The Role Of A Distribution Company

The role of a distribution company is identify and then deliver the largest audience that is possible for every type of film, they can then continue on to target companies to book the film for their cinema. The distribution company has to calculate how much money will the film will make and then they will release a budget to release it and then their goal is to get back all of the money from the costs and gain a profit overall.

There is a 6 step plan of a distribution company, these are:

Focus on the audience

Distributors need to be able to understand their target audience, this is often achieved through questionnaires and surveys which help them understand what kinds of things they need to do to promote the film. For example: Twilight is a film aimed at mainly teenage girls so there would be no point promoting that particular film at 80 year old men because they wouldn't go and watch it and then the distribution company would come to a loss. Distribution companies tend to try and create the largest range of target audience as they can but they also need to make sure they don't lose the films core audience because if they did so there would more than likely to break even or end up with an overall loss.

Rolling the distribution dice

Audiences vary in tastes and this makes them very unpredictable which causes a lot of problems for the distribution companies because even with the experience they have, they will still not be able to tell or even predict what will be a hit or miss at the box office. This has also been the case with a few films in the past where the first film has been a hit but the sequel may be a flop at the cinemas.

The competitive jungle

There is a lot of competition when it comes to distributors releasing films because they have to think about what films will be released on that day or around that time for example: Releasing a new horror film on a Friday during the half term holidays and then another distributor releasing a film like Toy Story which will be a major success because of children being off school and the fact it's a film aimed at children, the first distributor has the decision of rescheduling the release or going ahead and possibly having an outcome of a loss.

Satisfying anticipated demand

When the distributors are going to release a film they need to work out whether they are going to release the film to cinemas everywhere if it is going to be a box office hit or for example a foreign film or a student made film will more than likely be shown at a few cinemas rather than many.

Digital regeneration

When digital release was introduced there was a very positive impact on the distribution companies, this is because disks are less expensive to be duplicated and there is also a better chance of new releasing and also programming opportunities such as animation films, 3D films, and HD movies which are shown in high quality and they do not deteriorate or damage.

Budgeting the release

When the distributor has seen the completed film and has then confirmed the release plan they then work out the budget. Distributors in the UK pay the release costs which include marketing, print duplications and advertising this also covers the launch of the film post-release.