The 1982 comedy film Porky’s was critically received as vulgar and juvenile, and has been called by some the worst film of that year.

Yet the Florida-shot film, featuring a slew of Canadian actors and produced by Astral Bellevue Pathe, in its opening weekend in the U.S. made $7.6 million at the box office, almost double its $4 million production budget. In its lifetime, Porky’s has grossed more than $111 million in the U.S.

Lategan Media Group (LMG) president Stephen Lategan says Porky’s formidable box office presence was due to its producers approach to P&A (prints and advertising) – the marketing and promotion behind a film in its theatrical release.

And the Toronto-based LMG’s business model aims to focus on Canadian indie films’ P & A, Lategan tells Playback.

The core of the offering is that a film’s demand over its life cycle is driven by marketing of its theatrical release; the more billboards, TV spots, theatrical trailers and print ads that promote it, the better. After all, he insists, films only “are commercially viable if people are aware of them.”

Lategan wants to help Canadian indies to follow the “50/50” model – that the marketing budget should be equal to that of the production budget.

“The 50/50 model is really the Hollywood model,” he adds, noting that the flaws in the Tinseltown model come from studios putting all of their marketing capital into a few multi-million dollar films and gambling on those few films recouping all their investments as a result.

“What we’re saying is that any film can be [commercially] viable. A million dollar Canadian film can be viable, because it doesn’t need to do $100 million at the box office to break even,” he explains.

So LMG will work to raise private P&A capital approximately equal to the production budget of a client or clients’ Canadian indie film. The overall spend (production plus P&A) will be kept below a projected box office return, to create less of an investment risk.

LMG is focused on working with established Canadian independent producers or directors on films with modest budgets that have limited or no P&A spending budget. The company currently has one film in development and is in talks with other filmmakers. Lategan adds that the company will work with indie features, chosen on a case-by-case basis, that are at any stage, whether still in development or fully completed.

And the funding will come from investors who are outside of the film industry, an arrangement that doesn’t preclude involvement from Telefilm, the Ontario Media Development Corporation, or other traditional funding sources in a film’s production budget.

“The feature film industry hasn’t come anywhere near its potential, and part of the reason for that is that it’s not perceived as a moneymaker, and rightly so, because there’s no emphasis on marketing, and that’s something we want to change. We’re intentionally seeking funds from those that are not embedded in the current system and set in a certain way of doing things,” Lategan insists.

He is optimistic that their private supporters will recoup their investments, leading to further investments down the road.

When it comes to Canadian distributors, LMG will work with them in a service arrangement, to stay in charge of how marketing dollars are spent.

“The distributor would do all the leg work, because they have all the channels in place, and they would probably take a lower percentage – but a lower percentage of much more at the box office,” Lategan explains.

The arrangement could lead to the benefit of smaller indie distributors who don’t have the power to raise large sums for marketing to expand their slates.

Since the LMG model is focused solely on the Canadian market, international distribution rights would be handled as usual.

Lategan couldn’t say exactly how many films the company will work with, or what the cap on the private funding will be, but did say that once the model is proven, LMG will increase the slate each year.

LMG first launched in 1999, and Lategan first devised the business model in 2006. He’s launching it now formally to bring other productions under the LMG umbrella.

Lategan has also assembled an advisory board comprised of industry execs, including Channel Zero president and COO Cal Millar and Jed Schniederman, who most recently worked at Microsoft Canada as on-line marketing lead.

And the model has peaked the interest of many producers and directors in the industry dealing with the challenges of marketing an indie film with a limited budget. That includes writer-director Brett Heard, who recently completed Stag, his first feature, and is in the process of getting it to theatre screens.

“[Stag] is a commercial comedy that could realistically appeal to a very wide audience. However, it’s a low budget film with no money allocated for P&A, and so it’s unlikely that it will have the opportunity to even be seen by a medium-sized audience,” says Heard. “I’m thrilled to have picked up some awards from the festivals, but I’d really like to pick up some coin from the box office, and I can only assume Telefilm and all the other investors in this film would like that as well. Stephen’s plan is very intriguing to me as it might have the ability to provide the two missing elements for the success of low budget Canadian films – exposure and awareness,” he adds.

Slaughter Nick for President producer and co-director Liza Vespi echoes the sentiment, noting, “There are so many funding challenges confronting indie producers simply to get their projects completed that the marketing budget is oftentimes left to wither. Having a substantial P&A budget up front ensures you can break through the noise of a crowded marketplace in order to get the returns.”

And while he’s not projecting an outsized Porky’s or Bon Cop, Bad Cop-type of return, but more of an average return on the P&A dollar, Lategan says the benefit of this model is that the telling of Canadian stories isn’t reliant on international markets. In the long-term, he adds, it’s a strategy that could contribute to creating a self-sustaining film market in Canada.

“One thing that frustrated me was that there’s a bias against Canadian films really based on nothing. People weren’t going to see a lot of good films just for the reason that they weren’t aware of them, and that’s what we’re looking to change,” he says.