The man from Starz

INDIE FILM GUIDE: Industry sales vet co-produced The Man From Earth

By Laurence Lerman -- Video Business, 10/15/2007

OCT. 15 | Eric Wilkinson has been in the home entertainment business in brand managing and sales positions since 1989. He’s currently director of sales for Starz Home Entertainment, where he’s likely to keep a particularly close eye on the company’s fourth-quarter release The Man From Earth, which he co-produced.

“It’s a sci-fi movie with a genre-centric cast,” says first-time producer Wilkinson. Starring Richard Riehle, Tony Todd, William Katt and John Billingsley, the DVD will be released Nov. 13 (prebook now; $26.97).

Shot on digital video with a budget of less than $200,000, The Man From Earth has been getting positive buzz on the festival circuit over the past several months. Directed by Richard Schenkman (The Pompatus of Love) and written by the late, respected science-fiction author Jerome Bixby, the film picked up two awards at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and played the Comic-Con International Film Festival in San Diego this past July, where it was “one of the better attended movies,” Wilkinson says.

Wilkinson previously worked at distributors Schwartz Brothers and Valley Media and at suppliers MGM Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Arrow Entertainment. He first met Schenkman in the late ’90s when the director submitted a film to Arrow. The two became friends and eventual filmmaking partners on The Man From Earth.

The genesis of the film traces back to 1999, when Emerson Bixby, son of Jerome Bixby, approached Schenkman with the screenplay. Schenkman gave the script to Wilkinson, who was interested in getting involved with the project.

It wasn’t until the fall of 2004 that Schenkman and Wilkinson went back to Emerson Bixby with a game plan for the production.

“Before we made the deal, I wanted to get more experience in home video sales,” Wilkinson says. “The more I knew about that, I thought, the better I’d do with the movie.” The Man From Earth went into pre-production in the summer of 2005 and was shot over a nine-day period in January 2006.

“When I walked into this industry and I tried to get a job, everything that I knew about this business, I learned from reading the trades—particularly Video Business,” Wilkinson says.