OB Marcus Markou was a keen Drama student whilst at Bloxham School and he credits it with igniting his interest and passion for storytelling. Prior to creating his first feature film, Marcus had studied on a part-time filmmaking course at Met Film School.
Then, back in 2012, Marcus took the unusual step of writing, producing, directing and self-distributing his own independent film. The comedy ‘Papadopoulos & Sons’ centres on the life of a wealthy Greek businessman and his family in London who lose it all in the financial crisis and are forced to start their lives again in a chip shop in Cyprus. However, Marcus faced a lack of enthusiasm from cinemas for the film and, in 2013, took the decision that his best way to create a following and achieve success would be to self-distribute. Marcus only had a budget of ‘40,000 but came up with some inspired ways of targeting his audiences to get the most mileage and managed to convince Cineworld to give him 12 screens for a week. Following the film’s release weekend, ‘Papadopoulos’ achieved the second-highest screen average, beaten only by ‘Oblivion’ with Tom Cruise.
Since then, the film has been picked up by the BBC, Arte, iTunes and Netflix. It achieved a 100-screen release in Germany, DVD distribution in the US and Australia and was even picked up by an Iranian TV company as recently as last November. In addition, it is now offered as in-flight entertainment on various flights.
These days, the film is still going strongly across the country and Marcus is keen to encourage more filmmakers to distribute their own films, saying ”if you’re good enough to make one, you probably have the skills to distribute too.’