We’ve spotlighted the travails of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” and the problems it’s had finding a distributor. Icon Productions (Mel’s Company) planned to act as distributor, and finally teamed up with Newmarket films. Newmarket distributes independent productions…usually to a few theaters and then getting them out to more theaters if they have good buzz. By all accounts, “Passion” would be a good movie for Newmarket because they would get it into just the big theaters, and, so long as there wasn’t a rash of anti-semitism and rioting following the premier (sarcasm mode off), then follow that up by increasing the distribution. Seems like a good plan.

And in the end, unnecessary. “The Passion of the Christ” has been booked into 2000 screens! That’s as many as a standard movie release.

For comparison, Newmarket’s “Whale Rider” was a smashing success for the studio, with great buzz, tremendous reviews and top honors for the year, and it topped out at 550 screens. Of course, one of the problems with the whole “buzz generates more screens” business model is that these days, by the time you hear of a good movie, the DVD is almost out.