Chicago Rot Status Update #5

Coming Soon.

While I am positive that “R”, “O”, and “T” are far from the most common letters being typed into Google after the word Chicago these days, we do have some rather meaty updates for those of you who arrived here due to some pre-existing interest in our film. And for those of you who simply evidenced a poor aptitude for spelling while searching for Cubs gear – welcome! Not all of us on the Rot crew are sportsing fans, but as Chicagoans and just generally as people, we all share a mutual appreciation for those rare moments in life when you are afforded the opportunity to bear witness to history being made. It was almost as amazing as Chicago Rot winning Best Thriller at the Nightmares Film Festival, which, by the way, happened roughly 5 hours prior to the Cubs winning the division and gaining entry to the somewhat questionably-named World Series. While I am not necessarily prepared to say that our win was a precursor to theirs, we will happily take credit for it if anyone decides to draw a causal connection.

In addition to the aforementioned appearance at the exceptional Nightmares Film Festival, Chicago Rot was also honored with a screening at the Hell’s Half Mile Film & Music Festival in September, where a statistically significant portion of the uncannily kind Bay City populace showed up to watch our film in a Planetarium and prove what we already knew – that the Midwest does it best when it comes to hospitality towards the filmmakers, and respect for the work they have brought with them. I am confident that I can speak for our entire crew and all of our fellow attendees when I say that our undying gratitude goes to everyone who made Nightmares and HHM possible. They are festivals of the highest caliber, run by tireless, estimable cinephiles who understand that we kill ourselves to get our movies there, and are thus unsettlingly willing to reciprocate by killing themselves to make sure you have an experience that is respectful of that. It is an incredible thing to witness and be a part of, if you don’t mind the corpses that pile up as a result of all this altruism.

The festival experience has been an unequivocally thrilling one, and while we wish our run could go on much longer, it appears that ours is intent on finding its conclusion. We only have a handful of pending submissions left, and are currently not applying to any more festivals, because…

We have signed a distribution deal for Chicago Rot.

It would not be untoward to suggest that I may have buried the lead here, but rather than fling blame around, let’s just get into the details –

Most of the details are still being finalized.

It would not be untoward to suggest at this point that I may have jumped the gun on burying this lead, but what we do know is that the release will happen in 2017, and literally everything else is still being discussed and devised by our distributor and ourselves. Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for timely updates, but know this – the deal has been signed. The film, along with all of the additional resources required for the marketing/releasing of our film, have been delivered to our distributor, and everything has passed their Quality Control checks. Yes, this is really happening.

As anyone with even a passing knowledge of our film knows, it has been a lengthy, arduous road we have travelled to get where we are, and while we likely still have a few more mountain peaks to plant the Rot flag upon before this whole journey concludes, this news definitively orients us upon the final range that we must conquer. It is perhaps the most daunting of them all, but everything we have endured has given us the confidence to confront it, and the wisdom to temper that confidence by reminding ourselves that we must proceed as though we are taking our first fumbling steps into a whole new breed of unknown. Luckily, that is exactly the type of environment where we fucking thrive.