Where is the marketing for mid-level movies that are playing at your theater?

What are these movies?

So, the YouTube channel RedLetterMedia recently dropped a video titled What Are These Movies?!? The video brought up front something that I’ve been noticing for a while in the back of my mind, but never quite gave any real thought to. This subject will vary depending upon where you live and what kind of theaters are accessible to you, but for me, having an AMC with 24 theaters as one of my regulars, there’s just something interesting with the movies they show there every day.

Over the past year, a friend and I have gotten into the habit of going to the movies in more frequent succession. We will occasionally pick titles that we’ve never heard of, but sport interesting plot descriptions. Last year, we saw a pretty good film called Queen of the Ring, which depicted the rise in popularity of women in professional wrestling. The movie starred the likes of Josh Lucas, Walton Goggins and Deborah Ann Woll. What’s more interesting is it’s directed by Ash Avildsen, who is the son of Rocky and Karate Kid director John G. Avildsen, and the film had the same underdog spirit of his father’s films.

This is just one example of many that we’ve discovered just by going to the movies and picking something almost at random. And there are many more that we didn’t even choose to see. But why haven’t we — the general audience, the casual moviegoer — ever heard of them? Even in an age where you see many ads online, where is the marketing for these mid-budget movies?

Age of Alternatives

Looking at the inverse, back when we gave you a first look at Project Hail Mary with a teaser poster and information from Amazon’s press release, there was a commenter on our article who was excited about the news because they never even knew they were adapting the best-selling book into a film. Fast forward a bit and you’d start to see trailers, commercials, more posters, online ads, etc. Project Hail Mary came out in the past week and is doing big business for a non-franchise film (both IMAX showings I had gone to were nearly full).

Obviously, Project Hail Mary is a much higher-profile movie, but for a film that doesn’t really have an established IP name, its success is a win for more original cinema. Sure, it’s based on a book, but this past year, we’ve also gotten films like Sinners and Marty Supreme that scored big.

According to Variety, hot off the success of Project Hail Mary, the film’s star, Ryan Gosling, addressed an audience at a showing of his movie in New York, saying, “Six years ago, I got the manuscript, [It’s] the most ambitious thing I’ll ever make; it seemed impossible. It was too good not to give it a shot. Six years later, we did it. Here we are, we’re all back in theaters. It’s not your job to keep them open, it’s our job to make things that make it worth you coming out.”

RedLetterMedia addressed in their video (and I shared their sentiment) that they once thought the fight to save theaters was to offer mid-level movies that are good alternatives to the big-budget blockbuster films. Offer a variety of choices to bring in different (but more) audiences. Growing up in the 90s, we had plenty of smaller films to choose from. The indie boom was an exciting shake-up for Hollywood and new, fresh voices attempted to bring unique movies to the masses. The idea is for movie theaters not to put all their eggs in one basket, burning out their business when a big-budget movie sees a massive drop or flops.

Marketing and streaming

So, we circle back to the mid-level movies you probably have never heard of. Just recently scrolling through the list of titles available to see at my local AMC, I see that Rose Byrne’s new movie Tow is already out, unbeknownst to me. But shockingly, I also never knew that Bryan Singer had already directed another project, much less that it’s now in theaters. And it stars Jon Voight and Joseph Mazzello from Jurassic Park. Even if he shot the film in secret, for a studio to release it and try to make some kind of money, it’s interesting not to have heard about it in any capacity. Although, understandably, the distributor behind this movie — titled Monument — was probably wary about using Singer’s name after his allegations.

Then, there are films such as They Will Kill You, The Pout-Pout Fish and Reminders of Him. These are movies that kind of sport name actors or premises that will interest an audience out there, but very rarely will you see marketing for it.

When even big movies go to streaming in a short amount of time following a theater release, it almost feels like these smaller studios, who are making and distributing these mid-level movies, know that their films will eventually get dumped on some platform and it will just find its audience in the people who scroll past numerous titles. Perhaps the studios make their money from the streaming deal and while they don’t market their films for theaters, they know they can still make some money from theater play. When you look at the figures, movies that budget in the $20 million – $30 million range might make $4 million in over 1000 screens. But if that $4 million is added on to a good streaming deal, maybe that’s where their profit is made.

You know those huge bins at Walmart that are filled with cheap DVDs for movies of varying quality? That’s kind of what the movie plane feels like right now.

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