David Cross has recently expanded his do-no-wrong oeuvre with his directorial debut, ‘Hits‘, which premiered at Sundance in January last year. After twelve months of mixed reviews, however, the film is finally being released, with an experimental screening model in tow.
To cut to the chase of it, the film’s producers are having a fire…sale (*amaaaazinggg grace*) for the release, offering a “pay as you wish” monetary model. The film was released this week in limited theatres across the US, as well as online: leading client BitTorrent has supported the release, offering a download with a blank price tag (starting at $1) so audiences can decide how much they consider the film to be worth.
While the site currently seems to only support the full download for US audiences—I will never fully comprehend why Australia is forbidden in having nice things—a teaser download with extras is available for free, and bypassing a US geoblock is not, by any stretch of the imagination, rocket science. You know what to do.
Earlier this week, BitTorrent made news for announcing BitTorrent Originals, a platform for the torrent client’s original content, following in the extremely successful steps of content created and distributed by Netflix and Amazon in the last few years. Today’s move by the ‘Hits’ team is hardly new—Cross said in his Reddit AMA yesterday that it was inspired by Thom Yorke‘s similar paywall—but with every new release that finds its debut through torrents, we become ever so closer to making that kind of release ubiquitous. The future is nigh, folks.
Watch the trailer for ‘Hits’, a film musing on internet fame, fortune and becoming viral, below. Don’t leave your uncle T-bag hanging.
via The Verge.
