Rotten Potatoes

TARA BRADYon the idiosyncrasies of the Irish box office

EXHIBITORS beware the stealth picture. For what seems like a geological age, Irish critics have bemoaned the proliferation of stealth releases – movies that open without the benefit of preview screenings. For professional reviewers it’s a mortgage-busting equation: no press show = no review = no paycheque. Don’t all weep at once.

Occasionally stealth pictures are just that. For reasons best known to that film's distributors, Shark Night 3Dwas kept under lock and key until the very nanosecond of release. And that's okay. Attempting to put one over on the general public is an ancient showbiz tradition.

It gets rather more complicated when UK-based distributors screen their films for British journalists but refuse to extend the same courtesy to Irish ones. Down the years, long-standing Hibernia-based critics have listened to a barrage of unlikely defences of this “No Irish” door policy. (“We’re having a regional press show in Bristol; isn’t that near Dublin?” remains a favourite post-colonial refrain.)

This petty industrial squabble has finally spilled over into the big, bad world of profits. Recent releases Abductionand Trespassexemplify a strange new disease at the Irish multiplex: the stealth picture margin munch. It shouldn't matter to most civilians that the UK distributor decided not to bother screening those titles for Irish critics but, by golly, it matters to the bottom line.

Neither film came close to accounting for the magic plimsoll mark that governs the Irish movie market. A normal healthy release on these shores should amount to about 10 per cent of the overall UK take: Abductionlimped out of the Irish box office chart in mid-October with an appalling €166,399 from regional totals in excess of €2,609,666; Trespassdebuted here with €7,466 in a week when it took €247,957 in the larger marketplace.

We’d love to think that the great Irish public have decided to stand behind their local critics and boycott films operating a “No Irish” policy. But that does seem somewhat unlikely. Instead, the stealth picture margin munch is more likely a consequence of low media coverage.

Here’s another simple equation: if you don’t screen the film for critics, then it doesn’t appear on listings websites or pages, and punters don’t know its on.

Take Lions Gate. The UK-based distributor has released more than a dozen titles in Ireland in 2011. Of these, only two ( The Next Three Daysand Little White Lies) were screened for Irish critics. Reviewers aren't happy, but neither are the cinema owners who ultimately wind up bearing the brunt of the coverage deficit when Lions Gate property Conan the Barbarian 3Dspirals into oblivion.

Crunch the numbers and a clear pattern emerges. TV spots and flashy street ads may be enough to sell tickets for the opening weekend, but come week two, when the advertising spend is gone, the movies that weren’t reviewed last week aren’t listed on meta-sites or in newspapers this week. Out of sight, out of mind.

Exhibitors beware the stealth picture.