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Demystifying The Indie Film Journey
You can never do too much to put your movie out. And so I was in Sacramento and Dallas and then took my grandma and aunt yesterday. Like, I've been all over the place just taking people to the movies because we want people to go see our movie. This is truly independent, a show that demystifies the demystifies the indie film journey by documenting the process of releasing independent films in theaters. Each week, Garrett Batty and I, Darren Smith, will update you on our journey, bringing guests to share their insights into the process and answer your questions.
Daren:Today on the podcast, we dive into the wider release of Faith of Angels on 375 screens. How did we do? What did the box office look like? We're gonna get in deep. This is Truly Independent episode 19.
Daren:Garrett, hey, man. How's it going?
Garrett:Hey. I'm doing good, Darren. How are you?
Daren:I'm good. I've recovered from being in multiple time zones over the weekend, and seeing the movie multiple times. I saw the I saw Faith of Angels, Wednesday, Thursday, twice on Friday, Saturday, and Monday. So I saw it 6 times in the last 5 or 6 days.
Garrett:Okay. Yeah. You've been you've been busy.
Daren:Yeah. It's been, you know, it's we go back to this quote from, your our friend Brandon Purdy of you can never do too much to put your movie out. And so I was in Sacramento and Dallas and then took my grandma and aunt yesterday. Like, I've been all over the place just taking people to the movies because we want people to go see our movie. But, that's what we're kinda talking about today.
Daren:We're we had our grand opening of our wider release of the film, and so that's kind of our topic today. Why don't we start off with, box office?
Garrett:Yes. Alright. Perfect. It's good. Yeah.
Garrett:Let's see. We were recording this on October 1st. So let's look at that weekend's previous weekend's box office. We got Wild Robot that came in with 35,000,000, on almost 4,000 screens.
Daren:Yeah. And it felt like all 4,000 were in every theater that I went to because, man, they just had, like, 3 or 4 different screens in every theater that we were looking at this weekend. I'm like, come on guys.
Garrett:It is so so interesting. And they get, yeah, they get, I mean, multiple screens per theater. Right? So even in a in a multiplex of 20 screens, you've got 6 dedicated to wild robot.
Daren:Yeah.
Garrett:You know, as I look at this box office mojo, there are 4 brand new movies in the, in the top ten. Mhmm. And then if I scroll down to the top 20, add another 4. So we got 8 new movies Yeah. That weekend, 9, 10.
Garrett:10 that were begging for screens. You know? And when Wild Robot and Beetlejuice still have multiple screens in a theater, it it becomes a very crowded place. Yeah. But good weekend for them.
Garrett:Beetlejuice 16. How was how's our model?
Daren:How is our model? So I see, 1 or 2 that I think are kind of in that sub thousand screen range. You know, we have vindicating Trump at 813, a movie called Lee at 854 screens, and a movie called Azrael, 762 screens. So all, you know, much bigger than our releases, but really in line with what the carpenter's planning on doing at 600 screens. And I would even start saying 600 plus because I think Purdy is just going after it, and they're gonna try to get as many as they can.
Daren:Hey, indie filmmakers and movie lovers. This show is sponsored by Purdy Distribution. Since 2011, they've been bringing incredible independent films to theaters, like Garrett Batty's The Saratov Approach, T. C. Christensen's Love Kennedy, and McClain Nelson's Once I Was A Beehive.
Daren:They've worked with top notch directors like Mitch Davis and Mark Goodman specializing in family, faith based, and funny films. This year alone, they've released hits with JK Studios like Go West and Villains Inc, and have even branched out internationally with films shot in South Africa and Japan. Purdy Distribution works closely with indie filmmakers, designing personalized distribution plans whether it's a theatrical release or straight to streaming on platforms like Amazon, Itunes, Google, and more. If you have a PG or PG 13 film ready for the world, think about reaching out to Purdy distribution. They're approachable and knowledgeable, ready to help you visualize your film's distribution.
Daren:Even if your film isn't fully polished, they can offer valuable guidance. Plus, if you need that crucial distribution piece for investor packages, Purdy Distribution can provide a letter of intent to distribute, helping you secure funding without locking you into a contract. Mark your calendars for Purdy Distribution's upcoming releases, Tokyo Cowboy on August 30th, the digital release of Thabo and the Rhino Case on September 1st, Faith of Angels in theaters on September 12th, Villains Inc on Amazon and Itunes on October 1st, and The Carpenter on November 1st. To stay updated on these releases and more, sign up for their newsletter at purdiedistribution.com. That's purdiedistribution.com.
Daren:Now, back to the show.
Garrett:We've seen them we've seen them do that for Faith of Angels. That's for sure.
Daren:Yeah. For sure. And we're gonna talk about that. You know, we've had there's some other movies that came out on one screen, 25 screens, 5 screens. Now I want to spend a minute on this because maybe, you know, I have an assumption as to how this works.
Daren:But Saturday night is a movie that came out over the weekend by Sony Pictures Releasing. It's a movie that I think about, like, the first time that Saturday Night Live went live, 1st, episode.
Garrett:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Daren:Did 270,000 on 5 screens for a per screen average of $54,097. Now the only way that I see that happening is if over the weekend, they've got 5 theaters and each one of those screens is a 100 seat theater and they're doing 10 screenings over a weekend and they're somehow getting whether it's influencers or special screenings or invites or they're just buying out every theater, and they're inviting people to come see it for free opening weekend to get reviews, to get influencers, to get buzz. And that's how they're getting these super high per screen averages because I don't know that if you just open it in LA, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco, that you get, you know, that's 5,000 people per screen to show up. I just don't see that happening from their marketing efforts unless they are personally filling those screens. What do you think?
Garrett:Yeah. It's a good question. I I don't know, but that is that does occur a lot. Right? And so I don't know if this is their, you know, New York and LA screening.
Garrett:What I mean, if you look at you go 5 screens and they're 54,000 per screen. So what is that? 10,000
Daren:That's 55,055100 per screen per per theater over a 3 day period.
Garrett:Yeah.
Daren:So you can't even fit that in one screening. Like, if you had a 100 screens and you did 10 or a 100 seats and you did 10 screenings, that's a 1000 people. So how do you get 5,000 people to one theater? Like, that's the part that confuses me.
Garrett:Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's a good it's a good question. I mean, I I think your estimate on seats is low because you get to those theaters in New York City.
Garrett:I mean, we opened Faith of Angels. We screened at the, the Zion's Indie Film Fest and had 900 people Yeah. On our night of screening.
Daren:Yeah. That's certainly true. Okay. And they I don't know, like, how big the the Chinese theater is in LA and these other big ones, but maybe they're targeting, you know, big auditoriums that have 5 100, 600, seats in them. You know, the Sarah has 750 in their main room.
Daren:So, yeah, maybe that's the case, and they're doing 10 screenings in at a 600 seat room. But still, you have to fill all 10 of them in order to get that many per screen average. Like
Garrett:I'd be curious too if it's if it's a premium ticket price. If you're saying, hey. Saturday night is open you know, is is playing on exclusively these screens for select audit for whatever. And your premium ticket price is gonna be $25 per I don't know. Or maybe they do 4 wallet.
Garrett:Maybe they just buy it out and pack it full of the industry people to review it and screen it. Yeah. I don't know. It's good.
Daren:I'm curious here. The only thing I'd have heard before is that studios will do this model sometimes in order to get lots of press, lots of influencer buzz, lots of posts the week before it goes wide because what we'll see next week, Saturday night, we'll probably add 500 to a 1000 screens because, a, it had a big per screen average, but, b, now they've got all this earned media. And that's why I think maybe there's a strategy where they're they're buying out those theaters and just filling it with whoever they can. But no more speculation. That's not super helpful.
Daren:Let's dive in.
Garrett:Well, it is it is interesting. So I have one note on that. If you take if you take our screen, our opening screen of Faith of Angels for at Zion's Indie Film Fest, and you go 900 people saw it that weekend at $15 a ticket, that's a $13,000 weekend, like, night in one screen. Yeah. So, it's yeah.
Garrett:I mean, maybe maybe they're doing that multiple times per day over the course of a weekend.
Daren:Well, maybe we should ask Purdy to add that to our box office numbers for the week.
Garrett:Yeah. Add a little 30,000. Yeah. It's anyways, a good weekend. Another just interesting note on that weekend.
Garrett:So the distributor SDG releasing, they did the, I am amiracist, and then also this vindicating Trump. So certainly have a a brand that they're going for. But they've got the number 12 and 13 movies in the country. I think that that's pretty interesting. Yeah.
Daren:And and amiracist was in the top 10 previously. Last week, it was number 7. So
Garrett:Oh, yeah. It's it's been in there for a little bit. It's, it's what is it? It's 3rd week out. I think that it is interesting to note too, you know, our car for Carpenter, we're we're saying, hey, 600, 600 plus screens.
Garrett:It might be more, it might be 750. And the goal is to be in the top ten. But look at these movies like Lee who start, you know, starring Kate Winslet and, who's the guy Andy Samberg, is in that movie, which is not a comedy. But, yeah, Lee, which opened 8 50 screens, and they are not near the top 10. They didn't break a million.
Daren:They're 15th movie this week.
Garrett:Same with vindicating Trump, you know, 813 screens. Almost a 1,000 per screen and they're number 13. So it's a big ask. Like, our goal with the Carpenter to break into the top 10 is not just a given just because we open on 600 plus screens. Like, they're I mean, they've done significant marketing for Lee.
Garrett:We we I've seen clips of, you know, late night talk shows with, Kate Winslet and Annie Sandberg and everything doing their thing. And they they opened, you know, Roadside Attractions, knows how to release a movie.
Daren:Yeah.
Garrett:But they don't but but they didn't you know, I don't know what their plan was, but I I would imagine that, they would want a little bit more. They'd wanna break a million on 850 screens.
Daren:Yeah. So here's I don't have the perfect data to show, but after doing all the research over the last couple months of box office, my I'm gonna pause it that if your number one movie is like this week, 35,000,000, instead of having a huge week like Inside Out 2 or Deadpool and Wolverine, some of these or Beetlejuice Beetlejuice where it's 50 or 100 or 200,000,000 for the number one movie. What I think happens is then all the ticket sales get spread out among that top 10, and the number 10 spot is a really high number, Like, 2,000,000 2,100,000 this week. Howl's Moving counts Castle, a studio gift
Garrett:2.3. Yeah.
Daren:20th anniversary released by Fathom Events on a 1500 almost 1600 screens did 2,100,000. That's the highest number 10 spot we've seen this year. And so Oh. By by half a $1,000,000, by the way, like, by a large margin. So what happens is Yeah.
Daren:On the weeks where you have a Deadpool or an Inside Out 2 or a Beetlejuice that does 50 or a 100 plus opening weekend, then your counter programming is, oh, I don't wanna go to a crowded theater and sit in the front row, so I'm gonna go see something else. And those are the weeks where you get the 500, 600, $700,000 box office for the number 10 spot. So whereas a lot of people kinda shy away from, oh, this big massive movie Deadpool is coming out this weekend. That might actually the best be the best week to release as an indie. We saw it last year with Sound of Freedom.
Daren:They came out July 4th, which was the same weekend as a lot of big movies.
Garrett:Indiana Jones.
Daren:Jones and Mission Impossible, I think, and or, Top Gun. No. I don't know what it was. I'm not gonna say because I don't
Garrett:think Mission Impossible was right around there.
Daren:Yeah. I think it was Mission Impossible. But they ended up doing 250,000,000 and ended up having a great opening weekend because they were counter programming. And so I actually now think yeah. I was really nervous about Wild Robot.
Daren:I actually thought it was gonna do 50 or plus, 1,000,000 this weekend, but I think it might be better to open on a huge opening movie weekend rather than a lot of smaller. Like you said, 5 4 movies in the top 10, 8 new releases in the top 20, because it's a pretty saturated weekend, so a lot of it got spread out. So something to think about if you're putting your movies in theaters.
Garrett:I think you scroll down too, and it's kind of fun to see faith of angels there on that chart coming in at 23 with a 144. Well
Daren:and here's let's start talking about all the good things that happened this weekend. Right? Because last week we were 29th and this week we're 23rd. So we moved up 6 spots in the box office. We added.
Daren:Yeah. By the count that's here, we actually we know that we added, and we got up to 375 screens. Box Office Mojo is reporting 324, which is almost, 300 screen increase from our limited release in Utah. And so our box office went up 283% over last weekend. You know, a lot of cool things happened.
Daren:And the coolest thing, you know, you look at when you look at 6 figure box office, now you can start talking about 10,000 plus, tens of thousands of people in a weekend that saw our movie. To me, that is what it's all about. I know I've talked a lot about numbers and box office over this podcast, but really when it comes down to it, if I'm being honest and if I'm remembering to talk about it like right now, it's about having people see your movie. And we had at least 15,000 people see our movie over the weekend, Garrett.
Garrett:Yeah. It's it is cool. I mean, that's good perspective to have too. I mean, it's fun to look at those numbers and go, okay. There's yeah.
Garrett:There's gross there there is gross increase, screen increase, and, percentage, from last week were up 283%. I mean, obviously with increased number of screens, that's going to happen. So that's good. There's also a lot to learn from that. You go, okay.
Garrett:Well, a 144,000 as is reported by Box Office Mojo. We actually did a little bit more. Mhmm. But most of those some of those screens aren't reporting yet. You know, you break that down over 320 screens, 375 screens is what it was, and that's not a a, per screen average that's competitive.
Garrett:Like, we're gonna be fighting to hold screens. Like, we have to you have to our distributor has to now come up with an argument, a defense on why theaters should hold the movie longer. And so that's an it's an interesting discussion point that we have to be prepared for.
Daren:Yeah. And I I know I keep harping on this topic of being oversubscribed, but it's such an essential principle for everyone listening to this podcast to understand that, like, yes. We've been touting and promoting the fact that it's in 375 screens, and everyone can go see it in a theater near you, and those are all really honest and and positive things. But what it did to the economics was it kind of messed it up. We oversupplied the marketplace compared to the demand that existed.
Daren:We're just speaking in very plain, basic, straightforward economic terms. So if we had, you know, we're looking at about 15,000 people that saw the movie, well, we supplied way more than 15,000 seats to go see the movie. And so, you know, the numbers don't always work out that way. You're not gonna sell every seat in every screening of every theater. Right?
Daren:I went at 2:15 yesterday in Sandy, Utah with my aunt and aunt aunt and grandma, and there were, 7 of us in the theater that holds 55. Right? So that's but that kinda speaks to the point of if we had fewer screens, we'd probably have more people in each theater and then our per screen average would go up. So I think that's an interesting thing to talk about for a little bit of the strategy of we talked about 200 screens. We ended up at 375.
Daren:We were super excited, but now we're maybe a little bit like, oh, the per screen average, that kind of hurts us going into week 2. You know, what are you how are you reconciling all this? How are you thinking about all this?
Garrett:I mean, I'm just along those lines as well where you you say, okay. You know, you have a play and you run the play and I, it's a hard call to make. You know, like, how much do you buy into the momentum that you're building and how how do you, perhaps filter through that and say, what is the reality out there? But, yes, I think that it it would be interesting to you know, you can't go back, obviously, but it'd be interesting to say, okay, do is there data that supports what you're what you're saying? I think the data does support what you're saying is we we we have to maintain a demand.
Garrett:And and so if the theaters if Purdy is saying, we got theaters that want this movie. Say, great. Fantastic. That let's maintain that. Let's not immediately satisfy them.
Garrett:Let's maintain and say, great. If you want this movie, we need you to help promote it. Put the tickets on sale for 2 weeks and start getting the word out. And here's a little bit of money to help do that. All of the onus was on us, you know, the theater is saying, hey, I want this movie Friday and it's Monday.
Garrett:So Purdy's shipping the movie out, and we're trying to get the word out via our only resource at this point is social media. And, it just spreads everything very, very thin, and so there's not enough demand, I guess, from an audience to to go see it. So I I I mean, I'm kinda processing and thinking out loud, so it's not very coherent thought. But, yes, I think limiting the supply to increase the demand, cool would have helped us.
Daren:Yeah. Well, I think you touched on some important things that the audience probably has never heard of, like, the behind the scenes of how this works. Right? So every Monday, we get on a call. Our distributor gets on calls and emails and says, hey.
Daren:Who wants the movie? Do you want it? Do you want it? Do you want it? And he's you know, they're messaging 800, 900 people, you know, bookers.
Daren:And the ones that come in and say, yeah. We're ready. Yeah. We want the movie, Like you said, instead of saying, great. Here's how we're doing our rollout.
Daren:You say you want it. You can't have it this Friday. You know, you need at least 2 weeks or a weekend in between now and when you release it to put the tickets on sale for us to promote it, for us to get all the materials to you. Because what I experienced in theaters that had it this weekend that we booked them on Monday and I was seeing it Friday, the posters weren't up in the theater. The we didn't have a standee get to a a screening in time.
Daren:And we and our team are scrambling to try to meet that demand rather than doing it in a really measured and conscious way. And so I think in the future, and this would benefit the Carpenter, which is why we're talking about it, if a theater wants it, it's like, great. You can have it, not this weekend, but next weekend. Like, book it now. Give us the time to get all of our ducks in a row.
Daren:Let us promote the movie because the other thing that happened is we had money, set aside for theaters to do co op marketing. Basically, we're we're giving them some of our marketing budget for them to run ads or send emails or promote it in their theaters, meaning they'll do, like, in theater trailers in their TVs in the lobby and that kind of stuff. We had theaters that didn't spend it because they didn't have time. And we're sitting here going, oh, well, we could have used that money. Right?
Daren:Because we're pretty thin on all this at this point. And so when we put ourselves in the position of not having any leverage and just saying, oh, we gotta do what we gotta do. We gotta hustle and we gotta go. Then, you know, we ended up with a couple of things that are like, Oh, that's not great. Yeah.
Daren:It would have been really awesome to have Faith of Angels in the theater for a weekend with posters and trailers before people can go see it, because at that point we were bringing people to theaters and texting everybody personally saying it's there, it's there, it's there, go see it. And I can only do that so much in a week, whereas if we had more time, could, I think, been more effective with our marketing in the theaters that were opening last weekend.
Garrett:It's an interesting point because the job has to be done. Like, for every you know, for our Utah release, we had a team on the ground in Utah, you, me, Michelle, and, Kurt, and and we're all kind of doing everything we can. We're pulling all the levers to say, hey. We've got PR. We've got marketing.
Garrett:We've got advertising. We have the product and the relationships with the theaters, and that's Utah. And we're getting you know, recording a dozen podcasts and appearing on local stations. We can't do that over and over and over for every every market that we open, but that doesn't mean that but that still has to happen in order to have success. And and so we have to figure out a way to replicate that scenario in other major markets which we did on a very small scale with you in Dallas.
Garrett:Right? And guess what some of our best performing screens were? Dallas area. So you appearing at 1 theater in Dallas for one screening drew drew enough attention to that area that it improved the, the weekend there. I went to Atlanta.
Garrett:Now now we can get into another scenario where there's a hurricane happening in the southern states, and we're having a premiere there. But that theater, that awareness was there. And so, I guess, to continue this supply and demand thing, do do you say, look, we have enough supply of personnel, to go to 2 or 3 cities per week. And that's what we're gonna target. And the release pattern is we're gonna open in Utah.
Garrett:2 weeks later, we're gonna do Texas and Georgia. 2 weeks later, we're gonna do Florida and Carolinas. You know, and do we just kind of plat platform roll it out that way? I think the whole time that continues to build up demand. Like, other people are seeing this.
Garrett:It's like, oh, we that looks fun. We can't wait. You know, when are you coming to Nevada? When are you coming to Southern California? And we kinda get to do that.
Garrett:We're doing a little bit of that model with the carpenter, and we could talk about that. But, you know, that's a thought. Would there be value in that? Yeah. I think there would be for something like this.
Daren:Yeah. So as we're thinking about applying the lessons learned to the carpenter because we have this blessing of we can immediately start implementing some of the things we learned. One of the big things that we haven't yet talked about today is reviews. So we were really, really pushing hard over the weekend to get our minimum number reviews up on Rotten Tomatoes. And the reason that we focus on Rotten Tomatoes is a lot of other sites pull that data, and we get free marketing.
Daren:Right? If we're a certified fresh, if we're a a 100% on the popcorn meter, then those things can pop up on ticketing sites. I think Fandango shows those things on their site when you're looking at what movies you're gonna get. And so if we have a certified fresh 100% Rotten Tomatoes score next to our movie, they go, oh, that looks good. I'm going to check it out.
Daren:Right? But we going into Friday, we did not have the minimum 50 audience reviews. And so you and I were texting our family and friends and everybody that we know had seen it saying, please leave a review. Here's the link direct to it. Here's how to do it.
Daren:I think 15 out of the 50 were my family and April's family. You know? Like, we had to manually get that number up. And I think one of our real missed opportunities was not getting 5 reviews, positive or negative, for the movie before it came out wide because we're still waiting on 2 more reviews as of this recording before we have a score on Rotten Tomatoes. And the the reason you want that is because if it's a good score, which ours will be because so far everybody's rating it 5 stars, like, it would show up on the sidebar.
Daren:It would be part of Rotten Tomatoes. You know, here's what to watch. Here's what's fresh this week. Like, you get free email marketing. You get free press.
Daren:You get free PR. And that was a missed, opportunity for us. So for me, going into the Carpenter, are we talking to reviewers now about The Carpenter, you know, 4 or 5 weeks out? I think it was 5 weeks out. Right?
Daren:If not, we better get on it this week so we can get some of those reviews loaded up before opening weekend so that people can go, oh, I get it. I I wanna see this movie because the audience likes it.
Garrett:Yeah. It it is fun. It is fun now to go to Rotten Tomatoes. The audience did I mean, not only was it us texting friends and family, which is obviously a very friendly crowd and we're we're going to, tilt the scale in our favor. But, people that were commenting on Facebook, people that are, you know, two levels removed from the movie, not that immediate sphere sphere of influence that are reaching out and saying, hey.
Garrett:We saw the movie. We loved it or whatever it is. FilmFrog was doing a good job of responding to them saying, thank you for sharing this on Facebook. Will you please share this on on Rotten Tomatoes? And, yes, if I look right now, and just go to all movies in theaters and sort by highest audience score, guess what?
Garrett:Faith of angels is top of the pack. Where, there's one other movie, Jungkook, that opens September 18th that has a 100, and we have a 100, and, no other movie does. And so that's that's a fun stat to to be in. And it's a marketing point. Yeah.
Garrett:So once we get it a 100% tomato meter or a 100% popcorn meter, you you take that graphic, create it, throw it on Facebook, and, it feeds the interest.
Daren:Yeah. We need to do that because that's a good it's a good one to have. I don't even know how to find that. But
Garrett:well, by the time people hear this podcast, it'll be it'll be there.
Daren:Nice. That's amazing. So, yeah, that to me is a big lesson learned. The other one too, I think, is it's it's important to have tickets on sale more than 2 days before a screen showtime, before a weekend. Right?
Daren:Some of the theaters that we booked Monday last week didn't have showtimes available on their site until Wednesday morning or Wednesday midday. And when you're trying to set up a special screening in Elk Grove that you already bought tickets to, you're like, can we get the showtime up, please?
Garrett:Yeah. You already bought your flights. You're you were committed to go there. Just hoping that they would put a screen up.
Daren:And the faith worked out. Right? And we had good, good show ups or good showings at those screenings. But, man, it was stressful going, we need tickets now. Everybody's waiting.
Daren:There was even a screening that happened on on Thursday night in Rocklin, which is, you know, 40 minutes from my house in South Sacramento Elk Grove area. And people just said, well, we're gonna go Thursday at 6 because we don't know if it's gonna show in Elk Grove. So people in Elk Grove were driving 45 minutes to go see it in Rockland on Thursday night, and some of those friends came again Friday because they live in Elk Grove and they love the movie and wanna support it. But, like, that's not fair to them to say, oh, we know it's gonna be in Elk Grove on Friday, but they're like, well, we don't see tickets, so we're just gonna go on Thursday. It's like, I love them.
Daren:They're amazing. Thank you, Tisha. But, like, if she's listening. But I think for the Carpenter, I don't know how it works because every time we talk about this stuff with distributors, it's like, oh, we're at the mercy of the studios, we're at the mercy of the bookers, we're at the mercy of the chains. And it's like, okay, yes, but it's still a marketplace and we can create some positioning and some leverage here to say, oh, you want our movie?
Daren:Well, here are our terms. We can't give it to you this week because we don't have enough time to get you everything we need to make it a success. So if you say on Monday, yeah, you can have it, but not this weekend. You can have it next weekend. That gives us time.
Daren:I don't know that they're gonna be upset with that. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. I've never had those phone calls. But, man, I really don't want to be doing the same scramble the opening weekend of the Carpenter going, oh, we got 400 screens this week that came through because everybody's talking about it.
Daren:How do we scramble and get, you know, activate those audiences in those areas? You can't in 4 days or 2 days.
Garrett:Yeah. It's a yeah. There's a lot out of your control. There's a lot of variables. And you I I mean, at the end of the day, you do the best you can.
Garrett:I mean, our job as a filmmaker is to make a good movie, and, we're we're seeing that. We've seen people respond very well to it. And so the rest is the rest is kinda up to up to the marketplace, up to the audience.
Daren:Yeah. Well, and I love what you said, yesterday in our, you know, weekly meeting was that faith based movies are kind of a a slow burn. You get people that go
Garrett:Yeah. They are word-of-mouth building.
Daren:Word-of-mouth builds. We we aren't we've never tried to say we're gonna be the number one film opening weekend on Faith of Angels. You know, we had hopes that maybe we could crack the top 20 and those kind of things, but still it's box office big peak on week 1 is not our model. And the idea that people are gonna see it Thursday night in previews, Friday, Saturday, and then they're gonna go to church on Sunday, and they're gonna tell their friends about the movie. And then that's going to inspire people to see it on Tuesday with their family and Thursday night, the next week, and then that leads to an opening weekend or a a really good strong second week.
Daren:And what's unfortunate is I think we're going to miss out on some of that because we're probably going to drop some of the theaters, some of the bigger chains that are all about box office. But a lot of the mom and pops, the smaller ones like the Megaplexes and stuff that have now had it in 3 weeks in a row, and they're going to keep going because people keep showing up. And so that's that's another aspect of it. It's like we have to position the movie as not that it's going to make all the money this weekend, but that if you keep it in and you give audiences a chance to have word-of-mouth play out, that means you gotta hold it for at least 2 weeks, and then you might be incentivized financially to keep holding it because you gave the the word-of-mouth a chance.
Garrett:It's, and you have yeah. That is a discussion the distributor has to have with the exhibitor. And, I think you have to have an arsenal ready of reasons why they need to do that and whether it's, you know, if I'm a big distributor, I've got I've got another movie coming down the pipe and so you're gonna hold mine if you want my other movie. We are in that position right now with Carpenter. And so, you know, we say, hey.
Garrett:Faith of angels is in theaters. Yes. We've we performed in the middle of the pack. You know, theaters have Joker coming out and White Bird coming out this weekend. It'd be easy to just throw us out.
Garrett:You know, and the distributor has to say, look. The all of those things you've listed, faith based is word-of-mouth. Let that Sunday, word-of-mouth carry at least to another weekend. Faith based is a PG. It's a very crowded r rated marketplace right now.
Garrett:You know, PG has a has a, again, attracts a different crowd. You're gonna get families Friday night that aren't gonna go see Joker. And and I don't know. For whatever the reasons. Yes.
Garrett:We have another movie coming out, Carpenter, November 1st. If you want it on the break, you need to keep Faith of Angels in for 2 more weeks.
Daren:Yeah. That would have been really cool. That was a smart idea. If we go in saying, yeah, you can book the movie, but you have to commit to 2 weeks. Again, that's believing in ourselves enough to say we have some leverage here in the conversation, because it's disheartening and I think disingenuous to say we're at the mercy of the marketplace.
Daren:We're whatever they say goes. I just don't believe that. I think you can position you can frame the conversation a different way and say, look. We have something of value, and this is how to maximize it in your theater so that you get
Garrett:Yeah.
Daren:As much out of it as possible. So if we had that conversation of, great. We're excited. You can book it, But here's the best way to maximize this movie because we know this stuff. Don't do it this weekend.
Daren:Open in a week so that you have time for us to do some marketing, for you to do some marketing because we're gonna give you some money, and commit to hold it at least 2 weeks. And if you can do that, you can have our movie. It's being a little bit more unaware of, like, we we hold more cards than we think. It's not, please take our movie. Please take our movie.
Daren:Please take our movie. We can't have that approach.
Garrett:That meant
Daren:It devalues the product in the marketplace. And so if we say, no. No. No. No.
Daren:This is a 100% audience score. This is a certified fresh movie. It is a good movie, but this is how this movie works. You have to hold it 2 weeks. You have to wait.
Daren:Then maybe we pick the best 10 theaters, right, or a 100 theaters or 200 theaters, and they're the ones who are playing ball, and they're the ones who we know are are are behind our strategy and want us to win along with them. And those are good partners to have.
Garrett:So
Daren:that's how maybe I'd I'd change or tweak the strategy in the future instead of doing a 30 screen limited release. Maybe just having a really, leveraged small release, 100 to 200 screens, but we know that all of them are gonna perform because they're all on the same page.
Garrett:Yeah. That's an interesting strategy. I would add to that showtimes. Oh, yeah. You know, we're in so many theaters, and it's just fascinating.
Garrett:And, again, I'm not an exhibitor. I don't run the theater. But, boy, if I did, I think I'd pay a little bit better attention than some of these theaters are because, tonight I mean, we're at Tuesday night. We're recording. We got one theater that consistently puts it at you know, does a show time at 7 o'clock, you know, or 7:10 in that 7 o'clock hour.
Garrett:And it is selling out every 7 o'clock. And then we have theaters that consistently put us at, like, 8:30. And I get it. There's lots of other media out there, lots of other product, but at 8:30, they're not selling any tickets. And you just go, okay.
Garrett:Well, what is it about this movie? Well, people are coming to it with church groups. And church groups have activities these evenings starting at 7. So it's just kind of a gimme like, here's how this movie works. And like you say, Darren, we know how it works.
Garrett:And maybe that's part of the discussion is, yes, you can book this movie, but we need these showtimes. Otherwise, it'll fail for you and it hurts us.
Daren:When I see 10, 15, or 10 o'clock screenings of our movie, I'm just like, I'm sorry. Our audience that's in the theater is either families with kids or older people. You know, our wonderful generation of grandparents that goes and sees movies every week, they go every Friday at 7 or 6:40 or whatever it is. But they're not going to 10 o'clock.
Garrett:11 in the afternoon. 11 in the morning. Yeah. Those those always have a couple of seats sold. So, anyway, lots of opportunities and lots of, like, guessing and kinda little data points here and there.
Garrett:Yeah. For Carpenter, game on. Like, we're rolling out. Purdy is, moving forward, booking the screens. We have a, October starts our premier month.
Garrett:So, we start with a premier in San Diego, then one in Atlanta, one in Salt Lake, and then 2 in Texas this month, 1 each week. And we will, do all our best to take what we've learned with Faith of Angels and even add to it. So we'll get those you know, that will be a talking point at the Oaks Premier saying, go to Rotten Tomatoes now and give us a review, and we'll make sure that we invite Rotten Tomatoes certified critics to those premieres so that they can have a good experience with the film.
Daren:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's huge. And I also think that this probably marks the point where we kind of pivot back to focusing on the carpenter because that's what the big that's the big thing that's coming next and what we're preparing for.
Garrett:We're 4 weeks out.
Daren:So I'm just gonna be, you know, pounding you with questions over the next 3, 4 weeks because I'm not in the meetings, and not as involved in this one. I do want it to succeed, and I wanna do as much as I can. So I'll be at premieres, and I'll be helping promote the movie, obviously. But, it'll be really interesting to see how the lessons learned from Faith of Angels informs the carpenter and how it does in a month. You know, it opens, it opens a month from today, not 28 days from today, but a month.
Daren:So November 1st, we're recording this on October 1st. Happy birthday to my sister Michelle. It's her birthday today. But, like, man, I'm doing all the shout outs today. But I'm very, very excited, and I'm very hopeful.
Daren:And I want the movie to do well. And, I mean, I'm very confident that there will be a handful or a number of theaters that still have faith of angels playing when the Carpenter comes out. And, I mean, that's a feat that not many directors have done, Garrett, having 2 movies in theaters at the same time. And so I don't want to congratulate you beforehand. I'll hold that congratulations until it happens, but that's an exciting potential little bonus for that weekend.
Garrett:Kind of fun. Yeah. Well, who knows? Maybe those have done it, and they say, hey. Lesson learned.
Garrett:We're not gonna do that again. But, no, it is exciting, and I'm I'm grateful that the Carpenter is coming out, that the Krebs family has decided to release it. And, yes, we are in the 4 week sprint to the finish. So, I just saw some marketing for it today that's coming together. I'm I'm after this podcast, I'm gonna hang up and do our, I have to design the step and repeat that needs to be printed out and shipped to this theater in San Diego for next week's premiere.
Daren:Yeah. We are four and a half weeks out from today. I actually looked at a calendar before just assuming I knew how how long we have. So crazy. 4 weeks from Friday.
Garrett:Hey, man.
Daren:Here we go.
Garrett:K. Well, to our audience who continues to listen in, we are going to, book some guests. Darren and I have kind of just been a little bit, you know, focused on this faith of angels. And so, but yeah. Keep thank you for continuing to listen.
Garrett:Thank you for your questions and for sharing the podcast. I thought it was fun that we got a shout out in deadline. You know, the the podcast was mentioned. And so for any new listeners, this is a weekly podcast where we're talking about releasing theatrically independent films.
Daren:Amazing.
Garrett:And all the ups and downs with that. All of them. So so welcome.
Daren:Awesome, man. Good talking to you. We'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of Truly Independent. To join us on the journey, be notified of new episodes and screenings, and ask us questions about today's episode.
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