It's even possible for a particularly short-sighted distributor to recall the kind of fanbase that the Twilight books/movies attracted a few years ago, to not realize that a lot of those folks have moved on, to conflate that with the obsessive Hiddleston fans, and to fixate on the notion that if they market the movie as a vampire movie with Tom Hiddleston in it, it will not be taken seriously as a Real Movie.
I think I'm losing the thread here: you mean that you think the distributors worried that by the time the movie came out, the ready-made fandom would have moved on to the next craze and they would be left with a movie that looked like "Twilight! With classier actors!" and no one to watch it?
I first heard of Only Lovers Left Alive in 2013. I found the cast on Wikipedia. I believe my exact words were: "Vampire movie with John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, and Mia Wasikowska. Did this just spontaneously generate out of the internet or something?" I first saw its existence confirmed on Tumblr. And then Tumblr kept being full of stills and studio shots, and they looked absolutely marvelous and people kept commenting on how marvelous they looked, and the movie kept not existing anywhere I could see it. Unless it's going into wide release later this summer and it's just not being mentioned, I genuinely think the film has missed out on most of its audience. Not everyone has a local arthouse theater taking a chance for a week. Not everyone can get to theirs even if they do. I can hope the movie will have a thriving life on DVD, but it benefited sumptuously from the big screen. And it's a bit frustrating not to be able to tell everyone I know to run out and enjoy Tilda Swinton with a blood popsicle.
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I think I'm losing the thread here: you mean that you think the distributors worried that by the time the movie came out, the ready-made fandom would have moved on to the next craze and they would be left with a movie that looked like "Twilight! With classier actors!" and no one to watch it?
I first heard of Only Lovers Left Alive in 2013. I found the cast on Wikipedia. I believe my exact words were: "Vampire movie with John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, and Mia Wasikowska. Did this just spontaneously generate out of the internet or something?" I first saw its existence confirmed on Tumblr. And then Tumblr kept being full of stills and studio shots, and they looked absolutely marvelous and people kept commenting on how marvelous they looked, and the movie kept not existing anywhere I could see it. Unless it's going into wide release later this summer and it's just not being mentioned, I genuinely think the film has missed out on most of its audience. Not everyone has a local arthouse theater taking a chance for a week. Not everyone can get to theirs even if they do. I can hope the movie will have a thriving life on DVD, but it benefited sumptuously from the big screen. And it's a bit frustrating not to be able to tell everyone I know to run out and enjoy Tilda Swinton with a blood popsicle.