Interest

Third Window Suspends Theatrical Releases

The distributor Third Window Films has made the following announcement on its facebook page.

Due to the resounding opening weekend failure of Himizu (and that of Villain before it), we have decided to suspend all theatrical releasing of films. Unfortunately without being able to release films in cinemas we will not have the power to negotiate the release of any big films in the future, so will focus more on straight to DVD titles or occasional one-off's in cinemas. Unfortunately if there is no public for these films in the cinema, then there just isn't a large enough demand for them to be shown at all.

Himizu is the live-action film of Minoru Furuya's manga Himizu, directed by Sion Sono, scheduled for a DVD/Blu-ray release on August 6.

In the subsequent comments, Third Window confirmed that the screenings of Himizu outside London would not be affected. It also said:

Since most cinema programmers live in London they check to see if it's popular in London before rolling it out to their others cinemas across the UK, but if a movie can't even get 10 people a screening in the biggest city in the UK, then there's not much prospect for it elsewhere, especially when we also spent nearly £20,000 on advertising it, so it's not like people didn't know about it (apart from online and word of mouth).