Yes, but each film has to be individually promoted. Granted, you’re not going to spend the kind of bucks to promote a $1M film that you are a $100M blockbuster, but there’s a certain minimum amount of exposure necessary to get even a small film noticed. Occasionally word-of-mouth sells a film, but only if it is something really unique, and these days when people are reluctant to go out to the cinema, it’s easy for a good but underpromoted film to fall in with direct-to-video releases and never be seen.
Donnie Darko is a great example of a unique, appealing low budget ($5M) film that died on first release but was resurrected (to the point of having a cinematic release of the Director’s Cut version) by cult status. I’m guessing that the distributing studio didn’t have a clue as to how to market it–is it a teen comedy, or a drama, or science ficiton, or what?–but if it hadn’t been so…different from anything else out there, it never would have made a dime.
And of course, no producer wants to be the guy who produced a hundred films that netted $500k each; he wants to be the guy in the shiny white house on the hill who produced a $100M film that brought in $50M over cost. Everybody wants to win the lottery. The success of a film in even getting to market has far more to do with the personalities and egos involved than it does the quality of the film. See The Battle Of Brazil.
Stranger