A small-time Hollywood studio, Asylum has perfected the art of the movie doppelganger and is proving that imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery, it is also very profitable. (David) Latt says he ‘stumbled’ on his money-making scheme by accident.
A former employee of a mainstream Hollywood studio, he left to make independent low-budget films and was working on an adaptation of HG Wells’s The War Of The Worlds for the now defunct Blockbuster video chain in 2004 when he learned Paramount was working on the same film.
‘I was about to throw in the towel, but then Blockbuster came back and said: “No, no, go ahead, we’ll order 100,000 copies,” Latt recalls with a chuckle sitting at the Asylum’s HQ in Burbank, California.
‘They told me every time there was a major blockbuster, people would come in looking for similar titles or similar themes.'I made the film for a couple of hundred thousand bucks and we doubled our profits.
'That’s when I realised, “Hang on, there’s something here.” There were people who would pay to see titles that piggy-backed off the back of a mainstream movie. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head.’
Mockbusters! Snakes on a Train, anyone? The Da Vinci Treasure? How fake films became big box-office | Mail Online
A former employee of a mainstream Hollywood studio, he left to make independent low-budget films and was working on an adaptation of HG Wells’s The War Of The Worlds for the now defunct Blockbuster video chain in 2004 when he learned Paramount was working on the same film.
‘I was about to throw in the towel, but then Blockbuster came back and said: “No, no, go ahead, we’ll order 100,000 copies,” Latt recalls with a chuckle sitting at the Asylum’s HQ in Burbank, California.
‘They told me every time there was a major blockbuster, people would come in looking for similar titles or similar themes.'I made the film for a couple of hundred thousand bucks and we doubled our profits.
'That’s when I realised, “Hang on, there’s something here.” There were people who would pay to see titles that piggy-backed off the back of a mainstream movie. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head.’
Mockbusters! Snakes on a Train, anyone? The Da Vinci Treasure? How fake films became big box-office | Mail Online
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