This is a new feature in which the whys and wherefores of releasing strategy are explored. Anyone out there with an extraordinary (or in any way curious or challenging) theatrical or video release campaign on the horizon, please give Playback a shout. maddever@brunico.com

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You have four-and-a-half hours of a Danish soap opera/comedy-horror tv show, originally four quasi-self-contained episodes (they’re now doing the rest of the 13) that’s been variously described as er on acid, or Chicago Hope meets Twin Peaks. It’s been packaged together as a English-subtitled feature which your company has acquired Canadian video distribution rights to. What’s your next move?

Well, if you’re Peter Wertelecky, vp of distribution for Malofilm Distribution, and the film is the intriguing and suspenseful The Kingdom by Lars von Trier (director of Cannes-winner Breaking The Waves), you release it theatrically. Via the rep circuit. On the eve of its video launch, which is slated for July 2: ‘I thought perhaps this picture would still have a chance before it went to video, basically in repertory cinemas, because that’s the audience we’re looking for.’

The Kingdom opened in Edmonton the first week of June, buoyed by a five-star review from Mark Horton in the Edmonton Journal, followed by a date at Toronto’s Bloor Cinema, June 21-27. The length-accommodating rep scheduling ranges from splitting the show over weeknights to single sittings for the weekend.

The ad campaign in Toronto will span the Star, Globe, Sun, Now and eye, to the tune of $7,000 to $8,000, which is what Wertelecky is hoping to do at the box office in Toronto.

If the math seems motivationally puzzling in terms of net gain, it’s because this expenditure will be setting the film up for the rest of Canada. Other rep cinemas in Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver, and likely Winnipeg, will be playing The Kingdom, and others on the rep circuit who are interested will gauge the Toronto receipts as they make their decisions. And since they’re now dating for September, the bulk of the desired rep bookings will likely come through after the film is in the home video market.

It is also hoped that the rep release campaign will boost video sales, sort of like running a trailer for video, ‘at least we hope so,’ says Wertelecky. ‘Even if we sell 5,000 units, if it was not released theatrically it could have been only 1,000.’

Why roll the dice on a theatrical release so close to the video date, a scenario which usually makes people stay away in droves?

Given the length of the film and the fact that it’s in Danish and Swedish with subtitles, Wertelecky doesn’t foresee the overlap as a conflict to the rep plans, given that it is ‘a different animal’ than the typical video product – some of the antics that take place in the haunted high-tech hospital complex include doctors dabbling in voodoo and self-administered organ transplants – and would therefore probably have more appeal as a theater outing in true cult film style.

Wertelecky says that when it was in the Toronto film festival, people were blown over by it, and the marathon-viewing experience was likened to ‘reading an excellent book that you can’t put down.’

‘It’s such an interesting film, I thought it was worth taking a chance. I hope it works, otherwise I’ll be out selling newspapers.’

And of course, if the cult seed blooms, it won’t hurt the video sales, nor the fates of future films of von Trier’s which Malofilm hopes to release.

‘We’re always looking for little hooks that help us launch a film,’ sums up Wertelecky, pointing to Margaret’s Museum as an example. It was held back until the star, Helena Bonham Carter, was available to come to Canada to promote the film. Wertelecky believes the picture wouldn’t have been as successful without her media tour. It’s still playing, having second and third repeats in quite a number of theaters, and video is slated for October.