Creating a Captive Audience

Outside the art house, it’s rare to find a moviegoer who can name the specific studio that backed a given title. Ask your typical New Yorker about “Spider-Man 3” or “Transformers,” and it’s unlikely that Columbia Pictures and Paramount Pictures will rise to the tips of their tongues. For most jam-packed Friday night audiences, the appearance of the studio logo is merely an announcement that it’s time to wrap up the pre-show conversation and settle in for the main event.Yet ask any horror buff about the relatively new studio on the block, After Dark Films, and you’re bound to get an excited response. “Those are the guys that made those illegal posters, right?” guessed one man in the audience at a recent “Hostel: Part II” screening, referring to the dark and somewhat scandalous posters unveiled on the West Coast and atop New York taxis for the new horror film “Captivity,” which opens today but was not made available for review.Those “illegal posters” were variations on the posters many New Yorkers have been inundated with for weeks, featuring star Elisha Cuthbert in various states of imprisonment and torture (the most ubiquitous poster focuses on a single eye trapped behind a wire fence, a stray tear running down her cheek, leaving a trail of mascara). In March, a series of posters made appearances on both coasts with what appeared to be tubes running out a woman’s gauze-covered face and a gloved hand gripped around Ms. Cuthbert’s face. Each ad featured one of four taglines: “Abduction,” “Confinement,” “Torture,” and “Termination.”Having never been shown the ads for approval, the Motion Picture Association of America — the body responsible for approving all domestic movie advertisements— saddled “Captivity” with a highly unusual sanction, refusing to view the film for ratings purposes for a month, which forced the studio to push the movie’s release from May to today. Now it arrives only a few weeks after the harrowing and violent “Hostel: Part II” surprised industry watchers with a spectacularly poor performance, leading some to question whether the horror genre might be running out of steam.Any publicity, though, is usually good publicity in the movie biz, and for a studio in the business of releasing horror movies, any news story that makes its title look more tawdry or scandalous is seen as an asset. More teenagers will turn out on opening night, eager to break taboos and defy authority.Those, at least, are the hopes of Courtney Solomon, the 35-year-old founder of After Dark who has never been shy about chasing down the spotlight. After the buzz surrounding those “Captivity” posters, and the public outcry (which, ironically, was led in large part by “Hostel” director Eli Roth, who claimed Mr. Solomon and his studio made it more difficult for him to deal with the MPAA), Mr. Solomon recently planned a splashy “Captivity” party, complete with a number of “Suicide Girls” from the scandalous soft-core pornographic Web site. The result? More headlines in the nation’s newspapers, more talk about the marketing campaign for “Captivity,” and, in at least one paper, a big picture of Mr. Solomon himself.“We get coverage like this because we sit down, brainstorm, and try to be as clever as we can about getting people’s attention,” Mr. Solomon said in a recent interview. “Most smaller distributors think to open a film on two, or five, or even 100 screens, but we open our films nationally and have to do something different than the major studios’ campaigns — who keep doing the same thing over and over again.”Mr. Solomon said he founded After Dark in conjunction with last year’s “An American Haunting” (which he directed) precisely because the studios turned their back on a film he believed could find an audience. “The studios didn’t think you could market a PG-13 period horror film,” he recalled. “But I was confident that I could market the film, and make a trailer that would make people want to see it. So we put our money where our mouth was, opened it nationally, and the rest is history.”When “American Haunting” opened with a worldwide gross of $27 million — not a huge sum, but respectable for a low-budget film released by an independent studio — those in the horror community took note. That was soon followed by the “After Dark Horrorfest,” an eight-film horror movie marathon that toured the country as a specialty, daylong event, including one title that starred the rapper Snoop Dogg. By targeting niche segments of the horror audience and billing this collection as an “event,” Mr. Solomon said that “Horrorfest” has grown into “an incredibly strong brand,” and that in his preparations for expanding the event this autumn, he has been approached by major studios interested in acquiring the name. “It’s ironic that in the beginning people said, ‘You’re nuts to show eight movies in one day,'” he said. “But now we have more theaters than ever calling us to ask when it’s coming back.”Founding After Dark as a company primarily focused on horror films, Mr. Solomon is quick to acknowledge that the horror scene has taken a hit as of late. “This year there were 44 wide-release horror movies,” he said, “where last year there were only 22. So now you have an audience saying, ‘Whoa, this is overkill.'”But even before the surprisingly poor box-office performance of “Hostel: Part II,” Mr. Solomon was actively acquiring other titles — “Skinwalkers” (a more dramatic PG-13 creeper), “FiercePeople,” and “Wristcutters” (a dark comedy that’s become a hit on the festival circuit) — that fall well beyond the typical slasher genre.Talking to Mr. Solomon, though, who clearly relishes discussing his various marketing strategies and who refers to many of his films not as stories but as “brands,” it’s clear that the onetime filmmaker (who says he hopes to move back behind the camera in the near future) has embraced his new role as studio CEO and guerilla marketer. Even in discussing most recent scandal surrounding “Captivity” — some southern Regal Cinemas have reportedly banned the film — Mr. Solomon the marketer can see the silver lining.“Sure this hurts, because now therewill befewer placesshowing the film” he said. “But the reality is that no one’s even seen the film, all these women’s groups who are upset about it. But I think these sorts of reactions prove that the film delivers — it’s a very harsh film and very psychological, and Roland Joffé directed it in a very different way so that it delivers with its characters far more than ‘Hostel’ did.”Criticize his methods, but it’s hard to refute the results. A whole lot of people are talking about “Captivity” today — a movie that no one’s even seen.

Creating a Captive Audience

Creating a Captive Audience

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