Movie Releases Direct to DVD and BitTorrent Simultaneously

Don't consider this movie to be the quality of say "Titanic," but it does have an interesting twist. In addition to being direct-to-DVD, it's also direct-to-BitTorrent. The movie, Blank, written, produced, and directed by Rick L. Winters, released Saturday via DVD, streaming, and P2P.

According to the movie's site:

The concept behind the torrent sites is that people will watch the movie and if they like the film that they will go to a designated website or the official myspace website and donate or pay what they thought the film was worth to them.

At least on the movie's website (I didn't check MySpace), payments go through PayPal.

The DVD costs $14.99. The movie is described as follows:

Johnny (DAngelo Midili) is a young boy witnesses the violent death of his parents and older sister. Twenty years later he finds himself involved with organized crime with his adoptive father a small local crime boss. While watching a poker game with men who work for his adoptive father he overhears who murdered his family and the wheels start turning in his mind set on revenge. Over the next twenty hours he plans his revenge making it up as he goes through his day. He picks up his adoptive father from prison, solicits assistance from his stoner friend. On his journey he becomes unwittingly involved with a pair of serial killers JACK (Jason Adkins) and JILL (Darlene Sellers). Throughout his day he meets an array of characters living separate lives until their paths cross in a bizarre and shocking end.

It's nice to see a company embracing, rather than vilifying, P2P and BitTorrent. Winter was offered some distribution deals, but he turned them all down. He told TorrentFreak that when his first film was released, cast and crew didn't understand why the distribution company made all the money:

"I have seen firsthand the greed that lurks in the Hollywood corporate circles. This time around the fate of the cast and crew getting paid is in the hands of the audience who watch the film. No Hollywood bank accounts being filled to turn out more crappy remakes. The future of film is in the home market, through peer to peer distribution."

The Pirate Bay has the torrent here. Watch the trailer: