Surprise success of Nicolas Cage movie ‘Mandy’ causes big shift in theater release strategy

Nicolas Cage in “Mandy.”
RLJE Films

• Panos Cosmatos’ latest movie “Mandy,” starring Nicolas Cage,
  is achieving the impossible for most day-and-date films, as
  audiences would rather see it in theaters than Video-On-Demand.
• Thanks to fans demanding it be shown in more theaters, RLJ
  Entertainment, the distributor of “Mandy,” has the movie booked
  in theaters until November.
• Business Insider explores why “Mandy” could be the next
  “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

With the fall movie season in full swing, much of the weekend box
office discussion has focused on the impressive staying power of
titles such as “The Nun,” “A Simple Favor,” and “The House with a
Clock in Its Walls,” which audiences continue to flock to after
their opening weekends.

But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll come across a title
currently playing that has the kind of hold on audiences that it
has the makings of being a cult classic the likes we haven’t seen
since “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Panos Cosmatos’
acid-laced revenge movie starring Nicolas Cage, “Mandy,”
isn’t just having a solid theatrical run, it’s defying the
release strategy of most day-and-date films before it.

In the three weeks since opening, the movie has only played in
210 theaters, but to date it’s grossed close to $840,000. And that doesn’t even count
the money coming in through Video-On-Demand, which the movie’s
distributor, RLJ Entertainment, boasts is in the millions.

When a movie is released on a day-and-date platform, meaning its
distributor releases the movie in theaters and
streaming/Video-On-Demand simultaneously, the theatrical
component of the release is often used almost as a unique brand
of advertising for the VOD option.

Because the major theater chains won’t allow day-and-date films
to be played in their multiplexes (as they are not exclusively
shown on the big screen), these titles instead play in limited
release at independent chains and art houses, typically in major
cities. So the reviews, feature stories, and any other attention
from the theatrical release boost the movie’s VOD exposure, as
people who want to see the movie but don’t live near one of the
theaters showing it can easily order it on their TVs. Cage, in
particular, has capitalized on this recently, as many of his
films in the last few years have been straight-to-VOD or
day-and-date.

So RLJ Entertainment, which is known for releasing genre films
(“Brawl in Cell Block 99,” “Bone Tomahawk”) and has handled
films starring Cage in the past (“Rage,” “Dog Eat Dog,” “Pay the
Ghost”), moved forward with the usual game plan for “Mandy.” They
released it in 75 theaters its first week, and had Cosmatos,
Cage, and co-star Linus Roache show up for live Q&As
following some special Thursday-night screenings before its
opening weekend, the hope being that exposure and the 94% Rotten Tomatoes score the movie has would
bring in the audiences that a limited marketing budget a
day-and-date movie can’t.

And boy did it work.

(L-R) Panos Cosmatos,
Nicolas Cage, and Linus Roache at a special screening of “Mandy”
before its theatrical release.
David
Livingston/Getty

Though the movie earned a modest $225,723 its first weekend,
there were sellout showings — from New York’s Alamo Drafthouse to
Chicago’s Music Box to even an art house in El Paso, Texas. And
then something unusual happened: Instead of people ordering the
movie on VOD, they took to social media and demanded a wider
release so that “Mandy” could open at a theater near them.

The twitter handle @CheddarGoblin — named
after the mac & cheese puking green goblin featured in a
commercial that appears in the
movie — suddenly became the destination for “Mandy” fans
to get the latest updates on which theaters around the country
were playing the movie.

And the hunger for the movie only increased in the second weekend
it was out, as the number of theaters showing “Mandy” dropped
down to 71. The loss of four screens may not seem like a big
deal, but it was for fans living in southern California, because
“Mandy” didn’t show at a single theater in Los Angeles that
weekend.

This wasn’t because RLJ Entertainment had given up on the movie,
it simply was going with its usual formula of decreasing its
theatrical count in week 2 and letting VOD become a more
attractive option to see the movie. The company had done its
theater bookings long before the fan outcry, and that meant it
couldn’t add new screenings because the theaters already had a
full slate of titles for the weekend (the movie playing in three
LA theaters the following weekend).

Despite the loss of a major market, the movie saw a relatively
minuscule 31% drop in ticket sales from its opening weekend — in
fact, its $155,405 take was one of the
largest for any indie movie that weekend.

“With a day-and-date release, it’s really hard theatrically to
break out, it’s nearly impossible,” Mark Ward, chief acquisitions
officer at RLJ Entertainment, told Business Insider. “So it’s
beyond our wildest dreams that the film is performing strong
everywhere, on all platforms.” (Currently, “Mandy” is in the top
10 films to rent on iTunes in “independent,” “horror,” and
“thriller” categories.)

Ward promises that, if there’s demand, the movie will continue
its theater run, so it seems the “Mandy” craze isn’t going to end
anytime soon.

“RLJ’s theatrical booker is getting all these calls from theaters
saying, ‘We want the movie but we have contractual obligations
with other films, can we have it in October or November?’” said
Lisa Whalen, CEO of SpectreVision, the production company founded
by Elijah Wood that’s behind “Mandy” (along with XYZ Films and
Umedia). “So it’s just going to keep coming out.”

“Mandy.”
Sundance
Institute

“As filmmakers, we have to catch up to the reality that many
cinema goers are now experiencing films in their homes,” Daniel
Noah, director of development at SpectreVision added. “And that’s
one of things that’s so thrilling for us, that people are saying
‘No, this demands to be seen in the theaters, we are not going to
watch it at home.’”

Ward believes we could be seeing the start of “Mandy” becoming
what “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is now: a movie that
continues to be played in theaters for its fans over decades. But
for the here and now, he believes “Mandy” has changed how
day-and-date films are perceived. 

“I feel ‘Mandy’ is the new benchmark in terms of this type of
release,” Ward said.