One of my favorite movies at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was Cube director Vincenzo Natali’s Splice. The movie, starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, is a weird-ass modern day Frankenstein tale about genetic manipulation, and it just keeps getting stranger and stranger over the course of its running time. You can read my review of it right here. Walking out of Splice I was impressed, but I thought that a film as flat out odd as this one must be a small arthouse release.
Wrong! It turns out that Joel Silver and the folks at Dark Castle (and by the transitive property the folks at Warner Bros) have some major balls, and they’re stepping up to the plate for Splice. They’re in the final stages of buying the film – which was heavily bid upon at the festival – and promising it a massive 3,000 screen release with a marketing budget of at least 25 million dollars. That’s huge, and it’s doubly huge for a film like this.
This is exciting news, since all too often the best movies I see at Sundance – even the commercial and genre ones – don’t get wide releases. Splice is very much a tough sell, but going in on 3,000 screens means these folks intend to try and really sell it. What will make this trickier is that the tone of Splice isn’t easy to get across in ads; while not a horror comedy per se, it is a movie that definitely isn’t taking itself too seriously. Best of luck to them, and expect to see us at CHUD pimping the hell out of this movie, which is brave and unique and more than a little awesome.
9 comments
Based on the buzz about its "weirdness" and the fact that Silver and Co. are ready to spend some dough to promote it, this sounds like minor cultural phenomenon waiting to happen … if the hype is done right.
Glad to see Natali rise from the grave. His segment of Paris je t'aime was my favorite.
Lots of good news today!
Man, I've been waiting for this film FOREVER! I'm glad that it's getting a wide release but I bet that means we have to wait a little longer so they have time to put that $25 mill in advertising to good use. It's also about time those Dark Castle folks released a good horror film and with Del Toro's name on it, it can only help the movie. I bet they release this around the same time as Predators to cash in on Adrien Brody.
I also saw this at Sundance and Devin is pretty much 100% correct about it. I wasn't really sure about it as I watched it but after the director's Q&A, which tackled a lot of the issues I had with it, it has improved in my mind and I'm completely shocked it's getting a release like this. I don't envy the people that will be marketing this. No matter which direction they go, a lot of the audience that sees it will be disappointed/weirded out/ completely offended. Like Devin said, major balls.
You sure they won't be using some of the $25 miil for re-cuts /reshoots to make it more 'commercial'?
Cube has to be one of my all-time favourite movies, and is an inspiration to low-budget filmmakers everywhere. Excited for this.
I too, have been waiting for this film forever, and am sooo glad to see it coming.
Wow. "Splice" sounds like an excellent movie. I saw some trailers on youtube. Sadly, it's rated R. And, I'm only a teen. But I really wish to see it =)
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