We had an encore screening at another cinema that's part of the same chain, but it drew low attendance.

A combination of screening on a Saturday afternoon on the Easter long weekend and Melbourne audiences never being particularly supportive of indie film, so though we were disappointed, we weren't surprised.

Our cinema run was dependent on continually drawing numbers, so after the second screening didn't draw, that was the end of that.

Digital Release & DVD

After that, Turn Key released the film on Amazon Prime on May 1st, 2018. They've pitched to Netflix and Hulu, but it has been rejected from there. We've put it up on Vimeo On Demand and OzFlix, an Australian VOD company. We've wanted iTunes and Google Play too but Turn Key doesn't seem keen on that.

VOD sales have been low.

A producer's rep from Sydney, Ignite Pictures, approached us wanting to see what else he could do with the film. We're non-exclusive with Turn Key, so we had nothing to lose by letting him try.

However, all his American distributors passed, as the film is already on Amazon. For us, it seems distributors are most interested in what is easy, and as the simplest platform to get onto, Amazon, was already taken, they weren't interested.

However, an Australian distributor, Bounty Films, took the film for TV rights in Aus / NZ through our producer's rep, and they have pitched to a television network there. We are yet to hear the result.

Turn Key did manage to secure a DVD release for the film in North America, selling mostly through Barnes & Noble. That was a nice surprise and money up front. And we actually saw the film on the Walmart website the other day. It was a bit of a thrill.

So we ask ourselves have we gone in the right direction by relying on sales agents, producers reps, and distributors to release Friends, Foes & Fireworks? Could we have done this ourselves with aggregators like Distribber, BitMax, or Quiver?

It is difficult to say.

Frustrations

Access to information and lack of communication has been the biggest frustration working with traditional distributors.

With Vimeo On Demand, it is our platform, so any time we want to see sales figures it takes only seconds to log in and check.

But the last time we heard from Turn Key about sales figures on Amazon was in October 2018. The film has also been on DVD for six months now and we have no idea how it is selling.

We emailed Turn Key to find out in April 2019, followed up in May due to receiving no reply, followed up again in June. We are still waiting.

Getting information out of OzFlix is just as bad.

Friends, Foes & Fireworks has been on the Australian streaming platform since April 2018. In all that time we have never received a sales report despite trying since January 2019, sending numerous emails and chatting to the CEO of OzFlix on Facebook when it became obvious the emails would remain unanswered.