Two Dollar Radio is expanding beyond the written word to the big screen. The Columbus, Ohio indie publisher of critically-acclaimed contemporary novels and a literary journal dedicated to nonfiction, Frequencies, is launching a micro-budget film division, Two Dollar Radio Moving Pictures. An Indiegogo campaign by the press to raise $50,000 to establish the division kicked off Sunday morning.
“Digital distribution models, along with developing technologies and the irrelevance of modern cinema lead us to believe that this foray into film is not only possible, but that there is a void to fill,” Two Dollar Radio publisher Eric Obenauf noted on Two Dollar Radio’s Indiegogo’s page.
“We have demonstrated that we have a knack for producing work that is distinctive, singular, and culturally relevant,” Obenauf, who has a B.A. in film from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, told PW. “I have more experience doing this than when I started a publishing company.”
Two Dollar Radio Moving Pictures films will be produced with budgets for each in the $7,000 range, never to exceed $10,000. They intend to produce two films each year and to distribute them as well.
“Whatever you are able to contribute will be put to good use: not actor-trailers, or on-site chefs, or the use of a pop song on the sound track,” Obenauf promised on the Indiegogo page.
In an interview with PW one year go, Obenauf noted that when he and editor Eliza Wood founded Two Dollar Radio in 2005, they had envisioned expanding beyond books into first, a literary journal, and subsequently, producing micro-budget films. To date, three screenplays have been optioned and are in pre-production. More information about the three projects, their writers and directors, and one-minute teaser-trailers for two of the films will be rolled out this week, beginning Tuesday. Obenauf declined to name the participating writers or directors during a phone interview with PW, saying only, “They’re big names to me.”
Two Dollar Radio titles are distributed by Consortium. There are approximately 30 Two Dollar Radio titles currently in print, and the press is releasing six more titles this fall.
