Matthew Scott Krentz throwing out the first pitch at Busch Stadium 09-08-16 copy
Matt Krentz throws the first pitch
Streetballers’ writer/director/producer and star Matthew Scott Krentz threw out the first pitch at Busch Stadium for Sunday’s Cardinals home game. That image tells the story of our efforts to bring Streetballers to St. Louis—and we are humbled and honored by the way this city has supported our work.
We are just two days away from August 21 premiere at Wehrenberg’s Ronnie’s 20 Cine and Landmark’s Tivoli Theatre in The Loop, and the buzz is reaching a fever pitch. Hot 104.1 is giving continual on-air promos leading the way to the VIP premiere, which they’ll be covering live Thursday night. To date, we have appeared on KMOX, KFNS, KTRS, & ESPN radio stations, appeared on TV channels 2, 4, 5, 11, City TV, MyTv 46, and received feature coverage from the Riverfront Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis American, El Mundo Latino, the St. Louis Beacon (not to mention our guest blogging here).
On the national level, we are just beginning to pick up speed. After our official press release was posted to the wire, 17 national publications, including the Hollywood Reporter, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle picked it up. (And no doubt the Associated Press feature on Streetballers that's due to hit the wire by Thursday will only add to the national buzz.) All of this has led to a recent invite from streetball.com— the world’s biggest streetball website—to open Streetballers in Harlem. The intention of streetball.com is to use Streetballers to unite the “five families” that head the streetball-mecca known as Rucker Park. There's international news, too: we’ve just received invites to open the film in Italy and the Phillipines.
Also on the horizon: the Streetballers soundtrack release. This past Sunday, St. Louis got a sneak peek when the Streetballers team appeared on Hot 104. In fact, rumor has it that a few St. Louis neighborhoods had private sneak peek listening parties and danced into the wee hours of the night. You can pick up that disc, and buy movie tickets (The theatres will keep Streetballers in rotation for as many weeks as the people of St. Louis continue to purchase tickets) through www.streetballersthemovie.com.
Our goal is to be the film with the highest per-screen average in the United States on opening weekend. We hope St. Louis can help us achieve this goal, which will allow the film to expand to Los Angeles, New York and other major markets, and create future opportunities for filmmakers and artists in St. Louis. As they say, there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come—that idea is Streetballers, and the time is now.
With gratitude,
Matt Krentz, Craig Thomas, and Patrick Rooney
