New Bargain Basement Distribution Strategy Wins Boffo B.O. for 'Midnight Reckoning'

New Bargain Basement Distribution Strategy Wins Boffo B.O. for 'Midnight Reckoning'

Indie Filmmaker Warfel Has New Movie Marketing Plan: He's Giving it Away, But They're Packin' 'em in in St. Joe, and 25 Other Cities, He Expects

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- This past Friday night in St. Joseph, Missouri, as the sold out crowds to the national premiere of "Midnight Reckoning" at the Plaza 8 theaters saw the white stretch Hummer limo drop off the film's golden haired star and local hero, Bruce Michael Hall, they may have been witnessing a new era in movie distribution history. The reason? This supernatural thriller kicked off its domestic theatrical campaign, not through a major studio or even an independent distributor, but through a grassroots network of business associates and friends of Los Angeles based independent filmmaker Derrick Warfel of Winter Star Productions. Warfel, faced with prohibitively high theatrical distribution costs or no theatrical distribution at all, opted for a third way: giving away only the theatrical rights to locally based associates of his throughout the country to induce them to take the risk to rent or book a theater and reap the profits or the losses on their own.

In answer to why Warfel would "give away" the theatrical rights for a token fee to the lead actor, Bruce Hall and his wife Christy in St. Joseph, to a filmmaker friend in Salt Lake City, to a fellow alumnus in Dallas, to a pastor in Bakersfield, and to an off Broadway impresario in Manchester, CT, Warfel said, "Even the major studios rarely break even on theatrical releases. But theatrical releases are needed for a movie to be taken seriously by both the press and the public and to get the attention necessary to set the stage for DVD sales, foreign sales, and other downline revenue. We wanted to give a financial incentive to our associates to distribute the film theatrically for us and then make our money back on DVD later." Warfel caught his biggest break when a fellow graduate school alumnus, head of a non-profit international students organization, got a theater chain to make an in kind donation not only to screen the film in one theater but in 23 theaters located in cities where buying tickets to support a charity might be a popular cause.

The ultimate goal for Winter Star Entertainment (distribution arm of Winter Star Productions) is to develop demand for the DVD release on Oct. 19th of "Midnight Reckoning" on its website www.MidnightReckoning.com where sales of even a modest 50,000 DVDs would cover its costs and net the company a tidy profit. They anticipate that the spiritual, apocalyptic thriller might do well as an alternative for the faith-based market during the normal melee of "Saw" type slasher films during the Halloween season. Winter Star Entertainment materials describes "Midnight Reckoning" as a Twilight Zonish type thriller where a rock musician on the run (Bruce Michael Hall, "Passions", "One Life to Live") hitches a ride with an eccentric prophet type (Tony Longo, "Mulholland Drive", "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days") and his mysterious associate (Persia White, "Girlfriends") and is told by the seer that he only has one night left to live; if he can't justify what he's done with his life he'll be dead by dawn.

Source: Winter Star Productions

CONTACT: Paul PR International; +1-818-360-1107,
midnightreckoning@gmail.com, or winterstarproductions@mindspring.com, for
Winter Star Productions

Web Site: http://www.midnightreckoning.com/

-------
Profile: intent