UK film in multi-platform release
July 1, 2013
By Colin Mann
The forthcoming film release – A Field in England – is coming out simultaneously July 5th in the cinema, on DVD, Freeview and Video on Demand, the first British film to do so.
The English Civil War-set film was commissioned by Film4.0, with Film4, Picturehouse Entertainment, 4DVD and Film4 Channel partnering for this ‘watch-it-where-you-want’ experiment. The film is one of the first to receive funding from the BFI’s New Models Distribution Fund strand, which was set up to support experimental and ambitious release models.
Director Ben Wheatley said the partners had tried to innovate with the film, in production and distribution. Sue Bruce-Smith, Film4’s Head of Commercial and Brand Strategy, said the broadcaster was lucky to have found in Picturehouse Entertainment, 4DVD, the Film4 channel and BFI partners who shared its vision to disrupt the status quo and experiment with new distribution patterns, to create what she described as an “exciting event style release”.
Clare Binns, Director of Programming and Acquisitions at Picturehouse Entertainment, said the company’s eagerness to explore and experiment with new platforms of distribution in an evolving film landscape made it all the more thrilled to be able to get the film out there to the audience it so readily deserved.