US documentary maker seeks damages over Oscar film ("Taxi to the Dark Side")

[Barrett808]

Source: Reuters

US documentary maker seeks damages over Oscar film
By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK, June 26 (Reuters) - Filmmaker Alex Gibney said on Thursday he was seeking more than $1 million in damages from a company he says failed to properly distribute and promote his Oscar-winning feature documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side."

The movie focuses on America's use of torture in prisoner interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks.

It had made around $280,000 worldwide by June 1, according to movie Web site Box Office Mojo, a fraction of the multimillion dollar takings of other recent documentary Oscar winners.

...

Gibney said he has filed for arbitration against the film's distributor THINKFilm, accusing the company of inadequately distributing and marketing the film after its Oscar win in February.

...

"We won, we did it, and then not to capitalize on that moment so that a lot of people could hear that message was devastating," Gibney said.

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26483143.htm

[redqueen]

1. K&R

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

2. K&R, too.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

3. Good for Gibney!

[cascadiance]

4. I found a bootleg copy of it, but FULLY INTEND to buy a DVD when he puts it out!

This film is too good to miss and he deserves to get every penny of royalty he can get for a release of this film! This is pretty damn lame! It's kind of like having to travel to Canada to see "Kill the Messenger". I wonder how much of these distribution "problems" are "demand-oriented" and how many are actually political in nature!

[Hissyspit]

5. I still have it sitting in the saved section of my Netflix queue.

Where it has been sitting since the Oscars. I'd say he has a case.

[DesertFlower]

7. so do i. nt

[krkaufman]

16. Exactly what I was going to post.

Never saw it come to theaters.

[brentspeak]

6. Why is he suing for a $1 million when apparently the company is broke?

According to what he said in the article, the reason his film wasn't properly promoted was because THINKfilm didn't have money in the first place. He's certainly entitled some sort of compensation if the distribution company misled him on the state of the company's finances. But asking for a million bucks from a broke company is like demanding a thousand dollars cash from a homeless bum: where's the money supposed to come from?

[slampoet]

8. if you own the rights to an Oscar winner I'd Load you the Money and nearly any bank would too.

If you defulted then I'd own the distribution to an Oscar winner.

Sounds like this was not distributed for an other reason.

Time to start looking for bush cousins.

[McCamy Taylor]

9. Have to assume someone is getting paid off NOT to promote the film.

I suspect that this happens a lot more than people realize.

[harmonicon]

13. yep - do you remember Idiocracy?

It's a great and hilarious film, but was made under contract to FOX. When they saw what it was, they didn't promote it - at all. No print advertising, tv, not even preview copies sent out to movie reviewers. It would have been a hit, but it was buried on purpose.

[readmoreoften]

10. Yes, and in other news a company that found the cure for AIDS also couldn't get funded.

THINKfilms is LARGE. It's full of shit. It won a fucking Oscar. It was clearly paid to suppress it. (Or just flat out agrees with the policy.)

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

11. Who Found the cure for AIDS?

Do you have a link?

[Supersedeas]

12. somethings they don't want us to know

[dipsydoodle]

14. Amazon release dates :

http://www.amazon.com/Taxi-Dark-Side-Alex-Gibney/dp/B001BEK8FQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1214555173&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Taxi-to-the-Dark-Side/dp/B000YDAJLS

Interesting that we get it in the UK 3 months sooner - next Monday in fact.

[JoFerret]

15. Where was the executive producer?

He talked a good game.

[damntexdem]

17. But if they had adequately marketed it, more people would have seen the truth about torture.

And we can't have that, can we?

;-)