Film Courage: We know you've put your own money into 1BR and now you've said
I believe that you feel confident you can raise what four to five million
for another picture of someone else's money what gives you that confidence
how do that?You took this chance you and the writer/director put your own money in first?
Alok Mishra, Producer: The thing gives me confidence is awareness.
We know with confidence I can tell you that as of right now before going on these AVOD
platforms [Advertising-based Video on Demand] you probably had roughly 100 million people
a mixture of Nielsen has a tracker and some other aspects that we have privy to it's interesting to
have the confidence based off of numbers that we think that about there's certainty 100 that
we know if 100 million people watch your movie and this is before it goes on AVOD right another 50-60
million people could watch it then there's 330 million people United States right do you think
we can convince a million people to come see this movie theatrically the next movie theatrically
I think the answer is yes I think not only a million you could probably convince two million
people so 20 million dollars in the lifespan of a movie in a theatrical release context right well
50 is going to the theater and if you have to have a theatrical distribute another 20 is
gone so you're making about 30 of either this 10 million or even this 20 million let's say well if
it's 20 you've already made your money back right there plus almost 20 for your investors and stuff
we're not even counting a Netflix deal or a in terms of an S5 deal and a TVOD
[Transactional video on demand] that window too if you have a hundred million people have
watched your film your TVOD should be two to three million dollars it could be just that if not more
then I said the asphalt release then go to AVOD what's that going to do for you and in addition
to that people are going to go back and watch the first movie twos that'll make money as well
if you plan a Trilogy right and at least the second one does the numbers we're talking
about third one will absolutely do the same numbers if not just as much if it's a good
movie look it could be a piece of crap but at least I'll do half of that right
we've already read the script the script's actually better than the first one
if the first one's alien the second one's aliens so we really do feel we're offering the film go
or something a bigger universe a bigger sort of continuation of the story it really does have a
much bigger scope and I feel given the awareness and given how many people watch the film we will
not only make people's money back but we'll make them some money so I feel very confident about
this this time in fact I'm trying to scrape up as much money as I can myself to put it
in just myself because I'd rather just have some ownership the film entrepreneurship that people
talk about right it's good to have a piece of what you have if it's considered successful I mean it's
an interesting thing with the first one look this is money that if we have a second and third movie
I'll make passive income on this movie the rest of my life I mean hopefully knock on wood if you
have one successful project it can be successful for a long time to come if you if you've marketed
it correctly there's awareness is there so awareness that's the main thing awareness is
key awareness is key and the same screenwriter same writer director he's our he's our brother
he's our partner we I don't know that we could do with anybody else other than him I mean only only
way we wouldn't is if you got too big for it and just wants to go out and do other more interesting
projects and this and that but but no we would love for him to be involved with all this stuff
I don't know how much you can talk about the second one so it's 2BR right it's not called
2BR people would tell you people seem to think that's the idea let me tell you why it's not
called 2BR okay all right so when you go on to I don't know Peacock for example and you go in
their horror section well it's all alphabetical but what becomes before the alphabet the numbers
come before the alphabet right so when you come on to Peacock for example you'll see
we're on the first very first page you come up 1 BR now wouldn't it be smarter to call it
1 BR colon something so that you retain that spot and you just call it something different
right so that's why 2BR is not as good an idea sure so but we can't say what it's called okay
if it's 1BR colon and then whatever else at least then the together if if the first one's still
on the platform so now that people go oh wait a minute well they're right next to each other right
so that makes sense yeah that makes sense yeah so it's funny too though that
the you would think that people always want to the 2BR thing and she's just moving on to a two
bedroom that's it that's more that's the thing that's the other joke that we make tourism through
oh we got two bedrooms not moving to a bigger place right well maybe she's going to have Single
White Female roommate was it your plan to turn 1BR into a sequel or a series of movies all along
well we I had a discussion what happened was this I thought it could definitely be a sequel
but in terms of the couple endings we shot it might have been or might not have been
and producers were pushing very much towards the the ending that we have
right now where it definitely lends itself to a sequel and stuff that because we felt
there was more to tell and we could cleverly I mean look I couldn't thought they could make a
sequel out of Die Hard and we have six movies so we knew there was always a way to do it
but and and the ending we have is a real there at the end or is it kind of ending which we thought
was kind of cool too so that helped us really cement the idea that we were going to have the
sequel it was talked about but then I was no no that ending will make sure that we people want to
see what happens next so yes it came down to the ending we picked and we already had ideas for it
anyways but the ending really helped us a minute what are your biggest concerns making 1BR into
a franchise going forward well I mean there's a believability to it some people talk didn't ask
why we didn't want to do a TV show I really feel it's it lends itself in terms of believability to
these sort of episodic not episodic but these these two hour hour and a half next chapters
let's say I feel to stretch into TV show there's times people start questioning the reality of it's
almost it's hard enough to get them to suspend their disbelief but I feel we can do that in
movie size chunks versus episodic kind of things where it's seasons or something that that doesn't
make sense to me I think it's more of a movie on the producing side is there anything that
you aim to do better this time around well we know quite a lot I mean we learned a lot we definitely
understand what the distribution game is I think that just I mean we have a very honest distributor
dark sky and and they're a mom-and-pop they're boutique they helped us quite a lot
I feel we did a lot of the marketing in comparison to what they did so I feel the next time you go
do this maybe we need someone who's not going to I don't know well we could still work with them
again or whatever it is but I think that Having learned what we learned I think that we can do a
lot of the stuff ourselves I think that we should try to distribute globally more ourselves rather
than handle sub-distributors unless you're going to have a theatrical opening and you
need that relationship that they have this local distributor has with the theater chain let's say
that's probably the only reason when you want to have someone that you have to sub distribute to
but I think we've learned a lot in terms of that part of the business I think
we've made a lot of relationships with actual journalists and Horror in the horror community
I still have a public I would still do a publicist all day long but I think that
there's a lot of opportunities for us to go directly to certain journalists and Alias
and we have a relationship we would love to sit down with you and we would bring
you these people and and do that more so and keep that sort of grassroots thing up
where they I think that it's really great when you have a relationship with somebody in general
whether it be a journalist or anybody let's say that you continue the relationship right
especially if they're supportive of your work then you want to give them sort of I'm going
to give you the first dibs on this crew the LA Times Trend Central gets it or whatever it is
you want to foster and support that relationship and hopefully you guys are both going to be here
a long time so this isn't just the only movie you're bringing them you're bringing up other
things too but I think that it's important into continue and foster a grassroots kind of spirit
to the whole thing and no matter how big it gets people discoveries they discovering horror movies
and the horror community is very passionate about it they get they get to the point where
they'll tell 10 of their friends it's amazing how how verbal and how the word of mouth in a
horror community travel so much more than even a regular romantic comedy or whatever it is right.