David Cross Comedy 'It's a Disaster' Getting Initial Release on Twitter-Owned App Vine

Oscilloscope

As Hollywood embraces social media to market its products, a New York-based indie distributor has decided to put an entire film on the newest social app.

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Oscilloscope Pictures on Tuesday afternoon released the apocalyptic comedy It's a Disaster on the Twitter-owned app Vine, which allows users to post six-second videos that play in a loop -- a marriage of YouTube and GIFs. The app, released Jan. 24, is the 74th-most popular in the iTunes store; Facebook, by comparison, is 60th.

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The Todd Berger-directed film stars David Cross, Julia Stiles and America Ferrera and is due out on VOD on March 5 and in theaters April 12. Oscilloscope will post Disaster, in six-second chunks, to its Vine account and tweet sporadic links. The "showing" began Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. EST. It is a "tongue in cheek" experiment, a rep for the distributor said, and the videos will be shot on a smartphone -- which means the quality will not be the best.

"Jean-Luc Godard once said that he pities French cinema because it has no money and American cinema because it has no ideas," Berger said. "Well, this is certainly an idea."

Ironically, THR's review of Disaster, which premiered at the LA Film Fest in June, said, "The low-budget production looks good on the big screen."

Although a stunt, the Vine release marks the latest development in platform expansion. Netflix's new drama House of Cards bypasses television altogether, and Cross' Arrested Development will be Netflix-only.

Vine ran into a problem this month when a pornographic post by a user found its way to the Editor's Picks section; it is now marked for users 17 and older. The app is available only for the iPhone and iPod Touch.