RELEASE WINDOW Cinemas love Amazon, nix Netflix

TBC

Guardian article.

There have been several high profile battles over the traditional release window - the convention that there will be around a 3 month gap between cinema run and DVD release, and another before TV release (which can be further staggered in the UK between premium subscription channels such as Sky Movies and terrestrial channels BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, C4 and C5).

Disney was forced to back down over its plans for Alice in Wonderland when several of the major chains threatened to boycott the movie if they didn't stick to the release window.

Netflix seems to have suffered such a backlash with its plans for a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel (the biggest foreign hit in US history took $130m there) to be an IMAX release seemingly abandoned. Cinema chains again pledged to boycott the film, due to be released on the Netflix platform at the same time.

WT: The Theory of Everything

Working Title's latest could be taken as a 'chick flick' - the marketing heavily centres on the romantic narrative - but, even if it's hardly a four quadrant movie (youth appeal?!), the biopic format and the science sub-plot should help boost male appeal too (being stereotypical in the manner that distributors are).

THE TRAILER

You don't need to have viewed a film in full to get to grips with analysing, the trailer generally reveals a lot you can utilise: good examples of mise-en-scene and key information on characters and setting; genre/s and which are being emphasised - title font and soundtrack also contribute to possible semiotic analysis here; target audience/s; intertextuality; distinctive (or uniform) marketing for different territories. You may also spot age ratings (MPAA and BBFC); occasionally there will be a sharp contrast between the US (which tends to heavily penalise sexual content but go very lenient on violence) and UK (which tends to be more liberal on sexual content but stricter on violence - so, the BBFC passed Baise Moi with an 18 despite its unsimulated sex scenes, but sought to ban The Human Centipede; Meadows and Warp were disgusted when TisEng got hit with an 18 which sharply undermined its box office prospects).

TRAILER SCREENSHOTS

1: We open on a grand historic building in the South of England - a world away from TisEng's Shaun and the council estate he resides in