Kino Lorber To Launch Zalman King Label

NEW YORK, NY – MARCH 12, 2014 - Kino Lorber is pleased to announce that it has entered into an exclusive agreement with the Zalman King Company for the packaged media and digital distribution rights to the Zalman King library which will be marketed under a dedicated Zalman King label.

The first release under this new agreement will be Red Shoe Diaries, the groundbreaking romantic/erotic television series that launched the career of David Duchovny, became one of Showtime’s earliest and most successful original series and paved the way for the Fifty Shades Of Grey phenomenon.  The first full season of 13 episodes from this landmark series and the feature-length film that launched it will both be released on DVD by Kino Lorber in June, 2014.

In July, the new label will release the DVD version of Pleasure Or Pain, the last film that King wrote and directed before his untimely death in 2012. DVD packages of the four additional seasons of Red Shoe Diaries, 66 episodes in all, will follow toward the end of 2014 and through 2015.

Dubbed “The high priest of erotic film-making” by Premiere Magazine and “The reigning auteur of erotic fantasy” by The Los Angeles Times, Zalman King’s long and successful career had already included such international motion picture hits as 9 ½ Weeks, Wild Orchid and Two Moon Junction before he moved into cable television and created the even more successful“Red Shoe Diaries” television series for the Showtime network.

Writing in The New York Times, Douglas Martin recognized King as “A filmmaker who mixed artistic aspiration, a professed empathy for female sexuality and gauzy photography – particularly with his Showtime series, Red Shoe Diaries… The series was notable for its female point of view, an approach that drew women and couples to what became one of Showtime’s highest rated programs – and led HBO and other cable channels to imitate it.”

King’s unrivaled status as the creator and leading exponent of this erotic/romantic genre even brought Stanley Kubrick to seek him out to consult with throughout the preparation and filming of Kubrick’s own erotic film, Eyes Wide Shut.

The film that kicked off the Red Shoe Diaries series introduces Jake, played by a then little known David Duchovny, a young architect who is trying to find a way to cope with the death of his fiancee as he learns that she was having an affair with another man before her death.  Unable to understand how this woman that he thought he knew so well could have had this parallel secret life, he advertises in the personals section of the newspaper for women’s diaries that reveal their most intimate thoughts and hidden experiences.  Each episode is then based on a different diary filled with secret, passionate, romantic fantasies and erotic adventures. King’s signature style featured beautiful people, lush photography, cutting-edge fashion and exotic locations, all wrapped in a sensual musical score that, together, always push the edge of the erotic envelope without ever crossing the line.

David Duchovny, who was discovered by King, stars in the Red Shoe Diaries film and in every one of the 66 series episodes.  He then went on to a highly successful career as the star of such series hits as The X-Files and Californication as well as many feature films.  In addition to Duchovny, Red Shoe Diaries also helped launch or propel the careers of a slew of young actors that included Matt LeBlanc, Ally Sheedy, Steven Bauer, Joan Severance, Arnold Vosloo, Adewale, Richard Tyson, Denise Crosby, Nina Siemaszko and Sheryl Lee.

“Zalman really had the soul of an artist,” Duchovny told Entertainment Weekly after receiving the news of King’s death in 2012.  “I’ve worked with a lot of people that get great respect and they weren’t the artist that Zalman was… For a guy like me, on his first or second acting job, I couldn’t have been luckier working with a man as talented and generous as him.”

Pleasure Or Pain will then be released by Kino Lorber in July of this year.  It is the last film that King wrote and directed before his death and was created as a 21st century update of the themes he so successfully explored in 9 ½ Weeks.  Throughout his career, King has always understood that there was a huge and under-served market for stories aimed at a female audience that can blend intense romance together with cutting-edge erotica and even explorations into the world of S-and-M as long as it is done in a tasteful and artistic way.  The runaway success of Fifty Shades Of Grey again proves that his vision was correct.

Pleasure Or Pain tells the story of Victoria, a young woman in Los Angeles, just beginning to break through in her career as a jewelry designer when she meets Jack, a handsome and enormously rich entrepreneur.  He courts her with a combination of charm, romance and sexual adventure she never dreamed possible and that she finds irresistible.  She gives herself over to him more and more until she is completely under his control.  But then it becomes too much for her.  She tries to leave him but he won’t let her, throwing her into a downward spiral that almost costs Victoria her sanity and even her life.  She decides to tell her story as a warning to other women who may also come face to face with this same kind of thrilling but dangerous sexual possession.

In Pleasure Or Pain, King continues his success in discovering talented and beautiful but unknown actors and nurturing them into giving textured, complex and steamy performances.  The film stars Malena Morgan, Christos Vasilopoulis, Kayla-Jane and Elle Alexandra.

Pleasure Or Pain was the grand prizewinner of both the Audience and Best Film Awards at the Erotikos Film Festival and will premiere on Cinemax this coming April.

Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber said, “We are delighted to bring the bold vision and extensive library of Zalman King to the Home Entertainment marketplace, for the first time in one cohesive collection.  Red Shoe Diaries pioneered the way for semi erotic content that is so popular today.

With our complete release in home video and on all digital platforms of Zalman King’s “Diaries” and features, audiences will truly come to appreciate that “Red” was the first shade of Grey!”

“Over the course of his long and successful career, Zalman King has created a large body of work that has been widely recognized for its unique blend of erotic and emotional stories presented with the highest quality film-making,” said David Saunders, King’s producing partner for over 20 years.  “I am thrilled that Kino Lorber shares my own tremendous enthusiasm and respect for Zalman’s work.  Together, we hope and expect to make all of these projects easily available to a wide audience that has certainly heard of them but may not have had the chance to actually experience them. It would be a more than fitting tribute to both Zalman’s life and his life’s work.