing it with a group of like-minded people, it's a kind of fan frenzy," says filmmaker Ron Mann, whose boutique distribution company Films We Like was behind "Pearl Jam Twenty" and "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop."
It's also a return to an older model of social event-style promotion that Mann embraces as the DVD market collapses.
"When I started off making films in the very early '80s, I would do the college circuit and my films would play and I would appear with my films and there would be a revenue stream as a filmmaker," says Mann.
"When DVD projections became popular, it phased out that circuit and the educational market collapsed, the 16-millimetre viewing of films collapsed, so the revenue stream was gone.
"So what we're bringing back is the idea of a kind of a rock tour or an event."
Conversely, more bands are also looking to capitalize on the film market, surmises Moffatt.
"I think if you look at it historically, several years ago bands wouldn't do a one-night limited engagement, they would just film a concert and put it straight to DVD, whereas now it's part of the evolution," he says.
"They are looking at doing the one-night screenings, giving it to their fans in the theatre just so they can see it on the big screen and then bringing it out on DVD or Blu-ray, digital download, and it's just a nice complimentary piece to go with the whole package."
Filmmaker Larry Weinstein, who directed the musical satire "Mulroney: The Opera," says short theatrical engagements are attractive for niche projects in a cluttered marketplace.
"I think the distributors of smaller Canadian films that are competing against the American films have to come up with other means," says Weinstein.
"I think there are certain films prior to our film that sometimes wish they had gone this route, partly so they wouldn't spend so much in promotion or theatre time."
Film and TV producer Niv Fichman of Rhombus Media, who produced "Mulroney: The Opera," says the one-off screening is also good hybrid model for arts-driven projects that deserve a big-screen presence but only in a limited fashion.
"If a film doesn't draw anybody to the theatre and it's running in that real estate for a whole week, what's the point of having it (there)? I don't believe it should be on there," says Fichman.
"It's embarrassing to have a film on that draws a few hundred dollars the whole week, you know?"
Cineplex, which handles one-off screenings through its Alternative Programming department, says it's getting more interest from distributors who want to do limited screening engagements.
But it also concedes that short screenings aren't always hits.
"Pearl Jam Twenty" and "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop," for instance, did well with their limited screening engagements -- Mann says "Pearl Jam Twenty" was one of their most successful films of all year -- because they featured subjects with fervent fan bases.
"Typically these kinds of films for one-night events are directed to those fans," says Mann. "Will it work for an independent film? Probably not.
"You're in a world where there are so many movies and a lot of them are good. ... People have choices on a Saturday night, and it's expensive."
Such was the issue for "Mulroney: The Opera," which Weinstein said will air on TV stations owned by Astral Media and Corus Entertainment sometime in the new year.
Rhombus Media, distributor Alliance Films and Cineplex tried to appeal to the subscription audience of "The Met: Live in HD" series and screened "Mulroney: The Opera" on a Saturday afternoon and repeated it on a Wednesday night a couple of weeks later.
"The problem is that it wasn't a Metropolitan Opera and it wasn't part of their series, it wasn't part of their brand, it wasn't part of the subscription that a lot of people have," says Weinstein, noting the film also didn't have the higher price point of the HD operas.
"And because it's not part of the opera, the opera audience isn't necessarily going to go to it. It's more like a movie, it's more like a comic Canadian film, and yet it's only shown twice on a Saturday afternoon and Wednesday night."
Weinstein says he also heard from a lot of people who went to see it not realizing it was only shown on those two days.
"It was in main theatres, it wasn't like, little art houses -- I think it went to 72 theatres across the country -- which is great, except it was only shown twice and at odd times," he says.
"People don't usually go to a movie on a Wednesday night or a Saturday afternoon -- normally it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday nights kind of thing -- so as a result it didn't do as well I think as it might have."
All told, "Mulroney: The Opera" pulled in less than $100,000 for the two screenings combined, says Fichman, who also felt the film wasn't promoted properly.
Weinstein says in hindsight, the film should have had a limited run of a week or so to capitalize on its publicity and reflect the enthusiasm.
"The problem with (one-off screenings) is, if there is an appetite, you've kind of pre-determined ahead of time how it's going to be shown. It may not have a chance to kind of just take off," says Weinstein.
"You might get word of mouth, but it's too late."
Still, Fichman says it was a "good experiment" and notes they're still thinking about doing one-off screenings for future projects, but with more attention on promotion.
"I think it was a really interesting effort that is a good model but a lot has been learned that needs to be tweaked," says Fichman.
Weinstein also feels the business model shows promise.
"The attentions were great and the people at Cineplex were really wonderful about it, and Alliance," he says. "It was a good feeling. It's like they were thinking, 'This is a good investment for the future. There's something about what we did that will pay off in the future.'
"Even though it might not have done as well economically, it's worth pushing and maybe we'll come up with a formula for a future one that will be the right combination of things."
Cineplex executives also seem eager to continue working with niche films, says Fichman.
"We had a lunch afterwards, with Michael Kennedy, who runs the whole thing, and Brad LaDouceur, who runs the specialty division, and they took us to lunch a few days after -- me and Larry, and we were kind of bummed out about it -- and ... said, 'Listen, it was a really good effort, we learned so much, we've got to do it again. This is the future, this is what we need to do. We need to be open to these things and to maximize our audiences everywhere."'
