Tonight AARP Movies For Grownups held a Facebook Watch Party to screen Phoenix, Oregon for their 2 million Facebook members. We’ll have all of the demographics and stats in a few days, but from what we could tell, about 1,000 people watched the film live and 25,000 watched the replay or checked in at some point over 6 hours.
Movies For Grownups usually shows pre-release studio films in cities across the nation a week or two before their wide theatrical release. It’s a service to their members and also a marketing opportunity for the distributors.
This was the first time they have streamed a release online. There were a few hiccups, but overall it seems to have gone well. They paid a flat fee to screen for one evening.
Any events or publicity done have the hope of increasing the overall awareness and value for the film in the long-term. We crossed over 1,000 orders on our streaming platform today as we introduced new theaters and Film Festival Day. Based on past experience selling off a private website, that is quite a lot.
Building awareness is almost more important than sales at this stage of the game. In the world of online streaming, most people buy from a service they are used to — like iTunes, Amazon, Hulu or GooglePlay. If they’ve heard of the film during this intense publicity period, they may be more likely to buy on their favorite platform later this summer when the film is available everywhere. The platforms may also be willing to give the film higher placement on their pages.
All this to say, the Theatrical-at-Home period is turning out to be much like a theatrical release with publicity, marketing, awareness and partners all leveraged towards long-term sales. Often the theatrical period for a film is treated as a loss-leader. Even though box office numbers are in the tens of millions for studio films, so is the marketing expense. For our film, it is similar but on a much smaller scale.
If we can continue to build on national press, partnerships and awareness, we have the potential to set a solid foundation for future sales and worldwide deals.
♡ Annie