Sundance Channel will look to scare up viewers for its video-on-demand service by premiering three Asian-based horror films in November, three months before they air on the traditional cable network.
The three movies — Lo Chi-Leung's Koma, Takeshi Shimizu's Marebito, and Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital — are part of the network's 13-movie “Asian Extreme” late-night film festival devoted to films emerging from South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand.
The second season of that film series launches on the network Feb. 4, according to Gretchen Beidl, executive vice president of affiliate sales for Sundance Channel.
Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Mediacom Communications and Insight Communications systems will offer the movies for free as part of Sundance Channel's on-demand service, which offers approximately 10 hours per month of acquired movies and network original fare, such as The Hill.
In addition, Sundance will launch a microsite for Asia Extreme on Nov. 1, as part of its sundancechannel.com Web site.
Beidl said the early on-demand showings of the films were an outgrowth of the network's VOD offering of movies from the first Asian Extreme festival this past Spring.
“We showed that we had very strong usage numbers when we first put this up on VOD in the spring and it really popped, so we decided to test it out,” she said.
“We hadn't done a VOD-specific promotion before, so we decided we were going to use something that we already saw that had very strong usage and to make it very special.”
