TMDaines wrote:Are Second Run going to continue be an independent entity competing with Arrow? I guess what I'm asking is, are Second Run going to become an Arrow sub-label? Would The Fireman's Ball have come under the banner of Second Run if it was a 2016/2017 release, for example, or will we still see potentially Second Run type titles under the auspices of Arrow Academy?
Yes, no, and no. This is purely a sales and marketing deal: both labels remain artistically independent.
Tampering with the Second Run brand would be a massive mistake, as it's the label's strongest asset - and there's very little overlap between the kind of things that Second Run does and the kind of things that Arrow Academy does. With only a very few exceptions (
Hard to Be a God being perhaps the most extreme outlier), Arrow Academy specialises in comparatively mainstream "classic" Hollywood and European arthouse, whereas Second Run covers much wilder and far less charted shores.
In fact, for a good example of how things split even when there's a notional overlap of interests, look how the last three Czech National Film Archive restorations were divvied up - Arrow got the more obviously "commercial" likes of
The Firemen's Ball and
Closely Observed Trains, while Second Run took on the equally good but far lesser known
All My Good Countrymen.