Jason Blum Quotes

'Brothers McMullen' would not be picked up for theatrical distribution now.

When I started in the late 1950s, every film I made - no matter how low the budget - got a theatrical release. Today, less that 20-percent of our films get a theatrical release.

Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed.

When you work in film, you learn to appreciate a distributor. You can have this great little film, but if you don't have a distributor, you are sitting in your living room with a great little film.

To have a film in America means precisely nothing if you don't have a distributor who stands behind it.

I think, it's important to understand how to release a film.

I think of 'Beyond The Clouds' very fondly. Yes, it has not been seen by a lot of people in theatres. I had anticipated more people would watch it. But that has to do with something I don't know well: marketing. A lot of people didn't even know that it was a Hindi film.

When I started, every film got a full theatrical distribution. Today, almost no low budget films, maybe two or three a year, will get a full theatrical distribution. We've been frozen out of that, which means they must be aware that for a full theatrical distribution it either has to be something like Saw or some exploitation film of today or an extremely well made personal film.

I'm really interested in making movies that people see: I've made a lot of independent films and it's really depressing when no one sees them.

I write box notes for Kino International, which specializes in distributing foreign films.

It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.

The movies have a way of seeping out there over time. We don't put them in 2,000 theaters. It wouldn't work that way.

It just seems like that because I do a lot of independent films that don't get to the mainstream.

Every film may not be appropriate for a theatrical release, and the theatrical business is not a very good business for anybody except the distributor.

Movies don't sit in the theaters for an entire summer like they did in 1982. Now you've got a two- or three-week shelf life so you need to have that awareness right off the bat. And in order to make a lot of people know about your movie, you need to be out there banging the drum and showing your stuff.

I would love to do a big studio movie, just because they're going to put the money into distributing it. A lot of times you do these little movies, you love them and they never get seen by anyone.

It would have been impossible to get 'The Verdict' off the ground without Paul Newman obviously, but today without any star, kind of a dramatic piece would be very tough.

Usually the films that I do are released theatrically in foreign markets. In the U.S., they're either picked up as HBO premier films or Showtime first-runs. In today's market, in America, you need at least $50 million for your budget to go to the big show, and I'm not quite there yet. But keep watching - maybe someday I will be.

Unless it's something very clever like 'Memento,' most independent films have a very tough life out there.

While more great films are being made every year, it is increasingly difficult to get indies into theaters or on TV.

Everyone who makes a film is at the major distributors' mercy.

We make a lot of movies that I don't think merit a wide release. We have this label called Tilt, and we have the movies come out on that, and that's fine. But it shocks me when, having done this a few times, when I really believe a movie should get a wide release, and I struggle to get it released. That does surprise me.

When my second film 'Dus' released, I was still getting compliments for 'Tum Bin' because it was a hit on satellite channels.

The idea of being associated with Bollywood prompted me to get into DVD distribution.

A theatrical release is not possible for a short film.