Having worked in a movie theater, I have seen first-hand just how fed up the general public is with the experience. Be it the inflated prices, terrible presentation, or the fact that people seem to think going to the movie means having a dark place to text your friends at will, attendance is slowly dropping as people opt for staying at home. Naturally this has made the theater owners nervous, and with video on demand becoming a bigger option for movie studios they are looking for other avenues to profit, including getting into the distribution game themselves.
That’s exactly what Regal Entertainment Group and AMC, the two largest chains in America, have decided to do; calling their joint venture Open Road and hiring Tom Ortenberg to run the company, they are hoping that by distributing the movies that play in their theaters themselves, they will both rake in more money and show the studios who want to narrow the release window that they don’t need them after all. During the Cannes Film Festival last month they made their first acquisition, an action movie called Killer Elite starring Jason Statham and Robert De Niro which will see release this September. And now they have acquired a second movie, one that could potentially put Open Road on the map as a legitimate contender in the distribution game.
Deadline reports that Open Road has acquired the U.S. distribution rights for The Host, the movie based off of Stephenie Meyer‘s first non-Twilight novel. Directed by Andrew Niccol, the movie takes place amidst a war between human beings and an alien species known as the Souls who latch onto humans like a parasite and erase their personalities. Saoirse Ronan stars as Melanie, one of the last humans that remain uninfected who is captured by the Souls and gets implanted with an alien known as Wanderer whose goal is to get Melanie to give up the rest of the uninfected humans.
What sounds like an interesting idea slowly turns a little goofy, which shouldn’t be surprising since Meyer wrote the source material. This Wanderer, a female, becomes overwhelmed with all the memories and feelings of her host body and most importantly, Melanie’s ex-boyfriend. That’s right ladies and gentlemen: the alien parasite falls for the boyfriend. And thus begins a ridiculous love triangle that is at least a step up from the Twilight series but by how much, one can not say. The Host is eyeing a January start date for production.
Was this a good move on Open Road’s part? And for all the people who have read The Host, is it markedly better than the vampire series that put Meyer on the map? Please say it is.