Distribution

2. How was the UK theatrical distribution of the film been managed in order to ensure the film's success in the UK?

Avatar's UK distributor is 20th Century Fox, who are responsible for the past distribution of Ice Age, Star Wars, Garfield, Home Alone, the Chronicles and Narnia amongst many others, demonstrating their expertise in the industry of large-scale blockbuster family adventure films, and indicating them to be the perfect distribution company for a film such as Avatar.



They had also just recently released Alvin and the Chimpunks, the Squeakquel which means that the films are being released in 'synergy', so can for example use one another as a platform for advertising (Alvin and the Chipmunks may be preceded by an Avatar advert and so on).


The premiere for Avatar was held on December the 11th in Leicester Square, London, demonstrating the UK as a specific target during the release. This premiere alone created a massive hype in the media industry and stormed across news headlines during the week. Despite many other films such as St. Trinians being released on that very same weekend, they simply did not pose as a threat to Avatar's success, this immediately obvious from it's first weekends takings of £8.5 million, almost eight times what St. Trinian's made in the same time frame. This is largely down to Avatar's much wider audience appeal, where other movies such as St. Trinians and Hump Day released on that same weekend were far more niche and specifically targetted.





20th Century Fox had distribution deals with both Coca-Cola and LG so as to boost the films success in the UK. LG for example combined the release of their newest model of phone with Avatar's launch in a process called a 'cross-media convergence'. The photo above of the film's premiere in Leicester Square shows how LG used the release to promote and advertise their phone. Here's a link to LG's blog to further illustrate how the companies would both have used each other for promotion. http://www.lgblog.co.uk/2009/12/11/lg-blog-at-the-avatar-world-premiere/