Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road (2019 Brent Wilson Documentary)

[juggler]

Brent emailed me again and said that it is important to both him and Jason that Brian's fans see this film in theaters.

I certainly "get" that from an experiential perspective, but under the not-quite-out-of-the woods pandemic circumstances, I guess that makes me less optimistic about the possibility of personally seeing the film anytime soon.  I agree that watching a special film isn't quite as special at home on TV via Netflix/Amazon/Showtime/HBO/whatever. BUT I suppose I'd have welcomed hints about a deal with one of those channels rather than something along that lines that Brent is cooking up a great little art-house distribution deal for the second half of 2022. We'll see.  

[HeyJude]

Now that Icon is in charge maybe they won't screw it up.

Iconic bought a majority of the Beach Boys; the Brian doc is not under the purview of the group or Brother.

I would imagine one if not several outside production companies funded this Brian documentary, with an eventual distributor paying for distribution rights. Those are the parties making decisions.

While one would think/hope/assume Iconic, now essentially running the Beach Boys, would make some attempts to coordinate with concurrent solo projects, especially a bigger one like a feature-length Brian doc, ultimately I don't think this doc is running through Iconic in any way.

[HeyJude]

I'm the biggest proponent around of maintaining the big screen theatrical experience, and not just for big, loud action movies. I'd love to see a Brian or BB doc on the big screen.

But holding this film for a theatrical run is dumb. Pre-pandemic this would not have seen much traffic in theaters (and probably wouldn't have hit many markets/screens), and now it'll see even less.

A good Brian doc (and I have no idea how good or bad this one might be; it would be very personal and poignant, or if could be a puff PR thing, I dunno) would make perfect sense creating a bit of buzz on Netflix or HBO Max or wherever.

If they also put it in theaters concurrently, sure, why not? Or giving it a few weeks window that way, sure. But if that's holding it up for excessive amounts of time, that seems odd.

[UEF]

Agreed with that HeyJude. Streaming is the new 'theatre' for art documentaries.

I'm happy to be surprised on this, but I can't see people going to see this at my local Odeon/Cineworld, hotdog in hand...

[Emdeeh]

The state of Georgia is about to open up in a couple of weeks, so I can envision this showing at the local art house (which has been doing well with pay-per-view and private theater rentals so far). Still I expect to have to wait to see it until the DVD/Blu-ray release, like everything else lately. Streaming on a computer with slow internet frankly sucks, imo.