We Didn't See SAW Coming...

Just before Halloween I found myself at Thorpe Park, queuing up for the infamous SAW ride, based on the massively successful horror film series franchise. It was a long line, so I had plenty of time to consider the implications of the time when I was part of a small group of people who could have possibly bought into the largest horror film franchise of all time...but didn't.

If I could do my career all over again I would definitely have looked to pivot from film marketing into acquisitions. There are many reasons for this. Back in 2001, when I joined Momentum Pictures, I'd already been a video buyer for the MVC and Alto Music & Video chains and had joined as Head of Marketing, at the age of 33, from being Senior Product Manager for film at Universal Pictures U.K., so starting from scratch again in a new departmental function wasn't really on the cards, plus I couldn't afford a pay cut to do so. Now, when I look at people in some of the key acquisitions roles in the U.K., I see that they were just entering the industry at this time, so if I could have afforded to start over it might have been worthwhile and had a long lasting effect.

Acquisitions is a fantastic role, especially if you like travel. Sundance (if you're really lucky), Berlinale, Cannes, Venice (maybe), Toronto and AFM, with a few others in-between perhaps. It's a bit like doing the season! The rush of chasing down a film at Cannes can be thrilling and you get to meet a lot of people and rack up a lot of contacts. It can also be stressful if you pay a lot of money for a film that eventually flops - the pressure can be on. It can also be a good path into film production.

My first experience with acquisitions was at Universal Pictures in 1998, where I sat and listened to Sally Caplan telling the home entertainment team about her role at the studio. During her fascinating talk she gleefully told us that she had turned down the Full Monty, not having seen the potential in it. I was blown away by her self-depreciating honesty - I couldn't imagine many male execs being confident enough to blurt that out in public!

But, seeing as I worked in the home entertainment sector in film, acquisitions seemed like a whole different world to me. I worked on films that came down the pipeline from the rental team, who themselves were passed the mantle from theatrical team, at a time when windows were around six months between each subsequent release.

When I joined Momentum Pictures, I was sometimes invited into the theatrical acquisitions process, which was a novelty for me. We also got our own acquisitions executive in the home entertainment team, Robert Walak, who had joined us from Endemol, and this was due to the rise of the DVD format and a brand new consumer lust for catalogue product. Being involved in this process, from my own point of view, largely meant going into the screening room (a sofa, some cushions and a biggish telly) to watch a film on a VHS tape. One particular Friday, sometime in early 2004, we were corralled by the Head of Sales, Alex Hamilton, to watch a new horror film that had come in, by the name of SAW...

I should say, at this point, that Momentum Pictures wasn't really a distributor known for horror releasing. Nobody in the team, as I recall, were particularly into the horror genre. We had released an independent British horror film called My Little Eye, to some success, getting it to over ￡2.5m a year or so earlier, but not much else and we were all more into art house films, dramas and docs.

I don't recall much about the background of SAW at the time either, but looking back at it now I see that it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. It cost $1.2m to make and took $104m worldwide at the box office, not including residuals (DVD sales, TV deals etc.) and over ￡2m at the U.K. Box office for its ultimate distributor, Entertainment in Video. This is just the tip of the iceberg though, when you consider the first option rights that distributors get for subsequent sequels, and then the colossal DVD sales that were rampant at that point in time in the industry. Originally, Lionsgate USA had picked up the film to go straight to DVD in the US, but after it played well at Sundance they had subsequently planned an October theatrical release to coincide with the lucrative Halloween season, but this information wasn't known to us at the time.

It's a very different experience watching a film before you've read a review or seen any marketing materials for it, aside from the sales agent artwork and trailer, which can vary wildly in terms of quality and sometimes the positioning and genre are different to how the film might ultimately be marketed. In terms of SAW, I wasn't aware of advance reviews from Sundance at the time, but then again I wasn't ultimately responsible for acquisitions and was looking at it far more as being a direct to DVD opportunity.

What transpired at that screening was interesting from the point of view of the influence that a communal atmosphere can have over a viewing experience, as it was a Friday afternoon and everyone was feeling rather demob-happy for the weekend. It was a jovial atmosphere and I think we perhaps didn't take it seriously enough. Knowing what I know now, knowing that this film could have completely transformed the company's fortunes, that makes me feel somewhat uneasy - but it would have been a hard outcome for anyone to predict I think, from just watching that particular film in that kind of environment. Never one to miss the opportunity to garner a quick laugh, I took it upon myself to quip 'he got beaten by the cistern'! Just as Adam whacks Zep over the head with the lid of the toilet, which got a big laugh - so I was partly responsible for this less than serious atmosphere!

Ultimately, we were not horror fans, or even buffs, and I didn't get the impression that anyone in the theatrical team had much of an appetite for releasing the film, but I wasn't involved in the deeper subsequent discussions, or understand at what stage Entertainment Film Distributors came along and swiped it up, or what was finally offered and paid for the rights. What I do know, standing in the long queue at Thorpe park, was that an opportunity had passed us by that was possibly a chance in a (career) lifetime to really be part of a massive film franchise, one that could ultimately spawn a theme ride in a park 5 years later that I would be riding 16 years later.

I would welcome other recollections about the U.K. release of this film in the comments section of this blog!