I Love This: Could Tugg Become the Kickstarter for Indie Exhibition? | Indiewire
Could Tugg Become the Kickstarter for Indie Exhibition?
The DIY movement may have a new champion with the launch of Tugg, a crowdsourced exhibition site whose partners include Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas and AMC Theaters, and with Richard Linklater, Ben Affleck and Terrence Malick as board members.Launched by "The Tree of Life" producer Nicolas Gonda and marketing executive Pablo Gonzalez, Tugg is designed to allow anyone the opportunity to book a film screening through one of the partner cinemas. If you want the theater to screen a film that's part of Tugg's library, you drive users to express their interest at Tugg.com.
Once the numbers hit a threshold, the screening's on. Tugg will handle the details with the theater, including print and theater rentals and ticketing; your viewers then pay only the ticket price.
Now in beta, Tugg's official launch will take place during SXSW; at that point, they plan to announce their intial distribution partners. Tugg will also have their own execs on the ground in Austin, looking for films from distributors, studios and filmmakers.
However, the most compelling elements of the Tugg model are what it could mean for indie films that do and don't have distributors. For example, will Tugg allow small cities to see indie films that would otherwise pass them by? ("Shame" in Missoula, MT? "Michael" in Galveston, TX?) Better yet, could the site provide a new distribution model for self-distributing filmmakers?
read the full fascinating post here:
http://www.indiewire.com/article/wanna-host-a-film-screening-things-just-got-...