Why is arbitrage not in theaters

By Lisa Richwine. The scheming recalls real-life scandals and high-flying bankers who made headlines and brought populist scorn to Wall Street during the recent financial crisis.

Writer and director Nicholas Jarecki, who grew up in the world of high finance as the son of two New York commodities traders, said the character of Miller sprung from the financial crisis. But the mandate is different for Roadside and Lionsgate. So from the moment they first saw and decided to buy Arbitrage at Sundance , they were dead set on making the film work — both in the theaters and on VOD. While theater owners generally return half of box-office grosses to distributors, the split is much sweeter when it comes to VOD revenue, with Lionsgate receiving 60 percent to 70 percent, according to insiders.

With the blessing of Lionsgate, Cohen and his Roadside team committed to a major advertising spend to prove to theater owners that they were serious about the theatrical run — and they also budgeted for an awards-season push for Gere, who scored a Golden Globe nom. Nonetheless, Roadside still had to pay some exhibitors upfront to carry the film, which is not the norm.

At its widest, Arbitrage played in locations. We are very respectful of them. Anderson's The Master with Joaquin Phoenix - which had truly impressive debuts, garnering weekend-high per-theater counts in limited release Anderson's film even broke a record or two.

The two films are, in many ways, very similar, as they each represent the original work of a writer-director who was partially inspired by a real person Bernie Madoff with Arbitrage , Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard with The Master - not to mention, two leading man performances that many regard as respective tour-de-forces worthy of awards consideration.

Anderson's The Master has been generating lots of buzz in recent months, between encouraging responses from pre-release screenings look for our review later this week and continued controversy over the surface connections to Scientology; of course, the film is also the first Anderson project since his Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood , so anticipation has been building among members of the arthouse crowd for five years now.

However, The Master deserves credit beyond landing the second-highest total for a limited-release live-action film behind Kevin Smith's Red State ; it demonstrates that a filmmaker's prolonged devotion of time and effort to their craft can not only produce an artistically-satisfying final product, but also a lucrative one.

Longtime readers will recall that The Master hit the wall two years ago , lacking proper funding and support; that is, before Anderson found the necessary financing in order to continue moving forward once again, via up-and-coming Hollywood power-player Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures True Grit , Lawless.

Moreover, Anderson's commitment to seeing the venture through went beyond making the movie, as he was responsible for cutting the alluring series of Master teasers that got people talking months before anyone had even seen the film.