Sundance Film Festival 2010 - Manka Bros. Will Not Attend

To all the acquisition and distribution executives at Manka Highbrow, Manka Dogme and Manka Docs - due to budgetary constraints and the absolutely shitty year you all had in 2009, you will not be attending the Sundance Film Festival this year.  If you desperately feel the need to attend in order to bid on a movie about Native American pedophiles looking for redemption, then I suggest you quit your job and start a new company that specializes in distributing videos shot on camcorders.

When the economy was good, this was not an issue for us.  We loved to throw money away during the good times.  Sometimes we even got lucky - for instance, when we picked up the rights to Snuffing Out The Magic Fury (which will finally open next month after extensive recuts and reshoots and recasts). 

But, too bad, junior executives, there will be no more $600 a night rooms with $1,000 a night "entertainment" bar tabs while you try to sleep with 22-year-old "directors" who would do anything to get their $300 film about an autistic coal miner distributed by a major Hollywood studio.

I realize you've probably already purchased your $400 ski caps that you were planning on wearing throughout the festival because independent film makers are way too cool to shower (and, of course, you have to be just like them).  I guess you'll have to return those at lunch today.

We have a new theatrical policy here at Manka Bros. - WE WILL NOT PRODUCE OR DISTRIBUTE ANY FILM THAT DOES NOT MAKE MONEY!

So for the young writers and directors of the world who make films about:

• The various plights of high school geeks growing up in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s;
  
• Immigrants trying to survive in modern day Mobile, Alabama;
• Poets trying to break free from their oppressive capitalist "day jobs"
• Cancer movies of every size and shape;
  
• (and, my favorite) Movies about filmmakers trying to get their films made in Hollywood where everyone who works at a studio is some kind of idiot...

I'm sorry, you'll have to find some other sucker to distribute your story that MUST BE TOLD. 

I hear The Weinstein Company has about $200 left from their billion dollar war chest.  Go ahead and take your precious little film to Harvey Weinstein.  He's not hard to find - he'll be the one smoking.

Khan Manka, Jr. - Chairman & CEO - Manka Bros. Studios
The World's Largest Media Company