Liberal Arts

[d. b. wilyumz]

(06-03-2012 12:51 AM)Firefly Wrote:  lol i don't know if i'm following/understanding the market and theater thing lol

You aren't. A market is a metro area, like "the Chicago market" which includes that city and all the surrounding suburbs. Each market is an area where newspaper and TV ads reach all the people in that area.

Each major market has many theater complexes (cineplexes) with multiple screens showing different movies at the same time. Each of these cineplexes is owned by a theater chain (just like gas stations; BP, Texaco, etc., own gas stations all over the country).

The Liberal Arts distributor, IFC, makes agreements with various theater chains to show the movie. The chain will then schedule the movie on one or more screens in each of the cineplexes it owns in the 20 chosen markets. The movie won't be shown in theaters owned by other chains.

A small indie movie like Liberal Arts is usually bought by a small distributor, who doesn't have agreements with a lot of theater chains. The benefit of doing a studio movie like The Lucky One is that Warner Brothers' distribution division has agreements with all the theater chains and they were able to place TLO in more than 3,000 theaters for its opening weekend.