Murkwood

Information

The Swiss film industry faces a fundamental challenge: the national market is too small for movies to fully recoup their production costs. At the same time, shooting with an international market in mind is made difficult by the politics of funding institutions (e.g. arts council, foundations etc.), as they generally discourage filmmakers from shooting in anything but one of the official Swiss languages (German, French and Italian).

This, then, is what informs all of our project decisions:

• Since our primary goal is to recoup our investors' money, we have to target the international market. This means shooting in English and distributing internationally.
• In order to be able to shoot in English, we have to look for native English speaking actors. This means casting in the U.K., which keeps travel expenses manageable.
• The genre/style of this particular movie was deliberately chosen because it allows us to tell a compelling story on a limited budget.

In order to lower the overall financial risk for all parties involved, we are producing this movie for a relatively small budget compared to other projects of similar size/content. This will greatly increase the likelihood of recouping all costs when the finished product is released and distributed.

Beginning in Spring 2014, we will submit the movie to various national and international film festivals to attract buyers/distributors around the globe. We will also as attend a number of international film markets. And we are targeting a limited theatrical release in certain international territories.

MURKWOOD is a mixed-genre thriller (crime-drama/horror) mainly targeted at male viewers aged 15 to 50 years. The core audience, however, consists of viewers who like intelligent mixed-genre movies such as "Fargo" (1996), “Blair Witch Project” (1999), “Twin Peaks – The Series” (1990) and “Long Weekend” (1978).