"Guadalupe" - How not to promote a movie

In the "worst promotion of a movie ever" department...

Did you even know that "Guadalupe" was in local cinemas last week? This film about the apparition of the Virgin Mary to St. Juan Diego (explored from three perspectives) ran at two Colorado Springs theaters from Dec. 8-14. The problem is that the filmmakers did zero promotion for the film. They said they wanted word of mouth and e-mail reviews among friends to fuel its demand for theaters. That is fine, but it requires that you actually do your own advance promotion of the film to local media and church leaders. You can't build word of mouth in a couple of days. They should have let the Catholic press know at least a month in advance and they would have jumped all over it. Yet Catholic News Service didn't even get to review it. It doesn't cost anything to do a little research on the Web and send out promotional e-mails to media and churches. "Therese" had little to no promotional budget, yet Luke Films feverishly worked those avenues well both before and after its release and was able to bring in more than $2.6 million between 2004-05. The Herald usually gets flurries of e-mails for every Catholic- and Christian-related music or movie release, but we heard not a peep about "Guadalupe." I didn't discover it until I saw the theater listing last Friday. I asked the bishop if he had received any advance notice and he said no.

Having returned from a pilgrimage to Mexico City earlier this week, I had planned to see it last night. But alas, the movie came in and out of local theaters before the masses had a chance to see it. I know a couple of priests who discovered it and referred it to their parishioneers, but it was hardly enough time to build up any kind of momentum. In an initial release to 225 theaters nationwide, it brought in small crowds and just $484,000 in business. While it has been pulled from the local theaters, Guadalupe can still be seen at Cinema Latino in Aurora.

Moral of this story: If you're going to rely on word of mouth to promote a film, don't wait until its release in theaters for people to discover that it even exists. This film could have had a sizeable enough opening weekend that theaters would've held it over. It'll be interesting to see how (and if) they promote the DVD release.