GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM: Sony Pictured Classics' foreign-lingo 'The Vertical Ray of the Sun' faces a battle at the B.O.
After counting the hurdles that foreign films face in America, one can only say
Mamma mia!
First came the disappearance of the baby boomers from theaters. Once religiously lining up for the latest from Fellini, Truffaut, and Bergman, they're now busy paying mortgages and raising kids.
Then came the downturn of the video market.
"It's a pale imitation of what it used to be five years ago -- like half," says Mark Gill, president of Miramax L.A. "That's because of the drive in the video business towards A titles." Sobering news for foreign fare, which relies so heavily on ancillary sales.
But rely it must, for box office receipts rarely top $1 million, and $2 million-$4 million is considered a certifiable hit. However, foreign films have smaller ancillary markets than their English-language counterparts.
"There are so few subtitled films shown on television, there's basically no television licensing," says Wendy Lidell, who has distributed foreign films for 15 years, first at the nonprofit Intl. Film Circuit and now at Winstar Cinema.
Normally television licensing may amount to 15% of revenues. Without that, says Lidell, "you've eliminated an essential revenue stream. So immediately the theatrical distributor doesn't have that money to spend on marketing."
Nor do they have equal advantage when it comes to home video and cable TV.
As Lidell explains, "When these ancillaries grew up in the '80s and there was so much money feeding into distributors' pockets, that went overwhelmingly to English-language films. The small screen was less hospitable than the bigscreen to subtitled films. Even I don't like to watch subtitled films at home late at night."
When you factor in the cost of shipping prints from abroad, converting video materials, redoing the foreign trailer and preparing subtitles, you shave another slice from an already thin pie.
Take subtitling: At list price, the first print runs $3,000 to $3,500, or $4,000 to $5,000 for a talkative movie, according to Jose Machodo of LVT Laser Subtitling. The price immediately drops 50% for additional prints, but that still adds up to $9,000 for a modest run of five prints or $31,500 for 20 -- the typical range for a foreign release.
Gone are the days when a business could run solely on theatrical bookings and sublicenses. Within the past five years, smaller distributors have almost all added inhouse divisions for VHS and DVD. Zeitgeist, one of the last hold-outs, made the move earlier this year when it saw the DVD market catching fire.
"The idea didn't appeal to us as much when it was just video, since that market's really falling off," says Zeitgeist co-president Nancy Gerstman. "Nor did we like the idea of just throwing something onto a video with no extras. There's a real opportunity with DVDs, given the fantastic growth of that market and the ability to really do very special things."
Zeitgeist's division launched with three films by Atom Egoyan, who produced the DVDs and their added content. It continues this fall with two foreign titles, "Aimee and Jaguar" and Francois Ozon's "Water Drops on Burning Rocks."
Despite all the obstacles, distribs of foreign fare are hopeful about the future.
"For the first time in a long time, there are signs of encouragement," says Miramax's Gill. One is the sizzling $209 million that Sony Pictures Classics' "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" snagged.
"With 'Crouching Tiger,' you've got a lot of people seeing their first subtitled film ever in America," he says. "That provides a couple of openings. First, you've eliminated the subtitle barrier for those people, and second, especially for Asian films, you not only can get the art audience, but also the action audience."
Sony Pictures Classics continues to mine the foreign-lingo market with titles such as Zhang Yimou's "The Road Home," Jan Hrebejk's Oscar-nominated Czech film "Divided We Fall," Tom Tykwer's "The Princess and the Warrior" and, more recently, Tran Anh Hung's languid "The Vertical Ray of the Sun." Although these 2001 titles have been well reviewed, they seem to lack "Crouching Tiger's" crossover appeal.
With eyes on that prize, Miramax is taking a shot at a wide release of two subtitled films in the Asian action genre: "Iron Monkey," by Yuen Woo Ping, and Tsui Hark's "Zoo Warriors." Both might build to 1,000 prints, according to Gill, "like the Jackie Chan films, though they were dubbed. But it could be that 'Crouching Tiger' has opened (the) door to wide subtitled movies."
Mostly, however, success with foreign titles involves a tried and true formula: a slow platform release and dazzling reviews, backed by a basic business plan, which Gerstman boils down to trying to wring the last dollar out of every market.
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