Baby Steps
Hats off to Steven Soderbergh for bucking tradition and releasing his latest film, Bubble, simultaneously in theaters, DVD, and on cable. Now if the major studios only had the balls enough to follow this approach for all films, we would be in business. The current model – theatrical release <wait six months> DVD <wait six months> cable – is horribly archaic and only benefits the studio while in the end the consumer suffers having to be spoon fed content as dictated by the MPAA’s schedule.
Unless they can dramatically enhance the theatre experience the MPAA can keep blaming internet piracy for declining ticket sales, when the reality is it’s the theatre experience itself that is driving people away. In return for paying $11 for a ticket you’re treated to 10-minutes of commercial advertisements (and that’s even before the 20-minutes of trailers, which are by themselves ads). With 50” sets and 6.1 surround setups at home, what real benefit does the theatre experience bring to the table? Seven-dollar popcorn?
Not everyone wants to go to the theatre to watch a film. Sure for films like King Kong it makes perfect sense to get the giant screen treatment (then again, compare a nice HDTV and your couch to a cramped theatre), but take Bubble or Junebug which can be offer pretty much the same experience on any size screen – why not just release everything simultaneously and let the viewer decide which format to ingest?
I’m sure there’s a lot of money to be made here if only the studios had the stones it takes to testbed a new distribution model. Sure movie theaters themselves may lose their shirts if they can’t offer an experience better than viewers can get at home, but all progress creates dinosaurs.
It will be interesting to see if Bubble is a theatrical success, but we may never know as most theaters are boycotting it. I wonder why? It’s my guess that in 20-years we will look back at movie theatres as we look back at the drive-in today.
January 24th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
I couldn’t agree more. But until the movie houses and productions companies start hemorrhaging money (much more than now) they will not up the ante for the movie going exprience. And I don’t see anything coming in the near future. Even as the production companies are footing the bill for the big switch from film to 4k DLP we, the viewer, won’t notice much of a difference while the production companies will save billions of dollars by not having to make film prints and then distribute them worldwide (the largest cost for production companies). Maybe after these shits save 50 or 60 billion dollars they will see fit to release a new DLP system that can really move some pixels. As for now it’s just the same ‘ol same ‘ol.
Note: 4k digital, while less res than a perfect 35mm print, should appear as good or a tad better do to the fact that most film prints aren’t perfect, especially for us sad sacks on the east coast (excepting a few theaters in NYC) who get second rate prints of first run films from day one.
January 25th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Higher picture quality is a start, but they really need to ramp up the entire experience. It’s such a chore to go to the movies these days between buying tickets, standing on line to get in, fighting for a good seat, sitting through commercials and trailers, dealing with annoying people, etc.
If I could just buy the DVD on opening day, 9 times out of 10 I would. They need a really compelling reason for me to go to the theatre, and for non “special effects tour de force” flicks all the technology in the world is not going to get me to the theatre if I can get the film through another distribution mechanism.
The MPAA knows that, thus the spoon feeding from theater to disc to cable in hopes to snag the minority sales from those who actually buy the DVD of a film they saw in the theatre. Keep re-packing the same product is a ploy straight of out the RIAA handbook, except the MPAA can repackage every six months, instead of every ten years as with recordings.
I think the only thing going out to the movies is going to have to keep it alive is the “going out” part. Dinner and a movie just isn’t the same if you have to stay home to do it. I don’t think it’s enough to keep it afloat in the long run however.