If there is one thing Mark DUPLASS hate, it’s “mandate.” He heard the crazy word a lot when he beat his last show ”The long long night. ”
“The Long Long Night”, which Duplass collaborated and records with his old friend Barret O’Brien, has sat without distribution or a streaming deal since it premiere at Tribeca last year. It is a series of two dudes who want to help the world but realize that the only two white men take their place, so they decide the only way to make the world a better place is to get out of it. Predictable bites no streamers.
But Duplass has had enough, and he will finally release the series himself.
“I wish we could program this, but it’s just not in our mandate. The fucking word “mandate,” Duplass told IndieWire. “They have a mandate, and it all falls apart at the same time. To be completely sincere, we had some people who made us really not financially advantageous offers for us so that they could ride on our coatings on what we were already building. “
Duplass will independently distribute “The Long Long Long Night” through a series of crowdfunding and community theater views of the show before it makes it available to the public, IndieWire can exclusively reveal.
Through a partnership with Seed & Spark and CINEMADUPLASS today launches a crowdfunding campaign through Seed & Spark to drive the series marketing, where supporters will be able to gain early access to the series. Duplass will then through Kinema’s tools to organize a run of personal community shows. The first wave of supporters will be able to access “The long long night” from April 14, and it will be released publicly on April 28.
IndieWire first reported on Partnership between Seed & Spark and Kinema Back in February. It is called “The Independence Partnership” and Creator such as Crownfund its film through Seed & Spark gains access to Kinema’s distribution platform. Duplass is their first large guinea pig to test the model’s vitality, and he explained why it is not just about this project but about building something for a long time.
“What I ask people is not, hello man, come to finance my project. I ask you to invest in the future of an ecosystem that we will all need that is a hybrid-self-distribution model, ”Duplass said.
As a duplass, it sees, the days to get your movie to Sundance and get a huge deal, “It’s over.” Now all the tools have to make a movie but what no one can figure out is “was the hell to put it.”
With “The Long Long Night”, DuPlass first uses seed & kick for crowdfund supporters for the project. This money will go to traditional P&A, which helps make digital ads, trailers and the costs required to make DCPs and the rest of the marketing campaign, all while you build a network of people who want to see the project succeed.
Then with Kinema he will have the infrastructure to plan shows and get the series at VOD, and he can invite those who helped back the series via crowdfunding. The 6-part series with 30-minute episode each would not normally be shown publicly, but he can arrange it so that he can schedule community shows that will play the entire show.
With its latest show “Penelope”, as DUPLASS sold out from Sundance to NetflixHe found that he already did all the things needed to get the word about the show. Netflix only licensed US rights, so “Penelope” did not have the marketing support another Netflix -original would have, and Duplass had to do it yourself. With this new model, he will be able to own the rights to his show, access data on how it performs and bring it directly to an audience he has built.
“I want to be able to go into the market and say, that’s probably what we can expect if we make a hybrid or self-distribution strategy through like Kinema and Seed & Spark, and we know we have it as a definitive path,” he said. “It removes some of the fear you have at the beginning of a process, oh my good, we will do this and it will not have anywhere to go. It also gives a correct leverage effect if you decide to sell it to a traditional streamer, because you know what you have to offer there, “
Duplass has enough star and influence to get “the long long night” into an audience in a way that most indie fillers could never. What he has not had is the knowledge that he could do it himself. With “The Long Long Night”, he is willing to eat the costs he has already dropped into it, but he wants the “negotiation tactic” to be able to safely see a traditional buyer on his face and know what his project is actually worth and what he can do on his own. And if “the long long night” is successful, it gives someone else the same power.
“Brick by Brick, you start building something that is unspeakable so that if you are 25 years old and calculate where to go, when you are 45 or 50, you have done 20 of these things. You own all these movies, and maybe they did not blast and earn a million dollars in cash office, but you have put together a living and you have this enormous library with things. Go right for them, and no one keeps you away from the gates anymore, “Duplass said. You don’t need Sundance anymore. You don’t need Netflix.
