iTunes to Be Exclusive Distributor of Ed Burns’s New Movie

This AP profile of filmmaker Ed Burns ends with an interesting nugget:

Next month, Burns’ new romantic comedy, “Purple Violets,” will become the first featured film to be released and distributed by iTunes.

I looked for more information about this, and found this excerpt of an interview with Burns from PremiumHollywood:

Burns: So, we’re gambling and we’re gonna be the first film that is released exclusively through iTunes. It’ll be available for four weeks exclusively, and the idea is we’ll promote it the same as you would a theatrical release and we’ll see what the numbers are. If the attendance, if the downloads, which we expect to be a much higher numbers than the attendance, I think it’ll be the way I would go in the future for small movies like this. […]

Reporter: When did you say it would be available?

Burns: Um, October 9th.

Reporter: Is iTunes promising you a huge amount of promotion for doing this?

Burns: Huge is a relative term. We’ll have to see, but they’re promising promotion. I hope it’s huge.

★ Tuesday, 18 September 2007