In the spring of 2012, a few months after filming The Avengers and just before reprising his role as Captain America
for a third time, Chris Evans played the rebel who leads a ragtag, rag-wearing
lower-class community in a revolt against their decadent overseers in Bong Joon-Ho’s
English-language debut Snowpiercer (released
in the U.S. in 2014). For the film’s South Korean director, the challenge was finding
the right clothes and camera angles to hide the actor’s Marvel superhero physique in order to
assure his credibility as the malnourished leader of the revolutionaries. This
problem provides an apt metaphor for the
Weinstein Co.’s marketing and distribution of the movie. Analyzing the
Weinsteins’ involvement with and public statements about Bong’s film and its intended audience in trade
publications, I will argue that the distribution company used a discourse of
distinction built on aesthetic value judgments in order to rationalize and justify
decisions based on financial considerations. Their challenge was finding the
right language to disguise the sci-fi action blockbuster as a small indie movie
better fitted for online and on demand distribution rather than a wide
theatrical release.
Media scholar John Caldwell
considers the artifacts circulated among production communities “deep texts…[,]
plays of cultural competence and critical-theoretical engagement [which] stand
simultaneously as corporate strategies, as forms of cultural and economic
capital integral to media professional communities, and as the means by which
contemporary media industries work to rationalize their operations” (“Critical
Industrial Practice” 102-07). Trade texts, for Caldwell, are a fundamental
component in the way the media industry makes sense of itself to itself. Elsewhere,
he writes,
“The worlds of
film/video workers are organized and rationalized around an extensive set of
secondary symbolic texts, trade stories, pedagogical rituals, and technologies.
All of these rituals and artifacts serve to manage and inflect the social
relations and labor activities, even as they [have] enabled each craft and
association to collectively imagine itself as a community.” (Production Cultures 341).
In other words, stories that film professionals tell about their labor
play a direct role in reproducing the conditions in which that labor occurs,
thus making those conditions imaginable within and as a production community.
Derek Johnson, analyzing the discourse surrounding the brief
independence of Marvel Studios’ production in an age of media convergence,
writes how “for such reorganization to make sense to established Hollywood
production cultures, the industrial shifts implied by Marvel’s independence had
to be managed on a self-reflexive, discursive level.. [t]hrough specific trade
narratives that constructed Marvel’s cinematic independence as commonsense”
(2). I will argue that the trade stories that TWC executives and employers have
deployed to legitimate their distribution strategies on Snowpiercer similarly worked to mediate and manage the company’s
release plan and disguise a (highly profitable) marketing ploy as common sense
by bolstering a specific taste hierarchy. While only a few years ago such a
limited theatrical release (initially only eight theaters in New York and Los
Angeles), accompanied a mere two weeks later by digital distribution might have
signaled a failure, today such strategies are all part of a plan to increase
profits for niche films.
The deep texts of trade stories, therefore, offer a unique tool for
examining how the discourse designating Snowpiercer
as an “independent” or “niche” product was used to support, legitimize, and
give industrial and cultural meaning to a strategic course of action motivated
by bottom-line business considerations. Yannis Tzioumakis has noted how the
label independent is an important industrial category that has more to do with
finance than formal qualities; sometimes it is “the only way of marketing
esoteric or idiosyncratic films to an increasingly large audience” (282). As
Dana Harris pragmatically put it in Variety
over a decade ago—and her
comments have become only more applicable with time,
“In a product-saturated
marketplace, you don’t sell tickets on the strength of a director’s oeuvre
or a stellar review in the New York Times. These days, ya gotta have a niche.
The studios’ current game plan for making money in the art business combines
opportunism with a yogic flexibility. Specialty divisions can mean slick urban
comedies like Brown Sugar or Deliver Us From Eva. Or unabashed
crowd-pleasers like Bend It Like Beckham.
Or Hong Kong action movies, or even foreign-lingo romance. To put it another
way, “niche” is a nice way of saying ‘anything we can sell.’”
It is a widely accepted fact that “Hollywood hates a movie that it
can’t easily pigeonhole,” so when the Weinsteins bought the distribution rights
to Bong’s movie, they weren’t exactly sure whether they were dealing with a
mainstream dystopian epic or a specialty, art-house production aimed at a niche
audience, which caused an almost two-year delay in its North American release (Maio
183). When the movie finally did come out, through the Weinsteins’ boutique
distribution arm RADiUS, critics were similarly
confused, a typical review calling Snowpiercer
“an exciting, Michael Bay-sized blockbuster that also was infused with an
indie-film aesthetic, a feel for true human intimacy, and a sense of the tragic,”
and a film “as much about philosophical reflections of an age of social and
moral collapse as it is about blockbuster-friendly, CGI-enhanced sequences” (Derakhshani,
Tsui). Such contradictions in terms perfectly befit “indie mogul” Harvey
Weinstein, the company’s co-chief, who seems to have invented the “independent
blockbuster” as head of “mini-major” Miramax
in the 1980s and ’90s. Surprisingly, Snowpiercer’s
star-studded cast, action setpieces, and post-apocalyptic futurism were
significantly downplayed in trade stories, in favor of the movie’s more
“artistic,” “subversive,” “eccentric,” “quirky,” and, of course, “independent”
qualities.
Geoff King situates his
understanding of “independence” in Hollywood at the intersection of individual
films’ industrial conditions of production, formal/aesthetic strategies, and
relationship to broader cultural, political, or ideological landscape. He sees
two of the defining characteristics of the independent sector as (1) the
willingness to complicate and transgress genre while still mobilizing familiar
conventions to some extent (165-195); and (2) the expression of alternative
social perspectives which question or critique dominant values (197-201). It
comes as no surprise that the traits emphasized in trade articles about Snowpiercer were those that “derail[ed]
both cinematic expectations and the status quo”
(Carlton), “drip[ped] with political messages about class warfare” (Vetter); “brilliantly add[ed] politics and social
realism onto a genre picture” (Lyttelton); and “veered away from mainstream
narrative tropes” (Tsui).
What clearly emerges from this type of discourse is the fact that, regardless
of the economic realities of the industry, the term “independent” is often used
to describe not a mode of production, financing or distribution, as much as a
form of thinking and cultural appreciation, “suggestive of a romantic vision of
filmic productivity” and of a certain guarantee of quality (Berra 9). Whereas
in the past the designation simply defined works that were not affiliated with
the major studios, today the label carries with it a cultural significance that
implies a certain taste and a certain target audience. During the summer that
also saw the release of yet another Michael Bay extravaganza, the label independent
which was attached to Snowpiercer to
distinguish it from the mindless, crass commercialism and harmless
entertainment of the major studio blockbusters is a signifier of prestige and
status. Variety’s Justin Chang
directly compared the “marvelously imaginative” Snowpiercer to the “brain dead” Transformers
4, concluding that Bong’s film was “provocative… serious-minded foreign
fare,” the “work of an auteur” with “multicultural aspirations,” “artistic
heft,” and “genuine moral vision”
Pierre Bourdieu,
in his work on cultural production and taste cultures, establishes a theory of
the cultural field which might prove useful to the discussion of Snowpiercer within the culture of
distinction set up by the discourse surrounding TWC’s distribution of the film.
“There is an economy of cultural goods,” Bourdieu writes in the introduction to
Distinction:
A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, “but it has a specific
logic” (1). He sees the cultural field as “the site of the antagonistic
coexistence of two modes of production and circulation obeying inverse logics,”
split up between the field of restricted production, where profit is not the
ultimate objective, and large-scale production, which is a purely capitalist
enterprise. The anti-economy side of the spectrum, where values and practices
correspond to the discourse of art for art’s sake, he calls the “autonomous”
pole, while the “heteronomous” pole seeks economic dominance (The
Rules of Art 142). This economic aim means that the cultural work that
is conducted within the field of large-scale production is commonly of less
artistic value—or at least is perceived as such—than that which is conducted
within the field of restricted production.
The lines between restricted and large-scale production are
increasingly blurred in today’s film industry, with producers and distributors
in the independent sector finding themselves operating as “mini-majors,”
struggling to balance cultural credibility with the hard bottom line principles
of Hollywood studios. Cinema autonomous of the field of economic power is what
Bourdieu would refer to as “the field of cultural production, where the only
audience aimed at is other producers,” meaning that the economic failure of a
work is a sign of its artistic success (The
Field of Cultural Production 39). This is the image of independent
filmmakers “with stories to tell and axes to grind, working against the grain
of corporate-sponsored cinema to bring their vision to fruition” (Berra 16). Of
course such a cinema cannot exist within a system made up of studios,
distributors, exhibitors, and promotional media that filmmakers must rely on
for their work to reach the public. As Berra writes, “no film-maker or producer
is truly ‘independent’ in that they cannot exist separately from the field of
economic power” (15). Thus, no film can be truly “independent,” but the label,
although misleading, works to increase the symbolic capital of films designated
as such, regardless that the aim of their creators is ultimately financial
profit. Marketing a film as “independent” serves the purpose of cultural
legitimization, even while commercial considerations gain more and more weight
in the art cinema niche, as De Valck points out in his article on international
film festivals (76-78).
Bourdieu argues for an inverse relationship between symbolic capital
and commercial capital in the realm of art. Writing about the literary field at
the end of the nineteenth century, he notes how the “hierarchy among genres
(and authors) according to specific criteria of peer judgement is almost
exactly the inverse of the hierarchy according to commercial success” (The Rules of Art 114). Prestige, then,
is placed in direct opposition to economic profit, and reaching a “broad
audience [le grand public] … means, as the pejorative connotations of the
expression indicate, exposing oneself to the discredit attached to commercial
success” (The Rules of Art 116).
The same form of thinking holds sway over art-house and independent
films, although the financial realities might not support it. Tzioumakis points
out how independent films are seen by the public as examples of “cinematic art
that dealt with real issues and refused to compromise aesthetically,
thematically, and ideologically in exchange for a higher box office take” (282).
This perception, however unfounded, has helped the Weinstein brothers
throughout their entire career. While at Miramax, Harvey used the independent
label that signified a certain level of quality to the cinephile set while he was
actually turning the company into an internationally recognized brand that
became shorthand for middlebrow escapism. In Indie,
Inc.: Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s, Perren
points out that the company was the most publicized and profitable distributor
of low-budget, critically acclaimed indie films that expanded beyond a core
art-house crowd to attract a wider audience. Bourdieu claims that there are
three distinct markets:
“Firstly, there is
the specific principle of legitimacy, i.e., the recognition granted by the set
of producers who produce for other producers… i.e., by the autonomous,
self-sufficient world of ‘art for art’s sake’…. Secondly, there is the
principle of legitimacy corresponding to the ‘bourgeois’ taste and to the
consecration bestowed by the dominant fractions of the dominant class….
Finally, there is the principle of legitimacy which advocates call ‘popular,’
i.e., the consecration bestowed by the choice of ordinary consumers, the ‘mass
audience.’ (The Field of Cultural
Production 50-51).
It would appear that Miramax operated within the first of the three
markets in its pre-Disney incarnation, specializing in highbrow product for an
elite community of artists and critics. However, the company succeeded by
taking works from that community and promoting them towards the second, and
even third, of Bourdieu’s markets. Under Disney, Miramax developed into the
preeminent contemporary specialty or indie division, distributing
niche-oriented films and exploiting discourses of independence that appealed to
those possessing greater cultural capital. As Perren notes,
“The company
broadened the audience of these movies by portraying them as what Hollywood has
to offer and more: full of sex,
violence, and risky content. This marketing sleight of hand, in which the films
were at once similar and different from Hollywood, helped Miramax carve out an
often financially lucrative and aesthetically viable space for independent
cinema…” (“Sex, Lies and Marketing” 37).
Over the past 25 years, the Weinstein brothers have been honing their
marketing mix at Miramax and then TWC to target specific audiences, but to do
so in a manner that appeared tasteful and unobtrusive. As Bourdieu observes, “The
art trader cannot serve his ‘discovery’ unless he applies all his conviction,
which rules out ‘sordidly commercial’ maneuvers, manipulation and the ‘hard
sell,’ in favor of the softer, more discreet forms of ‘public relations’ (which
are themselves a highly euphemized form of publicity)…” (The Field of Cultural Production 76). Of course the niche market is
not opposed to marketing, but cannot be reached with the blanket promotion
practiced by the bigger studios. Instead, the Weinsteins take advantage of
their brand name and the values that name is supposed to represent—“quality,
class, culture, at once traditional and progressive” and promote their films
through culturally legitimized forums such as film festivals, using discourse
that sets up a culture of distinction (Berra 163).
In November 2012, when TWC bought the rights to Snowpiercer, Harvey framed the film as a blockbuster, telling The
Hollywood Reporter, “With a stellar cast led by Chris Evans, we look
forward to bringing this action-packed thriller to audiences worldwide”
(Siegel, “Weinstein Co. Nabs Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Snowpiercer’”). Before long, however, the movie was deemed
“too long, too violent and too weird for an American audience” (Doyle).
According to some reports, the company feared “the film wouldn’t be understood
by audiences in Iowa and Oklahoma” (Doyle). Harvey, nicknamed “Scissorhands”
for his tendency to tamper with directors’ final cuts, demanded that Snowpiercer was re-edited into a
shorter, mass-audience-friendly version, that some of the foreign language
parts got cut, and that a voiceover was added at the end to reduce the
ambiguity. Bong refused to make any changes to the film, and news of the
dispute soon went public, culminating in a November 2013 incident at the Museum
of Modern Art that landed
on Page Six of the New York Post. As soon as word got out
that Weinstein wasn’t supporting the director’s cut—and had tested a
version with twenty minutes chopped out—fans as well as the filmmaker expressed
dismay. As one reviewer put it, “To alter [the film] would be something close
to vandalism” (Vineyard).
Seeing that he wasn’t going to get his way, Harvey, “ever the spin
doctor,” started supporting the original version of the movie while arguing
against theatrical release (Mottram 78). “When I saw the… very artistic
flourishes that we all love,” he told Indiewire in July 2014, “I thought,
‘It’s not for a wide audience, it’s a smart movie for a smarter audience’”
(Ebiri). This provided the perfect justification to release the film on demand,
while flattering potential viewers and framing their interest in the film as a
mark of good taste. As Bourdieu writes, “To the socially recognized hierarchy
of the arts, and within each of them, of genres, schools or periods,
corresponds a social hierarchy of consumers. This predisposes tastes to
function as markers of ‘class’” (Distinction
1).
Taking up this discourse of distinction, audience studies have shown
that the crowd that frequents independent-sector fare is made up of mostly
young, educated, “inherently and eternally fashionable” selective viewers with
disposable income who are looking for entertainment of a socially and
intellectually provocative nature (Berra 181-185). Perhaps not incidentally,
the above demographic coincides with that of audiences who are likely to watch
films on demand, through subscription services like Netflix, set-top boxes (Roku, Apple
TV, Google
Chromecast or a cable provider), or digital platforms like iTunes (Sciullo).
Digital platforms have been especially adept at linking audiences
across the world and facilitating the flow of foreign products into the Western
market as consumers are turning to the internet and video on demand (VOD)
services for cultural consumption that transcends borders and features a
diverse range of international offerings or niche content (Iordanova 5-12). Stuart Cunningham and Jon Silver note how
Hollywood’s “increasingly well-resourced release strategies for its
blockbusters consistently roadblock screens for films from the rest of the
world” (34). Technology helps level the playing field, making the sharing,
watching, and talking about films more easily accessible to larger and larger
groups of people, especially viewers who position themselves in opposition to
“the Hollywood hegemony and the chauvinism of the classic art-house canon” by seeking
out indie or less commercial films online (Slater).
With the growth of VOD, the available services, platforms and content
have become more varied, allowing viewers more choice in what they watch, when,
and on what device. As Sharon Strover and William Moner write, “from the
traditional television set to pocket-size mobile devices to laptop computers,
people now have a surfeit of choices available for entertainment services”
(234). Digital options offer immediacy and ease of access, multiple screen
capabilities, and increased portability on mobile devices. While historically, film studios would release
films in theater first, where they would stay exclusively for a few months
before making their way onto the auxiliary markets of DVD, Blu-ray, on demand,
pay-per-view, and finally, television networks, this “inflexible succession of
hierarchically ordered windows of exhibition and formats” has been “radically
undermined by new technologies” (Iordanova 1).As far back as 2004 Amanda Lotz
had pointed out that industry practices were adapting in order to accommodate
the growth of the home entertainment sector, with strategies to increase the
availability of content on multiple platforms becoming more common. “The
rhetoric of industry leaders,” she wrote, “shifted from advocating efforts to
prevent change to accepting the inevitability of industrial adjustment” (cited
in Nelson 63). In the decade since, Hollywood has become increasingly open to
the idea of digital distribution as the future of the home-video business and
has started experimenting with release windows to provide greater access and
added value to media content.
As soon as the decision to release Snowpiercer
on VOD was reached, TWC quickly turned to emphasizing the consumer benefits of
digital platforms by framing the distribution model in a discourse of openness,
choice, control, and ease of access. Tom Quinn, co-president of TWC and a
veteran of Magnolia Pictures, told Entertainment
Weekly that the company’s philosophy does not mean thinking literally
big: “This is completely uncharted territory but it’s 100 percent within the
consumer’s control how you want to see this film,” says Quinn. “That’s what our
goal is at RADiUS: A screen is a screen is a screen and it’s your choice where
you see it” (Bahr). Executives at other companies chimed in to show their support.
Mark Cuban, whose media holdings include Magnolia, said, “Getting people into a
theater is hard and expensive. Getting people to hit a button on their remote
is a lot easier” (Sciullo).
A look at the numbers makes it clear that TWC’s unusual distribution
plan was motivated by economics just as much as, if not more than, the desire
to make the film easily available to its intended audience. Starting in the
mid-2000 and into the early 2010s, studios have been shrinking theatrical
windows in an attempt to maximize revenue streams and enhance total returns. So
far, there is no indication that a single timing strategy would work for all
films, especially when factoring in specific box offices and seasonality of
particular titles. As Elissa Nelson notes, the type of film (e.g. blockbuster,
independent) can help determine release order (72). “Situations that involve indie, documentary,
foreign and other niche films actively embrace the new digital and on-line
tools available,” which offers direct access to core audiences at the same time
that it reduces marketing and exhibition costs (Nelson 72). In the independent
sector distributors have been more willing to experiment with simultaneous
theatrical and VOD release.
In the U.S., Steven
Soderbergh’s Bubble collapsed the
theatrical window in 2005 when it was released in theaters, on DVD and cable at
the same time. In 2011, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia
profitably premiered on VOD before its theatrical release (65). But it was J.C. Chandor’s Margin
Call (also 2011) which became the poster child for early VOD success.
Shot in only 17 days with a $3 million budget by a first-time
director-producer, it was released in theaters and on demand on the same day
and ended up earning an estimated $19.5 million (Sciullo). In contrast, Children of Men and Drive, the “two movies in recent memory”
that, according to Quinn, fit [Snowpircer’s]
review profile almost exactly” disappointed
at the U.S. box office, proving that great reviews, action elements, and star
power don’t always guarantee success in theaters (Siegel, “Radius Co-Chiefs on VOD Stretegy”). “As good as [Snowpiercer] is, it
would have been a tough sell at the box office,” says Gitesh Pandya, a
researcher of Box Office Guru.
“They have tremendous competition from other summer action movies,” he
continues (Ebiri).
Following Snowpiercer’s
overwhelming success TWC is taking steps to create a new language around
digital platform revenues. The film was
TWC’s highest-earning VOD release, skyrocketing to the top of iTunes and other
media platforms in less than a day after launching, earning almost double what
it did in theaters over its first weekend on demand, and an impressive $3.8
million over its first two weeks. The financial benefits, however, do not stop
here. Whereas studios typically end up taking home 50 percent of a film’s box
office, the VOD split is closer to 75 percent, which means distributors can
earn a bigger percentage of every dollar spent without having to spend as much
on advertising (Pomerantz). “From a layman’s perspective these numbers are
possibly not that interesting,” Quinn admitted. “But from an industry
perspective, it’s a game changer” (Bahr). “I think this kind of release pattern
is the future of film distribution but not for every film,” the executive told Forbes.
“I do think wide release theatrical works very effectively for certain tent
pole movies,” he continued (Pomerantz). But for films in the $20 million to $60
million budget range, an at-home release starts to make more and more financial
sense. “We joke that we’re in an industry built on perceived success,” Quinn
said. “But at some point, you need to have actual success to survive” (Ebiri).
Without TWC’s strategic framing of Snowpiercer
as an independent and niche film, such financial success on VOD—and perhaps
even releasing the film on demand in the first place— would have been
impossible. The trade articles and interviews that the company put out between
2012 and 2014 were instrumental in legitimizing its distribution strategy to
media professionals and viewers alike by situating the film within a taste
hierarchy that assured it would reach its intended audience. Even though Snowpiercer can be considered a fun,
futuristic action blockbuster as easily as Harvey Weinstein fits the bill of an
old-Hollywood studio mogul, neither description would have justified the film’s
marketing and distribution. Instead, Bong’s film was turned into an artistic indie
and Harvey tried to maintain the carefully constructed and curated image of a
self-proclaimed maverick, risk-taking patron of the arts.
Bibliography
Atkinson, Claire. “Three of a Kind: Weinstein Gambling on ‘Rigby’ Movie
Format.” New York
Post: 31. Sep 02 2014. ProQuest. Web. 31
Mar. 2015.
Bahr, Lindsay. “‘Snowpiecer’s VOD Gamble Is Paying Off.” Entertainment Weekly. 15 Jan.
2015. Web. 14 Apr. 2015.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A
Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice.
Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1984. Web. http://monoskop.org/images/e/e0/Pierre_Bourdieu_Distinction_A_Social_Critique_of_the_Judgement_of_Taste_1984.pdf
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of
Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993. Print.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Rules of
Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Trans. Susan
Emanuel. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1995. Web. https://bildfilosofi.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/therulesofart.pdf
Caldwell, John T.
“Critical Industrial Practice: Branding, Repurposing, and the Migratory
Patterns of Industrial Texts.” Television &
New Media 7.2 (2006): 99-134. Science & Technology Collection.
Web. 1 May 2015.
Caldwell, John T. Production
Cultures: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and
Television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2008. Print.
Carleton, Sean. “Derailing the Status Quo: Snowpiercer.” Canadian Dimension 48.5 (2014): 37.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.
Chang, Justin. “Transformers 4 vs.
Snowpiercer: What Michael Bay and
Bong Joon-Ho Have in
Common.” Variety. 1 July 2014. Web. 1 May 2015. http://variety.com/2014/film/news/transformers-4-vs-snowpiercer-what-michael-bay-and-bong-joon-ho-have-in-common-1201256360/
Cieply, Michael. “Ho Hum, Another Fight for Weinstein Company.” New
York Times. Late
Edition (East Coast) ed. Jul 04 2013. ProQuest. Web.
31 Mar. 2015.
Cieply, Michael. “Weinstein to Release Film on Yahoo’s Streaming Site.”
New York Times. Late
Edition (East Coast) ed. Jul 22 2014. ProQuest. Web.
31 Mar. 2015.
Child, Ben. “Snowpiercer Director Reportedly Furious about Weinstein
English-version Cuts.”
The Guardian. 8 Oct. 2013. Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/08/snowpiercer-director-english-cuts-bong-joon-ho
Cunningham, Stuart and Jon Silver. “On-line Film Distribution: Its
History and Global
Complexion.” Digital Disruption: Cinema Moves On-line.
Iordanova, Dina and Stuart Cunningham, eds. St. Andrews, Scotland: St. Andrews
Film Studies, 2012. Print.
Derakhshani, Tirdad. “‘Snowpiercer’: Epic Apocalyptic Parable on a
Metaphoric Train.” The
Philadelphia Inquirer. 02 July 2014: Newspaper Source. Web. 1 May 2015.
De Valck, Marijke. “Film Festivals, Bourdieu, and the Economization of
Culture.” Canadian
Journal of Film Studies 23.1 (2014): 74-89.
Doyle, Sady. “Rebels without a Ticket.” In These Times 38.9
(2014): 36. Publisher Provided
Full Text Searching File. Web. 1 May 2015.
Ebiri, Bilge. “Snowpiercer:
Indie Savior or Casualty?” Bloomberg Businessweek 4388 (2014):
21-22. Business Source Complete. Web. 18 Feb.
2015.
Edelstein, Davi. “Snowpiercer:
At Last, a Fun Dysopian Sci-Fi Epic.” Vulture.
3 July 2014.
Web. 14 Apr. 2015.
Ford, Rebecca. “‘Snowpiercer’ to Open Los Angeles Film Festival.” The Hollywood Reporter. 1
June 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.
Foundas, Scott. “‘Snowpiercer’ Arrives on Video in France Two Months
Ahead of Delayed U.S.
Release.” Variety. 24 Apr. 2014. Web. 1 May 2015. http://variety.com/2014/film/news/snowpiercer-arrives-on-video-in-france-two-months-ahead-of-delayed-u-s-release-1201163311/
Franich, Darren. “Snowpiercer:
Get Ready for the Coolest Coldest Most Ingenious Outrageous
Mind-Blowing Unpredictable Audacious Dangerous Daring
Politically Charged
Provocative Thrill Ride of the Summer.” Entertainment
Weekly 1318 (2014): 38-43.
MasterFILE Elite. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.
Frater, Patrick. “Bong Joon-ho Hints and ‘Snowpiercer’ Discord.” Variety. 7 Oct. 2013. Web. 1
May 2015.
Frater, Patrick. “Korea’s ‘Snowpiercer,’ ‘Mr. Go’: Marketing Tells The
Tale of Two Films.”
Variety. 2
Oct. 2013. Web. 1 May 2015.
Graser, Marc. “Apple Gets Two-Week Exclusive to ‘Trip to Italy’ as
iTunes Becomes More
Valuable to Indie
Filmmakers.” Variety. 11 Dec. 2014.
Web. 1 May 2015. http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/apple-gets-two-week-exclusive-to-trip-to-italy-as-itunes-becomes-more-valuable-to-indie-filmmakers-1201377258/
Harris, Dana. “H’wood Renews Niche Pitch.” Variety. 6 Apr. 2003. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.
Iordanova, Dina. “Digital Disruption: Technological Innovation and
Global Film Circulation.”
Digital Disruption: Cinema Moves On-line. Iordanova, Dina and
Stuart Cunningham, eds. St. Andrews, Scotland: St. Andrews Film Studies, 2012.
Print.
Johnson, Derek. “Cinematic Destiny: Marvel Studios and the Trade
Stories of Industrial
Convergence.” Cinema Journal 1 (2012): 1. Project
MUSE. Web. 1 May 2015.
Johnson, Richard. “Harvey Weinstein Holding Up Foreign Film’s Release.”
The New York Post.
6 Nov. 2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.
King, Geoff. American Independent
Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
Print.
Lang, Brent. “Harvey Weinstein: Netflix Is Winning Because It Has
Vision.” Variety. 25 Oct.
2014. Web. 1 May 2015.
Lang, Brent. “Weinstein Co. Shakes Up the Movie Release Model.” Variety. Jul 29 2014: 20.
ProQuest. Web. 31 Mar. 2015.
Lyttelton, Oliver. “Review: Director’s Cut of Bong Joon-Ho’s
‘Snowpiercer’ Is Visionary and
Thrilling.” Indiewire. 31 Oct. 2013. Web. 14 Apr.
2015. http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/review-the-unaltered-cut-of-bong-joon-hos-snowpiercer-with-chris-evans-jamie-bell-tilda-swinton-20131030
Maio, Kathi. “Coming Soon to a Tablet Near You.” Fantasy &
Science Fiction 127.5/6 (2014):
183-188. Literary Reference Center. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.
Mango, Argustin. “Mar del Plata Film Fest: Bong Joon-ho Talks
‘Snowpiercer’ U.S. Release.”
The Hollywood Reporter. 20 Nov. 2013. Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mar-del-plata-film-fest-658332
Mason, Ian Garrick. “When Harvey Met Mickey.” New Statesman. 11 Oct. 2004. Web. 1 May
2015.
McNary, Dave. “Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Snowpiercer’ Brings the Heat at L.A.
Film Festival Opening.”
Variety. 12 June 2014. Web. 1 May 2015. http://variety.com/2014/scene/news/snowpiercer-bong-joon-ho-chris-evans-la-film-festival-opening-1201218913/
Medina, Dolissa. “Stasis and Flux: The 64Th Berlin International Film
Festival.” Film Quarterly
67.3 (2014): 67. Publisher Provided Full Text
Searching File. Web. 31 Mar. 2015.
Mottram, James. The Sundance
Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood. New York:
Faber and Faber, 2006.
Nelson, Elissa. “Windows into the Digital World: Distributor Strategies
and Consumer Choice in
an Era of Connected
Viewing.” Connected Viewing: Selling,
Streaming, & Sharing Media in the Digital Era. Holt, Jennifer and Kevin
Sanson, eds. New York and London:
Routledge, 2014. Print.
Perren, Alisa. Indie, Inc.:
Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2012. Print.
Perren, Alisa. “Rethinking Distribution for the Future of Media
Industries Studies.” Cinema
Journal 52.3
(2013): 165-171. Project MUSE. Web.
14 Apr. 2015.
Perren, Alisa. “sex, lies and marketing: Miramax and the Development of
the Quality Indie
Blockbuster.” Film
Quarterly 55.2 (2001): 30-39. JSTOR Journals. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
Pomerantz, Dorothy. “What the Economics of ‘Snowpiercer’ Say about the
Future of Film.”
Forbes.Com (2014): 20. Business Source
Complete. Web. 31 Mar. 2015.
Schager, Nick. “6 Ways the Movie Distribution Model Is Changing.” Vulture. 10 Dec. 2014.
Web. 31 Mar. 2015.
Sciullo, Maria. “Video on Demand Is Ramping Up Marketing." Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. 17 Oct.
2014: Newspaper Source. Web. 31 Mar. 2015.
Siegel, Tatiana. “Radius Co-Chiefs on VOD Stretegy, ‘Snowpiercer’s’
Critics and Toronto
(Q&A).” The Hollywood Reporter. 7 July 2014.
Web. 23 Apr. 2015. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/radius-chiefs-vod-strategy-snowpiercers-723256
Siegel, Tatiana. “Weinstein Co. Nabs Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Snowpiercer’ in
U.S., Other Territories.”
The Hollywood Reporter. 12
Nov. 2012. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/weinstein-acquires-snowpiercer-389291
Slater, Ben. “The New Cinephiles.” Screen
Daily. 30 Nov. 2008. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
Strover, Sharon and William Moner. “The Countours of On-Demand
Viewing.” Connected
Viewing: Selling, Streaming, & Sharing Media in the Digital Era.
Holt, Jennifer and Kevin Sanson, eds.
New York and London: Routledge, 2014. Print.
Tsui, Clarence. “Snowpiercer: Film Review.” The Hollywood Reporter. 23 July 2013. Web. 14
Apr. 2015.
Tzioumakis, Yannis. American
Independent Cinema: An Introduction. New Brunswick,
N.J.:Rutgers University Press, 2006. Print.
Vineyard, Jennifer. “Director Bong Joon-Ho Explains Harvey Weinstein’s
Problem with
Snowpiercer.” Vulture. 6
Nov. 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2015. http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/whats-weinsteins-problem-with-snowpiercer.html
Washington, Arlene. “LAFF: Tilda Swinton, Director Bong Joon-Ho Talk
Protest-Theme Appeal
at ‘Snowpiercer’
Premiere.” The Hollywood Reporter. 12 June 2014. Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/laff-2014-tilda-swinton-director-711459
No comments:
Post a Comment