DISTRIBUTION

"The market and distributive channel are often more crucial than the product."

—Peter F. Drucker

Live Performances

Clarity, Eloquence, and Ardor Incarnated

As alluded to in the Commercial Innovation and Distribution Risk sections, beyond the many other creative and commercial advancements that will come of our storytelling innovation, Live Cinema opens up an additional sales channel from the traditional film release cycle: the performances themselves. For us this will mean that hundreds of Colleges & Universities and Historic & Art House theaters will livestream the “must-see” performance series, which inherently embody a sense of urgency given the limited opportunities to view the high-wire act and unpredictable nature of such a live performance.

This three-pronged distribution cohort is sizable and spans the country. From the large urban areas and mid-sized cities to the smaller towns and more rural communities, we are confident our unique production will not only have universal appeal but generate considerable demand once promotional efforts are undertaken in earnest. 

Moreover, beyond the interest borne of what will be a highly strategic, systematic, and stylish marketing of our project is “emergent demand”, which will materialize due to a strong and growing desire across all sectors of society to reestablish the bonds of community after reality was indubitably usurped by Progress in early 2020, ushering mankind headlong into turbulent waters of a particularly dark historic current. Simply, Manalive’s raison d’être “to nourish the soul” is now even more necessary than at founding; and the demand for our storytelling innovation will go beyond what we have modeled as a “reasonable and prudent” forecast. 

Theatrical

Wonder, Imagination, and Creation Illuminated

Upon completing the performances of our production series, a best “takes” final-edit film will be entered into select festivals, and a self-motivated release strategy of the film undertaken in select markets. As the most prestigious festivals tend to be on the lookout for unexpected films that don’t look like other productions (i.e., festival programmers specifically seek projects that are memorable, ones they still think about the day after having watched them), we are confident our unique production will be of real interest, not only to festivals, but distributors and independent theater owner-operators across the U.S. and Europe. 

Piggybacking on the relationships we establish for our livestream from France (principal among them Amazon Web Services), we envision realizing a limited U.S. theatrical release, most likely through the art house distribution channel in major metropolitan markets. This limited-release strategy will help us gauge the film’s appeal and further calibrate, as necessary, the marketing plan to most effectively promote it. Should there be considerable interest for our film, we would likely release it to a wider audience in January or February of 2026. 

Lastly, should the final edit of the performances result in a truly beautiful work of art, we are very confident that the strength of our marketing plan, strategic partnership, and industry relationships will ensure not only a promising Festival run, but result in a solid distribution deal, likely to include pre-sales agreements for overseas markets (e.g., Japan, Italy, and Spain).

Post-Theatrical

Return, Renewal, and Re-Enchantment Reprised

As with traditional films, Streaming Video-on-Demand (SVOD), made-on-demand DVD, broadcast, and foreign distribution dynamic all represent additional revenue streams and increase the longevity of the sales cycle, which, for our financial modeling purposes, is 36 months, the normal timeframe for overall ROI calculations. Streaming, however, will represent the largest (lion’s share) percentage of this monetization category. 

As this new “Wild West” era in media entertainment (sans the anachronized Rube Goldberg-esque film distribution system ruled over by the principal Hollywood studios for decades) provides audiences with relatively unlimited programming choices with platform and time-shifting opportunities and therefore diverse and customized viewing experiences, we have thought deeply about how our production will be produced, licensed and monetized — focusing very carefully on every possible avenue of commerical exploitation to make a proper deal.

Thus, we are confident that our strategic partnerships (e.g., the likely production partnership with Amazon Web Services), deep industry relationships, and broader commercial networks for word-of-mouth promotion will ensure our final-edit film gains considerable post-theatrical viewership, which will necessarily be anchored to a deep understanding of the commerical marketplace vis-à-vis online movie distribution, VOD digital formula dynamics, and platform revenue models. 

“No doubt every civilization is haunted, visibly or invisibly, by what it thinks about death.”

—André Malraux