Licensing and Distribution

licensing is the process by which a distributor acquires the legal right to exploit a film. In distribution, licensing itself can take place on two levels.

International distribution ensures that films find their way to the 90+ market 'territories' around the world. The major US studios generally have their own distribution offices in all the major territories. By contrast, independent producers have to sell their films to different distributors in each territory. Independent production companies are usually small concerns, sometimes set up for one film and often lacking the necessary knowledge or contacts of each of the territories around the world. Instead of doing this themselves, they might choose to hire a specialist sales agent, whose function is to understand the value of a film in many different markets. The sales agent will then set up stall at the film markets that take place throughout the year.

Then there is 'local' distribution, which involves the distributor acquiring the licence to release and exploit the film in a particular country. The distributor will usually pay the producer a minimum guarantee for the licence. This fee will vary depending on the status and perceived commercial potential of the film, and on the range of rights that the distributor chooses to exploit. A distributor will usually be offered theatrical rights, for showing the film in cinemas; video rights, for video and DVD exploitation; and TV rights, if the distributor is able to sell the film to a broadcaster.

 In addition to paying a fee to secure the film, the licence will stipulate that the distributor will also pay royalties to the producer, taken from the profits that the film generates. A local distributor will conventionally share profits equally with the producer for the theatrical leg, pay back higher royalties for broadcast rights, and lower for video/DVD. Once the licence has been agreed, it is then the distributor's job to launch the film. In the UK, feature films are released initially theatrically (in cinemas). A theatrical opening is seen as the most effective way to create interest in a new film. The big screen is still the optimum setting for a film for both audiences and the filmmakers.

Some months following the theatrical release, a film will be packaged and released on DVD and VHS video, then on various forms of pay television and eventually, two years after opening in cinemas, on free-to-air television. The value of the film built up by its theatrical release reaps dividends throughout its release cycle, influencing the audiences and commercial value it subsequently commands.At every stage, the successful distributor must have an in-depth knowledge of the marketplace - which cinemas, video outlets and broadcasters can best draw an audience for its films - and of the variable marketing costs involved in releasing a film in that territory. The trick is to weigh up the two factors, to invest as much as is needed in promoting the film to draw out the maximum returns.

Distribution

The history of film is usually related through the achievements of producers, directors, writers and performers. Making films, production, has always been perceived as a glamorous pursuit. Alternatively, our personal understanding and appreciation of film is shaped by our experiences at the cinema. The exhibition of film is a commonplace, shared cultural activity highly visible in every city and town in Britain, constantly feeding the popular memory. By contrast, distribution, the third part of the film supply chain, is often referred to as 'the invisible art', a process known only to those within the industry, barely written about and almost imperceptible to everyone else. Yet arguably, distribution is the most important part of the film industry, where completed films are brought to life and connected with an audience.

So what is involved in this invisible process? Distribution is about releasing and sustaining films in the market place. In the practice of Hollywood and other forms of industrial cinema, the phases of production, distribution and exhibition operate most effectively when 'vertically integrated', where the three stages are seen as part of the same larger process, under the control of one company. In the UK, distribution is very much focused on marketing and sustaining a global product in local markets. In the independent film sector, vertical integration does not operate so commonly. Producers tend not to have long-term economic links with distributors, who likewise have no formal connections with exhibitors. Here, as the pig-in-the-middle, distribution is necessarily a collaborative process, requiring the materials and rights of the producer and the cooperation of the exhibitor to promote and show the film in the best way possible. In this sector, distribution can be divided into three stages - licensing, marketing and logistics.

 Logistics of Distribution

The distributor will enter into an agreement with the cinema to screen the film on certain 'play-dates'. It is the responsibility of the distributor to arrange the transportation of the film to the cinema, as part of its wider coordination of print use across the UK. Logistics represents the phase of distribution at its most basic - supplying and circulating copies of the film to theatres, of tapes and DVDs to shops and video rental stores, and managing the effectiveness of the supply. The showing of films in cinemas is a time-pressured activity. Cinemas spend their money publicising film play-dates and times in local papers or through published programmes. There's an imperative for the distributor to deliver the film on time.

For UK theatrical exhibition, the distributor typically handles 35mm film prints. Each print can cost around £1,000 - or twice that if subtitled - so a degree of care is required of everyone involved in handling the print. In the UK, prints are generally broken down for ease of handling into smaller reels, each lasting around 18-20 mins when run through a projector at 24 frames per second. So a feature print, in its physical form, will usually be 5 or 6 reels, stored and supplied in a single hard case, weighing in at 20-25kgs. Prints are hired by the exhibitor for the duration of their play-dates, and therefore each print is made for repeat use. It's easy to see from this that, during the course of even a short theatrical release period, any single print needs to be moved many times from the main print warehouse, onto a delivery van, to the cinema, onto an assembly bench, through the projector and then back through the process and onto the next cinema. 35mm theatrical prints invariably suffer cumulative damage as they pass through different projectors, and the hands of various projectionists. There are also overheads incurred by the distributor for the storage of prints at the UK's central print warehouse in West London. For these reasons, each theatrical print has a finite lifespan.

Distributor will invest in sufficient prints to provide optimum coverage through the first period of theatrical release, usually lasting up to 6 months. From this point on, many of the now used release prints will be destroyed, leaving only a small number to be used for second-run and repertory theatrical bookings through the remainder of the film's licenced period.

Towards the end of 2005, the UK distribution and exhibition sectors were starting to move towards digital distribution and exhibition. For exhibitors, digital projection, especially when married to the increasing use digital formats in production, can now replicate - if not surpass - the image quality of conventional 35mm cinema presentation. And, of course, digital sound systems have been used in cinemas for some time. In distribution terms, the advantages of digital technology are even clearer, though perhaps longer term. Digital technology is seen to offer a more cost effective and logistics-light alternative to the tried and trusted, but unwieldy model of 35mm print distribution described above. It will, eventually, be cheaper and much less stressful to send films as computer files to cinemas across the UK, than to transport 20-25kg tins of film in the back of a van. Digital distribution and exhibition on a large scale has started to appear in certain parts of the world, notably China and Brazil, where conventional logistics cannot, for one reason or another, efficiently bring together supply and demand.

In the UK, digital technology has been embraced by the non-theatrical sector, in film societies and schools, where the use of DVD and mid-range digital projection has replaced 16mm. The force of this change, coupled with the new capacity of technology to replicate 35mm imaging, has led the UK Film Council to establish a digital distribution and exhibition programme for the theatrical sector at the end of 2005. Entitled the Digital Screen Network (DSN), it will eventually support new facilities in 211 screens across the country (out of a total of just over 3,300 screens in the UK), and is seen as a small but important step change towards full digital cinema. The DSN will initially work with files transferred from a high definition digital master (either HDD5, or HD Cam). The compressed and encrypted files will be sent directly to cinemas to be downloaded, de-encrypted (unlocked) and opened as files for screening with digital projection equipment.

In principle, digital distribution will, in time, change the paradigm of 35mm print logistics. It will be possible for the distributor to send feature film files electronically, via broadband networks, thus eliminating dependence on transportation. There is little doubt that the advent of digital distribution has the potential radically to alter the modus operandi of distributors around the world. The comparatively low cost of film copies and additional logistical effectiveness of digital distribution provide the distributor with greater flexibility. It will be less expensive in the coming years to offer a wide theatrical opening with many copies, and also conversely, to screen a film for just one performance at any cinema.

 In theory at least, it will be possible for both distributors and exhibitors to respond more precisely to audience demand. All this suggests that in the future, more titles, both mainstream and specialised, will receive wide theatrical openings, and that this broadening of access at the point of release will dramatically reduce the overall theatrical period from 3-6 months to perhaps 1-3 months. Thereafter, films will enter into a second-run and repertory programming market aided by lower costs.

 The shortened first-run period will in turn bring forward the distributor's release of the DVD. And there's the rub. The adoption of digital technologies offers greater opportunities for distributors to create joined-up campaigns for theatrical and DVD releases, in which, increasingly, the theatrical opening is used as a way of providing a loss-leading marketing platform for the highly lucrative DVD leg.
 http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/distribution/distribution2.html

Slumdog Millionaire Statistics

Slumdog Millionaire - Statistics
Scripting	Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (British) wrote Slumdog Millionaire based on the Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-nominated novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup.
Directors and Producers	Danny Boyle (British - Danny Boyle has built up a reputation for highly stylised cinematography and fast cutting.), Loveleen Tandan Anthony Dod Mantle (Danish), DoP on Slumdog was with Boyle when he experimented with early digital cameras on UK television films in 2001 British director (Danny Boyle), producer (Christian Colson), screenwriter (Simon Beaufoy)
Music	A.R. Rahman (Indian) – soundtrack Sound Recordist - Resul Pookutty Remix of Jai-Ho with the Pussycat Dolls
Casting	Casting in Mumbai One UK actor Stars of Bollywood and parallel cinema Non-professional actors cast in India
Crew	Almost entirely Indian cast with the lead being English star Dev Patel Indian Film Crew with UK Heads Shot in India, editing in the UK
Awards Won
Sets
Finances	Warner Searchlight Pictures (USA) - $5 Million offered
Production Companies	Celador Productions – (Who Wants to be a Millionaire) Film4 Productions -
Distribution	Originally to be distributed in North America by Warner Independent Pictures. Jointly distributed by Fox Searchlight and Warner Bros -      Fox Searchlight part of Fox who are in turn owned by Newscorp -      Fox has recently signed a deal with Star Studios to become Fox Star United Kingdom: Pathe Pictures - A British/French distributor in the UK and France An Indian subsidiary of a Hollywood studio as distributor in India Warner Bros Icon Pictures – Distributor in Australia (owns by Fox Searchlight) Prokino Filmverleih GmbH (German Distributos) Icon Entertainment International, Lucky Red, Myndform, 20th Century Fox International, Gulf Film, Celador Films, Distribution Company, Acme Film, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Forum Film (Bulgaria), Volga, Filmladen GmbH, Bontonfilm, FS Film Oy, Silverbird Cinemas, Svensk Filmindustri Norway, Monopole Pathe Films AG
Revenues	US $100 million UK $37 million After these, the biggest markets have been France, Australia, Italy, Spain India (Hindi) $2.6 million India (English) $3.4 million (Note that the film has not been a big hit in Hindi markets, but has done very well in English language markets (don’t forget it is still a third Hindi in the English prints). Since tickets for Hindi halls are generally likely to be lower priced than the English language screens, it still means a sizeable audience of around 8-10 million Indians)
Languages	Filmed in English and Hindi
Subtitles	Released in English and Hindi in India and to NRI
Tropes	The rags-to-riches, underdog theme underlying the film was also a recurring theme in classic Bollywood movies from the 1950s through to the 1980s Fantasy sequences Montage sequence where "the brothers jump off a train and suddenly they are seven years older" Canted Angle Shots
Influences on	Salim Javed Salaam Bombay Satya (1998) (screenplay co-written by Saurabh Shukla, who plays Constable Srinivas in Slumdog Millionaire) Company Black Friday (2004) (adapted from S. Hussein Zaidi's book of the same name about the 1993 Bombay bombings) – Chase scene Deewaar (1975), which Boyle described as being "absolutely key to Indian cinema", is a crime film based on the Bombay gangster Haji Mastan, portrayed by Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, whose autograph Jamal seeks at the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire.

Media Conglomerates

Massive multinational media companies who own: Film Studios TV Stations Record Labels Magazines Newspapers Books Internet platforms Independents Some producers work outside of the major studies. Often British productions are made by smaller outfits like Warp Films, working with Film 4 or the BBC to try to secure extra funding and help with distribution. Often films made this way struggle to get more than £1 or £2 million budgets and consider a success to break even, with DVD after-sales included. US independent film maker Orin Peli made ‘Paranormal Activity’ for just $15,000. But he needed Paramount, a US major studio to distribute his film who spent a fortune on marketing and distribution. In doing so he made over $190 milllion. This shows there are exceptions to the rule that big budget films always do best... Synergy & Cross Media Convergence An example of this: Vivendi Universal make a film in Universal Studios. It releases the film’s soundtrack on Polygram, one of its record labels. The tracks can be bought online at MP3.com, one of its internet companies. The film can be downloaded on Vivendi Telecom phones. The film is then shown in its Odeon cinema chain. See the benefits for Film4 in work with them? Owning all of these assets makes it cheaper for the producer to make, distribute, market and exhibit the film, thus maximising profit, enabling the studio to keep making big budget films. A win-win scenario for Hollywood Studios... but is it always for small production companies

Slumdog Millionaire

• It's already the most talked-about film of the year – and it's set to sweep the Oscar nominations tomorrow. But there's a lot that went on behind the scenes. Tim Walker has the lowdown
• 'Slumdog Millionaire' was all set to go straight to DVD after the film's original studio backer, Warner Independent (a division of Warner Brothers), closed down in May 2008. Luckily, the Fox studio's indie film division, Fox Searchlight, picked it up for theatrical release.
• During filming, Azza, the Mumbai boy who was cast as Jamal's brother Salim, had his house bulldozed by the city council – a common occurrence in the slums where much of the shoot took place. The crew found him sleeping on a car roof.
• The three youngest child leads, who were all cast from the Mumbai slums, are now having their schooling funded by the film's producers. With the promise of a trust fund should they pass their exams at 16.
• Anil Kapoor, who plays Prem Kumar, the host of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' in 'Slumdog', donated his fee to Plan India, a child development NGO in Delhi, devoted to raising awareness about child abuse, trafficking, education and rehabilitating deprived children.
• Kapoor has starred in almost 100 Bollywood films. The real Indian version of the gameshow, 'Kaun Banega Crorepati', has been presented by two of his fellow Bollywood superstars, Amitabh Bachchan (who also features in 'Slumdog' as young Jamal's celebrity obsession) and Shahrukh Khan. Khan turned down the role of Prem in 'Slumdog' after deciding that the character was too negative.
• Director Danny Boyle almost didn't film the now-famous lavatory scene, in which young Jamal crawls through a cesspit to get an autographed photo of his favourite star, because it was too similar to a scene in 'Trainspotting' (1996), in which Ewan McGregor climbs into a loo to retrieve opium suppositories.
• Lead actor Dev Patel's 'Slumdog' audition was only his second ever. His first was for Channel 4's teen series 'Skins', where Boyle's teenage daughter Caitlin talent-spotted him for the role of Jamal. Last week, he was nominated for a Bafta for best actor. Not bad going.
• Bollywood composer AR Rahman, who wrote the score for 'Slumdog', has worked on British productions before. He composed music for 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' (2007), and in 2002, he composed the musical 'Bombay Dreams'.
• Boyle was slightly uncomfortable with the film's marketing campaign, which features posters of the two leads grinning in a shower of confetti with a quote calling it the "feel-good film of the decade". Considering that the film features poverty, torture and murder, says Boyle, "You can't go in expecting it to be 'Mamma Mia!'"
• The budget for 'Slumdog' was the smallest of all the nominees for the Golden Globe 2009 award for Best Picture – Drama, which it won. 'Frost/Nixon' cost $25m, 'The Reader' $33m, 'Revolutionary Road' $35m and 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' a whopping $150m, 10 times Slumdog's $15m.
• Mercedes-Benz asked for its logo to be removed from any scenes shot in the slums. According to Danny Boyle, the car-maker feared that such an association with a poverty-stricken area would dent its image as a luxury brand.
• Two of the film's climactic scenes were shot in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus station, which was formerly Victoria Terminus, and is commonly called Bombay VT station. It is the scene of one of the terrorist attacks that took place in Mumbai on 26 November; a pair of gunmen killed more than 50 people in the passenger hall. Boyle now says he believed "you should never talk about the film in terms of the attacks, because one's an entertainment and the other is a tragedy. But the scene in the station [is one] of unapologetic romantic love... It's utterly naive, and it says love conquers all. And [I'm] proud of that. It's unintentional, obviously. But it was the best thing I could possibly say."
• The scene in which Jamal is tortured was meant to be funny, says Boyle. "[It] was written as comedy, which is how I thought I'd directed it. When the scene plays in the West, everybody thinks it's about Guantanamo, but in India torture is accepted as part of the culture, like bribery." Sergeant Srinivas, the police officer, is played by the Indian actor, writer and director Saurabh Shukla.
• Simon Beaufoy, who adapted the screenplay for 'Slumdog' from the novel 'Q&A' by Vikas Swarup, made three research trips to India to interview street children. He says he wanted to convey the slums' "sense of this huge amount of fun, laughter, chat, and sense of community". Boyle wasn't interested in directing a script about 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' until he heard it had been written by Beaufoy (who also wrote 'The Full Monty').
• One of the film's opening scenes is a chase through Mumbai's Dharavi slum – the largest slum in Asia. Boyle says it was based on a 12-minute police chase in the Indian film 'Black Friday', about the 1993 Bombay bombings. One of his other reference points was 'Satya', a 1998 film about the Mumbai underworld, written by Saurabh Shukla (who plays Sergeant Srinivas in Slumdog)
• Boyle "fibbed" to his US producers that he wanted to translate about 10 per cent of the dialogue for 'Slumdog' into Hindi, then translated almost a third of the script.
• 'Slumdog' will be released in India on Friday. The film has not been universally praised by Indians. A debate started by commentators on Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan's blog included criticism of the film's depiction of India as a "Third World dirty underbelly developing nation".

Institutions and Audiences Topic List

• BIGGEST ONE Understand how all aspects of the media (websites, newspapers, television etc) are used to market a film and show you understand how companies work together to produce and distribute (and market) films.
• How film4 works with different companies and what those companies are
• What synergy is and how all the companies in your case studies make use of it and why they do
• Who are young bwark and why are they important.
• How your production companies have changed their production styles and methods of making films and why.
• How Film4 works as a company and its links to C4 – the particulars of the remit and it’s history
• The involvement of large non-British conglomerates in British companies and works and whether this is a benefit or a hindrance.
• How media convergence has affected your production companies (Warp, Celador and Film4)
• How changes in exhibition (all avenues including cinema, dvd, internet etc) have affected your companies?
• The rise of new media and how your companies have dealt with it – issues and benefits.
• The success of the smaller independent company and maintaining independence (and whether this is a good thing or a bad thing)
• How audiences respond to the products made by your companies and the different levels and types of audience (ages, classes etc)
• What has happened to Celador Productions and Warp Films recently.
• How your production companies have dealt with the rise of the internet.
• The conglomerates involved with all three films for all their aspects.
• How audience’s consumption of media has changed and how technological changes have impact on this (considering the home market as well as the cinemas)
• The different types of marketing used for both Four Lions and Slumdog Millionaire and the different types of advertising.
• How technological improvements have impacted the viewing experience, at home and in the cinema.
• How the increase and improvements made in technology are affecting the ways that films are made and distributed.
• How global institutions target national audiences.
• Why both films are considered successful.

Warp Films

Warp Films has created some of the most exciting pieces of British film making in the last five years. It has won numerous plaudits and awards (including three BAFTA’s) since being set up in 2002.

'My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117' was Warp’s first short film and was directed by Chris Morris. It won the BAFTA in 2003 and for its television premiere on Channel 4, more than one million viewers tuned in to watch it. Warp sold an astounding 22,000 DVDs of My Wrongs and was the first DVD single in the UK market.

Warp's debut feature 'Dead Man's Shoes', directed by Shane Meadows, received a record eight British Independent Film Award nominations, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Achievement in Production. ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ was also nominated for a BAFTA and won the Southbank Award for Best Film. The film has received nothing less than rave reviews across the board, and is being hailed by some as a landmark in British cinema.

Chris Cunningham directed Warp's next film, Rubber Johnny, –an experimental short and 42-page book that shocked and amazed audiences.

Following Rubber Johnny Warp made the critical success 'Grow Your Own', a film written by Frank Cottrell Boyce (24-Hour Party People), which tackled the subject of immigration.

In 2006 Warp made their most successful production to date: 'This is England', the story of Shaun, a boy who is befriended by a local skin-head gang after his father is killed in the Falklands war. With its evocative soundtrack, dazzling young star and emotive content it has won numerous international festival awards as well as scooping Best Film at the British Independent Film Awards and Best British Film at the BAFTA’s. At the same award ceremony Warp collected its third BAFTA as Paddy Considine's directorial debut 'Dog Altogether' won best short.

Warp Films has also worked closely with the Arctic Monkeys, producing two music videos for them and collaborating on the short film 'Scummy Man' starring Stephen Graham, which won best music video at this year's NME awards. Richard Ayoade has recently directed a feature length live show film with of them. Shot at their final concert of a world tour.

Warp Films' development slate currently includes projects with directors Shane Meadows, Chris Morris, Chris Cunningham, Richard Ayoade, David Slade and Lynne Ramsay. They are also dedicated to seeking out new voices; this goal is reflected in their recent ventures into promo making and the new digital slate, Warp X.

Warp Films Include:

Production Company

1. Four Lions - (2009)
2. Arctic Monkeys at the Apollo - (2008)
3. Crack Willow - (2008)
4. “Fur TV” - (2008)
5. Exhibit A - (2007)
6. Dog Altogether - (2007)
7. Grow Your Own - (2007)
8. Dog’s Mercury - (2006)
9. This is England - (2006)
10. Scummy Man - (2006)
11. Rubber Johnny - (2005)
12. Dead Man’s Shoes - (2004)
13. My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 - (2002)

Distributor – Filmography

1. Arctic Monkeys at the Apollo - (2008)
2. Cinema16: American Short Films – (2006)
3. Rubber Johnny – (2005)
4. My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 – (2002)
Warp films also funded ‘The Englishman’ in 2007, and supported ‘The Work of Director Chris Cunningham.

Four Lions

Awards – Sundance Film Festival – Award for Dramatic World Cinema – relying on critical acclaim

Locations

Almería, Andalucía, Spain(Pakistan scenes), Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, UK (Robin Hood Airport), High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, UK and Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, UK – familiar settings for local audiences

Summary

Four Lions tells the story of a group of British jihadists who push their abstract dreams of glory to the breaking point. As the wheels fly off, and their competing ideologies clash, what emerges is an emotionally engaging (and entirely plausible) farce. In a storm of razor-sharp verbal jousting and large-scale set pieces, Four Lions is a comic tour de force; it shows that-while terrorism is about ideology-it can also be about idiots.

Plot Summary

The film follows a group of young Muslim men living in Sheffield who have become radicalised and decide to become suicide bombers. Two members of the group, Omar (Riz Ahmed) and Waj (Kayvan Novak), go to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. The other two are Barry (Nigel Lindsay), who is a convert to Islam, and Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), who tries to train crows to be bombers.A fifth member, Hassan (Arsher Ali), is recruited by Barry while Omar and Waj are in Pakistan.Faisal accidentally kills himself moving explosives. The film culminates in the remaining four trying to blow themselves up at the London Marathon. Hassan loses his nerve and decided to give himself up to the Police, but Barry detonates his bomb using a phone, killing him and alerting the authorities to the remaining three. The three split up and after a fiery confrontation with Barry, Omar realises he has led his naive and unintelligent friend, Waj, into something he does not want to do, and sets off to make him change his mind. Omar eventually contacts Waj via his mobile phone, but is attacked by Barry, who swallows his SIM card. However, Barry begins to choke on the SIM card, causing a passer-by to detonate his bomb whilst carrying out the Heimlich maneuver. Meanwhile, Waj is cornered by Police and takes a kebab shop hostage. Omar manages to retrieve a phone and attempts to talk Waj down. However, his call is interrupted by a Police raid in which they shoot a hostage after mistaking him for the bomber. With Omar's call lost, Waj detonates his bomb as Omar rushes into the street. Distraught, Omar walks into a nearby chemist's and detonates his own bomb, a target the group had suggested before Omar settled on the Marathon.

“While the terrorists’ conversations are spot-on and the tension builds throughout, Four Lions looks more like a made-for-television special than a cinema spectacular. That could also be blamed on the grey skies of Britain and budgetary constraints — I expect potential backers shied away from the term “bomb-com”

Director

Christopher Morris is an English satirist, writer, director and actor. A former radio DJ, he is best known for anchoring the spoof news and current affairs television programmes The Day Today and Brass Eye (both productions aired on Channel4, made be TalkBack productions who have other associations with Film4), as well as his frequent engagement with controversial subject matter such as substance abuse and paedophilia.

In 2010 Morris directed his first feature-length film Four Lions about a group of inept British terrorists. Reception of the film was largely positive and received a respectable box office.[4] Outside his central work, Morris tends to stay out of the public eye and has become one of the more enigmatic figures in British comedy.

Production

Morris spent three years researching the project, speaking to terrorism experts, police, the secret service, and imams, as well as ordinary Muslims, and writing the script in 2007. In a separate interview, he asserts that the research predated the 7 July 2005 London Bombings

"It was an attempt to figure it out, to ask, 'What's going on with this?' This [the "War on Terror"] is something that's commanding so much of our lives, shaping so much of our culture, turning this massive political wheel. I was wondering what this new game was all about. But then 7/7 hit that with a fairly large impact, in that we were suddenly seeing all these guys with a Hovis accent. Suddenly you're not dealing with an amorphous Arab world so much as with British people who have been here quite a long time and who make curry and are a part of the landscape. So you've got a double excavation going on."

The project was originally rejected by both the BBC and Channel 4 as being too controversial. Morris suggested in a mass email, titled "Funding Mentalism", that fans could contribute between £25 and £100 each to the production costs of the film and would appear as extras in return Funding was secured in October 2008 from Film 4 Productions and Warp Films, with Mark Herbert producing. Filming began in Sheffield in May 2009.

Morris has described the film as a "farce", which exposes the "Dad's Army side to terrorism". During the making of the film, the director sent the script to former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg. Begg has said that he found nothing in the script that would be offensive to British Muslims. The actor Riz Ahmed also contacted Begg, to ask whether the subject matter was "too raw". When the film was completed, Begg was given a special screening and said that he enjoyed it.

Warp Films
Warp Films, a sister company of Warp Records, was set up in 1999 with funding from NESTA (The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) The company acts through a combination of practical programmes, early stage investment, research and policy, and the formation of partnerships to foster innovation and deliver radical new ideas.)

At present there have been five releases on Warp Films: My Wrongs #8245–8249 & 177 by Chris Morris, which won the Best Short Film award at the BAFTA Awards, Paul King's Bunny and the Bull,and Shane Meadows's films Dead Man's Shoes, This Is England and "Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee". They are also responsible for making This is England ’86.

Optimum Releasing

Mise-En-Scene

Familiar setting – Sheffield –Northern Working –class

Distinctive British feel – Realism (a strong feature of British films)

Budget appearance in both costume and editing.

Critical success

81% on Rotten Tomatoes

Positive reviews from BRITISH CRITICS

Generally negative reviews from US Critics – why? (theme etc)

Box Office Success

Despite an initial release on just 115 screens across the UK, the film saw impressive numbers at the Box Office on its opening weekend, generating the highest site average of all the new releases (£5,292) and making a total of £609,000. According to the Official Top 10 UK Film Chart (7–9 May 2010), Four Lions was placed at sixth behind Iron Man 2, Furry Vengeance A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hot Tub Time Machine and The Back-Up Plan. Due to its popularity, Optimum Releasing increased the number of screens showing the film to 200.

As of 6 August 2010, Four Lions has grossed £2,928,884 at the UK box office.

£0.3m in US box office – it was not a commercial success in America, although was not intended to be.