Optimum ReleasingJoe Cornish's directorial debut was one of the most exciting British films released this decade, and possibly one of the best genre movies of recent times full stop. Having cut his teeth on TV and film parodies on the Adam & Joe show, a handful of music videos and the scripts for The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn and Ant Man with friend Edgar Wright, Cornish threw himself into this amazing John Carpenter-esque tale of council estate kids facing down an alien invasion, with hilarious jokes and a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of the ostracised "chav", never indulging in easy stereotypes. Also, Nick Frost played a stoner. With Edgar Wright attaching his name as executive producer, hopefully ensuring fans of Hot Fuzz and Shaun Of The Dead to the film, and having been a modest box office success in the UK and abroad, it seemed like Attack The Block was a shoo-in to do well across in the States. After all, it's reference points were American filmmakers like Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante and Walter Hill. What put the US distributors off, though, were the quintessentially South London accents and slang used by the characters, doubting that audiences would understand them. They even considered subtitling the film, something that happened with Danny Boyle's Trainspotting years before, to make the thick Scottish brogues more palatable to the average Yank. At SXSW Cornish addressed the audience directly on the issue during a Q&A, an overwhelming majority of them saying they had no problem understanding the film. "My gut feeling is maybe they underestimate you guys," said Cornish. "With 20 years of hip-hop culture, with The Wire, did you feel this was difficult? No? Well, tell your local distributors that that's the case." The studio weren't as confident, released the film in just eight cinemas with no publicity, and it sunk without a trace.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
Optimum ReleasingJoe Cornish's directorial debut was one of the most exciting British films released this decade, and possibly one of the best genre movies of recent times full stop. Having cut his teeth on TV and film parodies on the Adam & Joe show, a handful of music videos and the scripts for The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn and Ant Man with friend Edgar Wright, Cornish threw himself into this amazing John Carpenter-esque tale of council estate kids facing down an alien invasion, with hilarious jokes and a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of the ostracised "chav", never indulging in easy stereotypes. Also, Nick Frost played a stoner. With Edgar Wright attaching his name as executive producer, hopefully ensuring fans of Hot Fuzz and Shaun Of The Dead to the film, and having been a modest box office success in the UK and abroad, it seemed like Attack The Block was a shoo-in to do well across in the States. After all, it's reference points were American filmmakers like Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante and Walter Hill. What put the US distributors off, though, were the quintessentially South London accents and slang used by the characters, doubting that audiences would understand them. They even considered subtitling the film, something that happened with Danny Boyle's Trainspotting years before, to make the thick Scottish brogues more palatable to the average Yank. At SXSW Cornish addressed the audience directly on the issue during a Q&A, an overwhelming majority of them saying they had no problem understanding the film. "My gut feeling is maybe they underestimate you guys," said Cornish. "With 20 years of hip-hop culture, with The Wire, did you feel this was difficult? No? Well, tell your local distributors that that's the case." The studio weren't as confident, released the film in just eight cinemas with no publicity, and it sunk without a trace.