Freestyle ReleasingAfter all her years in the acting business and creative and commercial successes under her belt, Uma Thurman should be a sure bet for filmmakers.Katherine Dieckmann's Motherhood had some potential to be good, too, as the director channeled her own experiences as a struggling parent in a big city into Motherhood's story of a struggling parent in a big city. An independent production with a low budget of $10 million (low compared to, say, Transformers 4), it was one of two small films financed by the New York City-based iDeal Partners Film Fund. In fact, iDeal was started precisely to release low-risk films, movies that would definitely make a return on their investment during the credit crunch age, with low budgets, productions which took advantage of tax incentives and which starred "commercially-tested actors" such as Thurman. As it happened, Motherhood received a limited American release in 2009 by Freestyle Releasing and, even worse, was shown in just one cinema in London the following year, making just £9 from a single audience member on its opening night and £88 on its opening weekend, with eleven people seeing the film in all. No less than veteran film critic Barry Norman suggested that "it's a reasonable assumption that there was a marketing and advertising catastrophe, and people didn't know it was showing." Motherhood was actually only the second biggest flop in UK cinema history, but the first was a small indie film that made £7; this was a reasonable-sized Hollywood production. Which eleven people saw. Because the studio messed up.
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/
Freestyle ReleasingAfter all her years in the acting business and creative and commercial successes under her belt, Uma Thurman should be a sure bet for filmmakers.Katherine Dieckmann's Motherhood had some potential to be good, too, as the director channeled her own experiences as a struggling parent in a big city into Motherhood's story of a struggling parent in a big city. An independent production with a low budget of $10 million (low compared to, say, Transformers 4), it was one of two small films financed by the New York City-based iDeal Partners Film Fund. In fact, iDeal was started precisely to release low-risk films, movies that would definitely make a return on their investment during the credit crunch age, with low budgets, productions which took advantage of tax incentives and which starred "commercially-tested actors" such as Thurman. As it happened, Motherhood received a limited American release in 2009 by Freestyle Releasing and, even worse, was shown in just one cinema in London the following year, making just £9 from a single audience member on its opening night and £88 on its opening weekend, with eleven people seeing the film in all. No less than veteran film critic Barry Norman suggested that "it's a reasonable assumption that there was a marketing and advertising catastrophe, and people didn't know it was showing." Motherhood was actually only the second biggest flop in UK cinema history, but the first was a small indie film that made £7; this was a reasonable-sized Hollywood production. Which eleven people saw. Because the studio messed up.