MTI offers up familiar faces
INDIE FILM GUIDE: DVD titles piggyback theatrical successes
By Cindy Spielvogel -- Video Business, 8/31/2006
AUG. 31 | MTI Home Video is releasing a couple of titles featuring stars that are currently receiving a lot of attention, according to Jay Grossman, VP of sales and acquisitions for the company.
MTI offers up name stars in movies such as The Reading Room with James Earl Jones.
Coming to DVD on Oct. 24 (prebook Oct. 4; $24.95) is The Reading Room, MTI’s second release from the Timeless Media Group. In addition to James Earl Jones, Georg Stanford Brown and Tim Reid, the Hallmark Channel original movie also stars Monique Coleman of Dancing With the Stars and High School Musical.
The film tells the story of how a man fulfills his wife’s dying wish by transforming an abandoned inner-city building into a reading room.
Then on Nov. 7 (prebook Oct. 17; DVD $19.95), MTI will release Archangel, a thriller set in Moscow starring Daniel Craig, the new James Bond. Grossman believes the film will ride on the publicity surrounding the upcoming theatrical release of Craig’s Casino Royale.
Having films with such stars “gives us more visibility,” Grossman says. “With certain genres, star power isn’t as important, but with dramas and thrillers it is important,” he explains. In horror, for example, a film doesn’t necessarily need a star because “the star is the creature.”
Another example of how familiarity has helped MTI’s releases is with the company’s Flight 93. The initial DVD release was timed to coincide with the theatrical bow of the similar United 93. With that film now coming to DVD and World Trade Center in theaters, accounts are bringing in more copies of Flight 93, Grossman says.
MTI also piggybacked its DVD release of Pirates on the theatrical release of the second Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Other high-profile upcoming releases for MTI include Going Shopping from Henry Jaglom and thriller Final Move starring Rachel Hunter and Daniel Baldwin, along with another release from Timeless, the Australian miniseries Mary Bryant.
