Cinedigital of Madrid, Spain will release Kitchen Film Productions’ microbudget gangster picture “Legit” on 400 screens throughout Spain this August.
Cinedigital minimizes its costs by transmitting the film via satellite from its home studio to theaters throughout Spain, a technology being pioneered domestically by Ira Deutchman’s Emerging Pictures that’s gaining traction in Europe faster than it is here.
“We’re excited to get a big summer release” in Spain, said producer John Stemberg. “We’re hoping it will spill over into Italy, France and England.”
Erik Baron of Red Baron Entertainment brokered the deal for a two-to-four-week run.
Kitchen gets a percentage of box office as well as impending cable and DVD releases in Spain, and with much lower overhead from transfer, prints and shipping, revenues come in a lot more quickly.
“We don’t have to transfer to film” for the release, Stemberg said. “They just dub it into Spanish, take the digibeta version, and beam it to as many theaters as you want. It’s a brilliant process.”
Director/producer James W. Boinski wrote the script with Stemberg and co-producer and choreographer Richard Strimer, drawing inspiration and cast from the South Loop prohibition-themed dinner theater Tommy Gun’s Garage.
Boinski stars as an Outfit underboss who survives a shooting and commits himself to going straight, which of course proves to be more difficult and deadly than he imagined.
“We knew Chicago gangsters were hot but we’re realizing just how big a market there is, even for a small film like ours,” Stemberg said.
Norm Boucher, Allen Kalfas, and Angelynn Schoofs co-star, along with Stemberg and Strimer.
Domestic distributor Echelon Entertainment released the DVD of “Legit” to online retailers June 6. It hits Netflix July 15, with a street date for stores planned for August.
“Domestic sales have been really strong,” Stemberg said the week after the online release. “We’re ranked in the top 6% of sales on Amazon right now.”
