Doug Spearman on the release of ‘Noah’s Arc’ movie: “They were just going to dance us into five theaters”

It was a triumphant scene last Saturday night as Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom tied with the gay surfing love story Shelter for best independent movie at the GLAAD Media Awards in New York City.

Fans of the series had been waiting for years for Logo to make the feature film which had been announced then the MTV network decided not to renew the series Noah’s Arc for a third season.

Since Logo did decide to make the movie their reasons for canceling such a beloved show have never been made clear. But at the recent Writers Guild of America event “Gay Today In Hollywood,” cast member Doug Spearman (Chance) shed some light on how Logo continued to underestimate the popularity of the franchise when they released the movie into theaters last fall.

“It was Logo Films first movie and they make their money off of DVD,” Spearman said. “They want to do pay-per view first, they want to launch everything on cable. That’s their business model. They were just going to dance us into five theaters. They weren’t even going to send is to San Francisco! They put us in five theaters for not even 10 days. It was, ‘We did a theatrical run, now we’re going to sell it for DVD.'”

But the audiences showed up – in droves.

“They oversold the theaters so bad, they were breaking fire codes,” Spearman said. “There were people standing in the theaters. Logo had to actually add seven more cities and then they kept it in there for six-and-a-half weeks. The movie made three-quarters of its budget back in theatrical release. It’s impossible for them to see this stuff coming.”

According to Box Office Mojo, the film opened on Oct. 24 in just five theaters. It still managerd to open in 34th place with an opening weekend gross of $151,335 – a robust $30,335 per screen average.

Jumping the Broom ended up peaking in nine theaters and bringing in an overall domestic gross of $532,878. It was released on DVD in February.

Earlier post: Dustin Lance Black, Doug Spearman and others talk about their first gay screen experiences