Business Gains Success from Low Budget Mocks of High Budget Films

Unlike many other mass medias, such as the internet and books, film is a very hard media for the average Joe to get involved with. Most of the titles that reach the widest audience range are from the major Hollywood studios and other smaller studios are sometimes drowned out in the noise. Yet, every now and again, several normal people form small studios such in the case of The Asylum (an American based film studio). The company was formed in 1997 by David Rimawi, Sherri Strain, and David Michael Latt. Their goal was to create low budget videos that they would release straight to video. At first, the team focused on horror films, but then, after the surprising success of their re-make of War of the Worlds, began to shift more towards ‘mockbuster’ cinema. The idea behind mockbusters is that they are similar to a major title that is due to come out and they are made and release several days before the major title appears in theatres. For example, right before Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest came out, The Asylum released a film called Pirates of Treasure Island. Though they have been threatened with legal action on several accounts due to the similarity of their titles to major ones, The Asylum has reportedly never lost money on a film. The source of this is due to the low budget nature of the films and the numerous annual releases; roughly 10 to 15 titles per year.

Though a good majority of their movies are of the mockbuster genre, The Asylum has greatly expanded their genres from horror, which was their genre focus when they were first created. If you take a look at their upcoming titles list, you will see a large variety of genres. You can see action titles such as Dragon Crusaders which is a medieval era based action adventure that has groundbreaking special effects such as computer generated dragons that breathe fairly realistic fire. There are also thriller movies such as Born Bad which is a thriller that has several reputable actors such as the Twilight Saga’s Michael Welch. Yet, by no means have they abandoned their founding genre of horror. They are actually about to release a movie called A Haunting in Salem which is about, you guessed it, people being haunted and cursed by the ghosts of Salem, Massachusetts. Now although their plots might not be too groundbreaking, The Asylum has been keeping up with the major studios in many respects. For example, A Haunting in Salem was filmed in 3d and is distributed as such. They also have their own blog where they post pictures from the movie sets or just allow people to talk about their movies. In this respect, The Asylum is quickly adapting to the digital world and will no way be left in the dust of the major studios digitally.