Australian film 'The Mule' focuses on the unfortunate adventures of a drug smuggler and stars Angus Sampson and Hugo Weaving. In many ways it’s a typical Aussie production, but the innovative way it’s being distributed could be a game changer for the local film industry, writes Alex McClintock.

The Mule is an Australian black comedy about a young man who returns from Thailand with a stomach full of drugs, and the waiting game played by the police officers who arrest him (including a particularly nasty Hugo Weaving) and lock him inside a hotel room until he owns up or goes to the toilet.

What you see is an economic situation that sets up Australian films to fail. Lauren Carrol Harris, author

It’s an interesting premise, but it’s The Mule’s distribution strategy that has the film industry talking. Apart from a few Q and A sessions with the filmmakers, the movie will not appear in cinemas. Instead it will be made available for paid download around the world on December 7.

According to director and star Angus Sampson, taking The Mule straight to the web means it can leapfrog the four month waiting period between a small cinema release and a domestic DVD launch—reaching a wider online audience before the pirates get there.

‘Do you know any other industry that says, "Here's an item available for purchase, here's a pair of jeans, we'll put them in our shop window, now we're going to take them away for four months and not let you buy it?”’ asks Sampson.

‘Do you know any industry that exists like that? It is madness. It is absolute madness.’

The problem, according to Sampson, is that distributors simply don’t have the money to spend on marketing Australian films, and as a result they tend to be released on a handful of screens, reach few cinemagoers and get pulled early.

‘What would be ideal would be if you could work out something that existed for Australian films only where the exhibitors got 80 cents in the dollar rather than the 62 cents which they currently take,’ says Sampson. ‘I don't know why you couldn't work out something with exhibitors that encouraged them to keep the films on longer at a different pricing model.’

Related: S&M in suburban Brisbane

Unfortunately that doesn’t seem likely in the near future, hence The Mule’s straight-to-web release. According to film academic Lauren Carrol Harris, the structure of the Australian cinema industry may mean it’s an increasingly common strategy.

‘The film industry has just changed so much and is now totally structured around these blockbusters and there's very little time or space for Australian films to even get a chance at the cinema,’ says Harris, the author of Not at a Cinema Near You: Australia's Film Distribution Problem.

‘Partly it's because viewers don't choose what they see at the cinema, that decision is made for them by the cinema, which chooses what to book and what to screen.’

Last week, for example, the number one film in Australia was Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, which was showing on more than 500 screens across the country. Gone Girl, the number two film, was showing on more than 300. In contrast, critically acclaimed Australian horror film The Babadook opened on just 13 screens in May.

‘If you're going to market [a film] in the way that would really be needed to distribute it widely, that would almost take as much as the production budget again,’ says Harris. ‘There's no distributor who can afford to do that, so what you see is an economic situation that sets up Australian films to fail.’

Maps to the Stars, The Mule Thursday 20 November 2014 Listen to the full episode of The Final Cut to hear a review of The Mule and learn more about the future of film distribution in Australia. More This [series episode segment] has image,

Fortunately for the makers of The Babadook it proved to be a financial success overseas, making $633,000 in one weekend in the UK, and $1.1 million in France. In Australia it grossed just $256,000 during its entire cinematic release.

‘Overseas, where there isn't this bad news narrative about Australian film, when it had the chance to be successful, it certainly was,’ says Harris.

‘Audiences will watch Australian films when they get wide distribution, when they're actually available to see and when they're not surrounded by this swarm of bad media.’

The Final Cut is your guide to films worth talking about, big and small—from Hollywood blockbusters to the outer reaches of world cinema.