Magnolia, Landmark, and Cinetic Planning Parallel Theatrical & Digital Releases for Upcoming Wayne Wang Films
by Eric Kohn (August 25, 2008)
A scene from Wayne Wang's "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers." Photo courtesy Magnolia Pictures
For more than thirty years, Wayne Wang has navigated the vastly different terrains of the independent film industry and Hollywood. Now, he’s preparing to extend his experience to another domain—the Internet. Due to the close relationship between his latest two features, “The Princess of Nebraska” and “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” Wang has decided to make “Princess” available online, for free, shortly after “A Thousand Years” hits theaters next month. Although the details of the distribution strategy remain in development, the final plan for the parallel releases will likely emerge in the coming weeks. Exactly one year ago, Wang premiered the features—which are both based on short stories from an anthology by Yiyun Li—at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Magnolia Pictures acquired North American rights several months later, but Wang was adamant about releasing both movies at once, which presented a challenge. At the Toronto fest, Wang screened the films together, and some theaters in France are doing that now. In the United States, however, such an operation seemed impractical. “Because of the expenses involved, we came up with the idea of putting one online,” Wang said in a recent interview with indieWIRE. The filmmaker started tossing around the possibility of releasing the films on parallel theatrical and digital platforms shortly after the premiere in Toronto. “When I did both films, they became kind of connected in my mind,” he said. “I’ve always been in love with both stories. They’re both about women who come from China to the United States.” The idea first came up in conversations with Ray Price, Landmark Theater‘s VP of Marketing. Price had a working relationship with Wang going back to the eighties, and understood the importance of the filmmaker’s need to attain his vision for the release. “It was important to Wayne to put them out at the same time, but I think it’s problematic to put two films on the same platform at the same time,” Price told indieWIRE. “They cannibalize each other.”  Filmmaker Wayne Wang on the set of “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.” Photo courtesy Magnolia Pictures
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I’m really interested to understand *why* releasing both of the films concurrently is “cannibalistic”. For me, this is a major hole in the article. Was a reason given, but not reported? Was a reason not given at all? Was the question asked? It seems to me that the concurrent release of two Wang films will serve only to increase the esteem of the director in the minds of casual moviegoers and cinephiles (and everyone in between), leading only to better performance of both of the films. Was it important to Wang that the films be released on the same day, or would he have been happy with overlapping theatrical releases? If the concurrent release of the films theatrically is such a big deal to him, will he also insist that the DVD not be available as a singe, but rather, only as a 2-disc set? Or that if one of the films plays on TV, that the other will have to play concurrently (whether on the same or a different channel)? How about airlines? Will those be *required* to purchase and air both films on any given flight where one is shown? In general, I guess I just feel like I’d like to learn more about this puzzling scenario.