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In a recent article in the Guardian, Danny Leigh posed the question of "Who Killed Cult Movies", pointing a lot of fingers including one pointing at Quentin Tarantino. The question is a reasonable one and Tarantino a likely candidate, but the blame shouldn’t be put on the directors and more on the system. Can a cult movie even exist today when distributors and marketing strategists seem to have found a way to exploit a potential “cult status” of a film? Viral marketing for sure-fire boxoffice hits like “The Dark Knight” and a clear aim at target audiences for the most marginal of films seems to point towards the fact that it’s all come down to business. And even if a film fails at the box office, DVD sales, online distribution down the line and selling films to cable channels for a handsome reward ensure a hefty profit. Not to speak of directors consciously using the cult formula and filming techniques to set their films apart from big summer blockbusters. Recent case in point: Neill Blomcamp’s “District 9”. The story has been told before. Originally slated to work on a HALO movie with Peter Jackson that fell through, Jackson decided to help Blomkamp helm his own project based on the short “Alive in Joburg”. Shot for a mere 30 million dollars, it apparently came from nowhere and stormed the box-office, making 114 million dollars in the US alone so far. But the real hero seems to be the head behind the film’s US marketing, Marc Weinstock, of SONY/Tri-Star, as mentioned by Nikki Finke. Signs had been there early on, appearing on random park benches and bus stops way ahead of the film’s release, asking to report non-human activity in a tie-in to the film’s sci-fi take on Apartheid and segregation. The film’s marketing finally exploded at the 2009 Comic-Con in San Diego where the film was touted as the discovery of the year despite its clever (and hidden) marketing campaign. In all of that, Weinstock made sure there was no mention of the actual distributor, SONY/Tri-Star, and the company’s logo didn’t appear in any of the adverts, as that might have negatively influenced the target audience who were meant to feel that they discovered the film on their own, turning it into a success through word of mouth alone.
The calculating strategy behind this all is striking and eerily effective, in the way it undermines legitimate indie productions and the channels for marketing they have – namely conventions and the internet. It also re-opens the age-old debate of having to find a distributor in a time when the studios’ faux indie houses like FOX Searchlight or Paramount’s Vantage are facing financial problems or are abandoned outright, leaving it to the major studios to pick up potential indie hits, masking the fact that they are involved. In a sense, it is reminiscent of the studios learning to exploit the niche markets uncovered through New Hollywood, culminating in commercial films directly aimed at the target audiences in the 1980s, be it soft horror or high school teen films turned into franchises. It comes as no surprise, then, that a sequel to "District 9" is more than likely by now. In the end, then, it’s not down to the fact that cult movies aren’t made anymore, but the more troubling trend of major companies appropriating these films and previous venues of advertising them. Tarantino may be culpable in that, consciously re-visiting areas of what may prove to be a cult film, such as looking back at the 70s for trashy B-flick material to be marketed through the Weinsteins. Which proved to be anything but successful, “Death Proof” losing money and status for the director. Instead, it’s the majors, not the indie auteur directors, who seem to have learned to play the game and exploit an area that, previously, appeared to be outside of their clout. Namely, the audience, who used to assign cult status to films by flocking to them unexpectedly but who, by now, are played by the majors to go through the same motions without realizing they're playing right into the overall scheme of a film's marketing. |
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