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Moonrise Kingdom and the Success of the Platform Release


The most frequent question that we’ve seen on tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook has been, “When is Moonrise Kingdom opening in my hometown?” If you yourself have asked this question, you are part of the success story of Moonrise‘s platform release strategy.

First, let’s turn to wikipedia for a definition of a platform release:

A platform release is a limited release strategy, whereby the film opens in only a few theaters, then gradually expands to more theaters as word of mouth spreads and the marketing campaign gains momentum. Depending on the film’s success, there is even the possibility to expand into a wide release. The advantage of this strategy is that marketing costs are conserved until a film’s performance has been established. This way, if a film turns out to be very popular or critically acclaimed, the distributor may opt to spend more money than originally planned and push for a wider release; if the movie flops, the distributor can withdraw from the campaign without having spent much money promoting and advertising the film.

As you may have heard, MR opened in only four theaters (two in New York and two in Los Angeles), but the film earned $167,250 per screen, which is highest per-theater box office average for a non-animated film of all time.

Join us after the jump for more thoughts regarding MR‘s success. Continue reading “Moonrise Kingdom and the Success of the Platform Release”

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Friday News Round-Up 6/15/12

Welcome back to the Friday News Round-Up! As you may have noticed, things are slowing down a bit around here, but don’t you worry. We still have plenty of Wes Anderson-related splendor to share with you. Let’s get to it!

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A.V. Club’s Pop Pilgrims Visit the Real Rushmore Academy

Yes, this is another post about something fantastic the A.V. Club did, but it was too good not to share. The A.V. Club recently took a field trip to Houston and visited the school that stood in for Rushmore Academy, St. John’s School.

The video features shot-by-shot comparisons of campus then and now, excellent interviews with a current teacher at St. John’s who was a friend of Wes’s in high school and the owner of Rosemary Cross’s home, and, as a bonus, has shot of Wes’s yearbook from senior year.


Houston: The Rushmore School

Join us after the jump for a bit more. Continue reading “A.V. Club’s Pop Pilgrims Visit the Real Rushmore Academy”

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A.V. Club’s WA Video Quilt

The A.V. Club put together a fantastic supercut of seemingly all of the accessories in Wes’s first six films. Every belt buckle, pair of sunglasses, hat, and shoe (or paw) is represented in this three-minute film. It looks like a true labor of Wes Anderson-love, and that’s right up our alley.


A video quilt of whimsical Wes Anderson accessories

You can also read a bit about the film over at the A.V. Club.

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Wes Anderson Interviewed by Rotten Tomatoes

Luke Goodsell of Rotten Tomatoes recently interviewed Wes Anderson and asked the acclaimed director to list his five favorite films. Wes coyly replied “You may have to call it ‘The five movies that I just say, for whatever reason,'” and “I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand behind them as my five favorites, they’ll just be the five I manage to think up right now.” Check out the interview, where, among many things, Wes discusses his inspirations for Moonrise Kingdom, his childhood obsessions, and how his experience in animation affected the way he approached his latest project.

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New Animated Shorts Released to Accompany “Moonrise Kingdom”

Wes Anderson has released enchanting animated shorts to accompany the film, “Moonrise Kingdom”. In the film, Suzy (Kara Hayward) packs six ficticious storybooks. Wes wrote passages read from each of the storybooks and decided in April to animate these passages. You can watch them on EW.com here, or in the embed below.

More details below from EW.com:

“I wrote passages for the other books that didn’t have any text [read aloud in the film], and we animated that too,” he says. “So we now have this piece where our narrator, Bob Balaban’s character, takes us through these little sections of each of these books.

To pull off the animated shorts in just six scant weeks, Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox producer Jeremy Dawson worked to pair each of the cover jacket artists with professional animators. “We got the artist to do key drawings, and then someone else had to take those key drawings and animate them,” he says. “One of these guys I believe was in Sweden, one in Paris, and one in L.A. They were all over the world and we did it all by Internet. For instance, the one with the hydrogoblin, The Girl From Jupiter — that artist does his work in oil painting, so someone had to kind of emulate that oil painting look in the animation.”

After the cover jacket artists turned in their key illustrations, the animators, says Dawson, finished their work in only two weeks. “I think we all just pitched in and we pulled a lot of favors because it was not like we spent a ton of money doing it,” he says. “People got excited about it because it was a creative thing rather than if they were making a Snickers ad or something.”

The animated shorts and the stories they illustrate are strikingly evocative of an earlier era of children’s and young adult literature. “I think it’s kind of nice that rather than just doing one whole story, [we’re] doing these little snippets,” says Dawson. “They’re about imagination — it’s just more like a spark of this story.”

Would the stories hinted at from these books ever be completed? “I think that’s up to Wes,” says Dawson. “I have no doubt he’s capable of doing it.”

So, Mr. Anderson, would you? “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” says the director. “I’m not gonna write them.”

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Friday News Round-Up 6/8/12

  • (Above) Suzy’s earrings have never looked so good than in this artistic poster by Alex Quinn.
  • The Museum of the Moving Image has republished their five-part video series on the Substance of Style for Wes Anderson. The series is extremely detailed, well-researched, and absolutely engrossing. Absolutely recommended.
  • Roman Coppola talks with Interview Magazine regarding his experiences co-writing The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom. (Bonus trivia: In the interview, Roman uses the phrase “a memory of a fantasy,” which was coined by an interviewer during Cannes, which was referenced by Wes in his NPR interview.)
  • Watch the full 40 minute Moonrise Kingdom press conference from Cannes over here.
  • Short List has “alternative” designs for the Moonrise Kingdom poster, some of which we’ve featured here before, but it’s worth taking a look at the whole gallery. Certainly telling that the film inspired so many diverse images.
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Bill Murray on Letterman: 7 June 2012

Bill Murray was on the Late Show with David Letterman last night. It was a great appearance, with some really kind words shared about Wes Anderson. There’s also a rare test of Bill Murray’s new hologram technology. US readers can watch the full segment here, about 13 minutes in, right after the second dot.

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Jason Schwartzman Interview from Cannes


We’re a little late to post this one, but don’t let its 6-day age turn you off. Jason Schwartzman, interviewed by Jada Yuan for New York Magazine, is at his best. He talks about his childhood experiences, working with Bill Murray, and his friendship with Wes:

So, when Wes calls, do you just drop everything you’re doing to be in his movies? Do you have a say in what you play?

First of all, let me say this: This is one of my best friends in the whole world and I am very, very lucky for that. There are very few people I could say that are my close people that I really, really care about. And I would say that there are an even smaller amount of them that I could say I actually work with, too. And it’s just very lucky. I met Wes on Rushmore. We made a movie together. We stayed in touch through the years. And then this weird thing happens to you personally and you talk about it and then you keep talking, and then all of a sudden it’s twelve years older and you’re like, “Wow, this is my best friend.”

Read the rest of the interview over at The Vulture.
(image via GQ)

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Bill Murray Interviews


Do you like Bill Murray interviews? Of course you do. You’re reading this site, aren’t you?

Well, it’s your lucky day. Bill Murray has a new interview with Esquire which is classic Bill Murray. And because this is a Wes Anderson appreciation site, here is the obligatory WA reference:

SR: The last time we talked about Wes Anderson was after what sounded like a horrible experience in Italy for The Life Aquatic. You must have a great affinity for him.

BM: Wes is still a young man, but he was just a kid when I met him on Rushmore. And he’s grown as a person, as a man, as a movie director. His stuff just keeps getting better and better. And he’s managed to make the making of movies a real living experience. For Moonrise Kingdom, he rented a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and we lived in it. The editing rooms were in the mansion. And we had a great cook. You could be relaxed in your own skin, but it also meant that you could work endless, ungodly art-movie hours because there was gonna be a meal prepared for you when you’re done.

What’s that? You’re not satisfied with only one interview? Well, good news for you– Unlikely Words has rounded up about 20 Bill Murray interviews for your enjoyment. Hope you didn’t have plans for this afternoon.


(via kottke, image via eric slager)