Red Dog director releases new film direct to online streaming

THERE was a time when following up a box office smash hit with a home entertainment release equalled career suicide.

But Red Dog director Kriv Stenders said he was just giving the audience what it wanted by releasing his latest black comedy Kill Me Three Times on Digital, Blu Ray and DVD in Australia this month and on Netflix in America.

“To me it’s inevitable, it’s part of the evolution of cinema and cinema is not entirely about a screen in a big room because there’s nothing more depressing than going to a movie, paying for a ticket and there being five people,” he said.

“That’s not a cinema experience, that’s a depressing experience and I think as a filmmaker you have to really reverse engineer and adapt to the audience.

“I think as filmmakers we have to evolve and obviously for our egos we would love to see our films in big cinemas packed to the brim with people clapping and cheering and laughing and crying but that is not an economical or physical reality right now.

“This (film) is meant for a big audience and the irony is that the film is already being seen by a much bigger audience than it would have if it was released theatrically.”

Kill Me Three Times, starring Simon Pegg and filmed in Lancelin and Margaret River, is a twisty, blood spattered dark comedy about a hitman who finds himself caught in the middle of three tales of murder, blackmail and revenge; a far cry from the heart-warming tear-jerker Red Dog.

Stenders said the change of pace was a chance to stretch and challenge himself as a filmmaker.

“Red Dog did very well and I had a lot of offers after that film, offers of dog movies, strange that, but obviously I didn’t want to repeat myself and there was nothing really that was leaping at me,” he said.

“I love all kinds of movies and making all kinds of movies and my ambition is to have a varied career.

“So when I weighed it all up, and against the projects I was doing, I went ‘this is exactly what I should be doing’.”