When a film is considered ready to be shown to the public, it falls down to the distributors to bring the film to the public’s attention. This is done by organising events that will bring the film into the limelight e.g. interviews with the stars, theatrical trailers. They also have to decide why their target audience would want to watch this film and their reasons for doing so e.g. are they watching it for the actors in the film or for the director? For example, when it comes to directors such as Quentin Tarantino, the target audience will go to watch it because they like Tarantino and they know already what his film will be like so they know that they will enjoy it.
The distributors also distribute films straight to DVD and on to the internet.
The UK film industry has many major film distributors that are directly connected to the Hollywood film industry. We also have distributors for British films and these distributors as it is important to focus on our own industry as well. The British distributors tend to look for releases from certain studios; they also tend to go for films that have a unique selling point e.g. The Iron Lady (Phyllida Lloyd, 2001, Pathe Distribution). 
Another British film that sold well because of its unique selling point in the British film industry was Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007, Universal Pictures International (UPI)).
Every year over 500 titles are released in the cinema and this is all down to the distributors. It is also said that the UK film distributors spend £170 million pounds on advertising every year. This doesn’t even include the cost of buying the rights to actually sell the film in different countries.
A term that relates strongly to distribution is reach, they are commonly linked as reach is basically an estimate of the amount of people that are going to see your trailer. For example, if the trailer is seen on the television or the internet it is going to have a larger audience then if it was on the radio.
Every film has a marketing plan to help the entire production eventually come together. One of the most important things is making sure that you know what audience you are going for, because if you leave it until the last minute then everything is going to go horribly wrong. So, the film makers will have to find out everything they can about their target audience. They will be defining them by their; age, gender, economics, religion, nationality and ethnicity. And most important of all they will have to find out their psychographics e.g. personality, lifestyle and product knowledge. To do this they have to make sure that they have a unique selling point and how close or far away the competitors are when it comes to selling your product. This is known as the Concept stage.
The second stage is the Production stage. This is when the distributor starts to get to work and the company start to ask for funding from different companies. As more of the elements start to fall into place the production starts to come together. At this point it is a good idea to advertise the fact that you may have a high profile actor/actress which will help to further attract the audience. After this they then add the release date. Another important part of the production stage is the use of synergy. Synergy is when a production company give the film rights to another production company, this is used extensively to help raise awareness of both the new film and and the other company. A good example is the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ( Tobe Hooper, 1974) franchise http://www.tcmfanclub.com/. You can find many websites advertising t-shirts, masks and even mugs http://www.chasingthefrog.com/leatherface-t-shirts.php. When people think of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films they automatically get an image of Michaels original mask (although it changes with most films) whenever you go into a joke shop and look at their selection of masks there will always be several copies of Michael's masks. This shows that the production company has given some of their copyright to another company so that they are allowed to use the mask to create sales for both the producers and the mask company http://www.hauntedshop.co.uk/bigtexasmask.html.
Another film that has a well known synergy is The Shining ( Stanley Kubric, 1980). The sequence when Jack Torrance smashes the bathroom door (his wife is hiding inside) down with an axe, sticks his head through and declares"Wendy, I'm home" This sequence has become iconic and it has been used many times. It was even used in a Premier Inn advert in 2010 and and one of The Simpsons horror specials.
The third stage is the Release stage. At this point all of the materials that have been used to promote the plan should already be in use. If there is a large enough budget then the company can add a few more promotional events such as festival reviews.
When it comes to the distribution plan, it is very important that the film company find the best distributor who will show their film in the best light possible, for example if you are making a horror film then you will want a distributor who already has experience in that genre.
However, it is vital that you know everything there is to know about your product. This plan is basically about persuading the distributor to take your film on and then finalising the budget plans and the distributor’s fee.
When it comes to the Film industry, the words advertising, publicity and promotion quite often get confused or are just thought to all mean the same thing. Advertising is when the product e.g. the film is brought to the audience’s attention. However, when advertising it is vital that the right audience is targeted by the use of trailers, interviews with the stars and posters.
The promotion process is quite similar to the advertising process as the audience will repeatedly see the trailer or the posters and so the audience will end up creating a bond with the film as it will be on their mind because they are always seeing it.
This is especially true with films such as Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012) which has been promoted in the public eye since last summer. When it comes down to publicity however this is something that the company cannot control as it is down to the critics in the media. Every distributor (and director) hopes that the film is going to receive good publicity as if they do so then more people will go see it and spread it around via word of mouth. Another reason this is important is because it cannot be changed by anyone else, these are people’s opinions and quite often they can either make or break a film.
The Wolfman (Joe Johnston, 2010)
This film was distributed by Universal Pictures and it was released in Italy, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland (twice), Argentina, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, South Korea, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, India, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, UK, USA, Uruguay, Venezuela, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Panama, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Australia, Poland, Israel, Syria and Japan.
In its opening weekend in the UK, The Wolfman was shown in 716 screens.
Teaser Poster
The Final poster
Teaser Trailer
Official Trailer
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