Star Wreck owes its Success to BitTorrent

Written by Ernesto on March 11, 2006 

Star Wreck, a movie directed by Timo Vuorensola backed up by a crew of independent film makers became a great success thanks to BitTorrent. The Star Trek parody, released under a Creative Commons lisence has been downloaded millions of times. The movie became Finland’s most popular movie within just a couple of months, and is [...]

Star Wreck, a movie directed by Timo Vuorensola backed up by a crew of independent film makers became a great success thanks to BitTorrent. The Star Trek parody, released under a Creative Commons lisence has been downloaded millions of times. The movie became Finland’s most popular movie within just a couple of months, and is translated into various languages (subtitles).

The movie had two sold-out screenings at a Norwegian film festival and in Januari the movie was broadcasted on a Finnish TV channel.

According to Timo they sold over 5,000 DVD’s, bringing in more than 120,000$ while the cost to make the movie were less than 16,000$ .

Timo said he owes the success to BitTorrent.

“Some people – the older generation of filmmakers not so familiar with the internet – might have seen Star Wreck as some sort of bubble, which will explode. This is not a bubble. I believe it is a new form of film-making and film distribution.”

More and more people are looking closely at this, and related success stories. Star Wreck was even mentioned in a paper by Microsoft’s research department.

it is important for commercial P2P distribution systems to publicize and encourage their legal uses and applications. In this regard, applications such as those recently enabled by the BBC for distributing TV shows, the World of Warcraft ingame patching system, or the distribution of the independent film Star Wreck, can help improve perception over P2P networks.

And recently Mark Achbar, the producer of the award winning movie “The Corporation” told TorrentFreak that he was looking into ways to distribute his movie over BitTorrent. His latest idea is to put out a “THE CORPORATION — Filmmaker-authorized Shareware Version”. This means people can download it and make a donation (or buy a dvd) if they like it. He is recognizing the possibilities P2P has:

I agree that the vast majority of those who downloaded The Corporation, if they didn’t also see it in a theatre, or buy the DVD, would have been—and may still be willing to—pay a bit toward the production costs, but there was just no mechanism for them to do it.

Never underestimate the power of BitTorrent….

Star Wreck Homepage

Previously: Filesharing is Great Business

Next: The Piratebay wins 6000$ thanks to TV-Show contestant

9 Responses

1 Mar 11, 2006 at 16:02 by Raj

I hope that this catches on. Bittorrent is the way to go.. I even don’t mind paying a $ for a TV serial download.. if you take a commercial DVD, remove the cost of media, marketing etc.. its a good extra income for the makers. As more and more people come on the net, the income from such operation are bound to increase. I am rooting for it..

2 Mar 13, 2006 at 02:16 by Name

my god – its a fucking Star Trek parody assholes – get it “STAR WRECK” – jesus h christ i give up

3 Mar 14, 2006 at 07:28 by PEC

Not an original name either (a NZ comic strip from the 1970’s).

4 Mar 15, 2006 at 18:29 by Ed Kohler

That’s a great use of torrents. People creating great video content are in effect penalized for doing so in terms of bandwidth costs without a torrent application to share the bandwidth.

5 Mar 16, 2006 at 20:05 by J Daniels

Well one will always get a surprise now and then. Seen the title Star Wreck on some torrent sites and thought it was some cheap crap made in Finland. Even more when finding out they only spent about 16 000 US$. And then I got it in my mind …. what the heck! Give it a try…… I deserve a good spank for not doin it earlier!!! I must recommend it highly, its worth seeing and praise to bittorrent to make this movie availiable.

6 Mar 18, 2006 at 12:33 by Toweri

Cannot agree more!
You interested in the earlier versions + other related materials of this movie? Take a look at http://forum.starwreck.com/viewtopic.php?t=2180

Enjoy!

7 Apr 25, 2006 at 10:13 by Dave

Quote: Name on 03.13.06 2:16 am
“my god – its a fucking Star Trek parody assholes – get it “STAR WRECK” – jesus h christ i give up”

Gee whiz! You don’t say. Wow. Thanks for pointing that out. Never would have seen it.

I agree. You should give up. :)

8 Apr 25, 2006 at 10:41 by Ernesto

lol, never realized the mistake, corrected

9 Apr 25, 2008 at 11:25 by Toveri

The makers of Star Wreck are going to release a teaser for their next film called Iron Sky in couple of weeks. The site for that is http://www.ironsky.net

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