As of today, we are fairly confident the movie will be picture locked by March 1. This means that all editing will be finished and the movie will be for the most part complete, and all that remains will be final polishing aspects like sound mixing and color correction.
We submitted a rough edit of an earlier version of the movie to SXSW and unfortunately were not accepted (they only took 8 films out of 905 submissions). We have two other major film festivals coming up: Hot Docs in Toronto (we are notified of acceptance by 3/18, festival runs in late April) and the LA Film Fest (unsure when notified, festival runs in mid June). Our distribution and broad release plans go hand in hand with whether or not we get into these festivals, and how the movie performs at them. However, we don't have all our eggs in these baskets…
Sometime in early-mid March we will be launching our website, powered by VHX, which will be the online home for the film from then on out. We're fully embracing the new models of hybrid independent film distribution and plan to follow in the footsteps of documentary success stories like Indie Game: The Movie, We Are Legion, and Sound City. We'll be going live with a new trailer and the ability to digitally pre-order the film, as well as join our mailing list. The important thing to note here is that regardless of our film festival results, we will be distributing the movie online, globally, in a wide variety of standard digital formats, so you can buy the film directly from us and watch it wherever and however you want to. We will be rolling this out no matter what happens, so the only thing in question now is a timeline (which depends on the festival results and distribution deals we could be offered). At the latest we hope to be available in wide release by this summer. We could hold the movie and apply to other major festivals later this year, but you guys have been waiting long enough and we believe it's important to get this out there sooner rather than later. We also have faith in our collective ability to reach people who really care about the online poker story and will share it with friends and family!
Lastly, we are strongly considering Kickstartering a theatrical tour to take the film to poker hotspots/communities throughout the US and Canada (and possibly further abroad). This wouldn't kick off until the summer, but we think it would be a great way to keep drumming up support for the movie and continue to spread awareness. Plus, the movie looks good! We want to see it on a big screen with everybody else!
If you have any questions, fire away, we are happy to answer! Exciting times ahead...
