Tuesday, March 22, 2011

"Direct to Torrent"

Paramount will be releasing "The Tunnel", a faux-documentary horror movie, direct to consumers through BitTorrent.  The torrent feed will include the full basic movie, and Paramount will simultaneously release a DVD with a batch of extras (including added footage, an alternate ending, and a "making of" documentary.
Paramount sees this as not so much supporting piracy, but exploiting a peer-to-peer, word of mouth, promotion scheme for the small budget film.  It's also consistent with its user-backed financing scheme, where the producers sold "frames" from the film (and shares in potential profits) to interested parties online.  (About 30K of the 135K frames were sold at a $1 a piece).

If nothing else, it's an interesting experiment in alternative financing and marketing.

Source: "Direct-to-Torrent: Paramount Releasing 'The Tunnel' over BitTorrent," Vidblog

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