Snowpiercer: Indie Savior or Casualty?

Depending on whom you ask in the film world, the U.S. release of Snowpiercer is either a revolution or a travesty. Directed by Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho and starring Captain America’s Chris Evans, the dystopian flick is set on a futuristic train hurtling around a frozen earth. With a 94 percent rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, it’s become a critical darling. In its opening weekend in late June, the film made $171,187 from just eight screens, playing sold-out shows in New York and Los Angeles.

Then, in its third weekend in release, when many studios would try to roll their small movies out to thousands of screens nationwide, distributor Radius-TWC took a different tack. While expanding to 356 screens, Snowpiercer also became available in 85 million homes on video-on-demand, making it the widest-ever simultaneous theatrical-VOD release. The film’s per-screen revenue dropped precipitously, to $1,785. But the movie also did about $2 million on VOD and iTunes that same week—a record for Radius and its parent, Weinstein Co. The film spent most of its first week atop the iTunes charts, beating out hits such as Rio 2 and The Other Woman. “We’re outflanking these bigger players, at a fraction of the cost,” says Radius co-President Tom Quinn.