Amaya Toman Do you know the movie Purple Flowers from 2007? The romantic comedy, directed by Edward Burns and starring Selma Blair, Debra Messing and Patrick Wilson, may not mean much to the average viewer. But for Apple, it is a symbol of a relatively important milestone. Purple Flowers was the first film ever to be released exclusively on the iTunes platform.
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The film Purple Flowers premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2007, where it was met with a generally favorable response. However, the director of the film, Edward Burns, was worried about whether he would have enough funds to distribute and promote the film, and whether the film would be able to reach the awareness of moviegoers. The creators of the film therefore decided on a rather unconventional step – they decided to skip the traditional release in cinemas and made their work available on the iTunes platform, which at that time was already offering videos for download for the second year.
At that time, the online premiere of the film was not exactly a safe bet, but some studios were already slowly starting to flirt with this option. For example, a month before Purple Flowers was officially released on iTunes, Fox Searchlight released a 400-minute short film to lure viewers to Wes Anderson's limited-edition feature film Darjeeling — the free trailer reached more than XNUMX downloads on iTunes.
"We're really just in the early days of the movie business," said Eddy Cue, who at the time was Apple's vice president of iTunes. “Obviously we want all the Hollywood movies, but we also like the fact that we can be a great distribution channel for smaller creators as well,” added.
The film Purple Flowers has rather fallen into oblivion over time, but its creators cannot be denied the innovative spirit and courage to try "a slightly different way of distribution" and in a way predict the current trend of legal viewing of content online
As the lifestyles and behaviors of moviegoers have changed, so has the way Apple offers content for users to watch. Cinemas are visited by fewer and fewer viewers, and the percentage of viewers of classic TV channels is also falling. This year, Apple decided to meet this trend by launching its own streaming service, Apple TV+.
Source: Cult of Mac
