Warner Bros. releases DVD in China the same day the movie opened in the US! (1 Viewer)

[Jason Seaver]

HDNet has done that a little - I'm pretty sure they did it with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - but for non-documentaries, I'm wondering if this could torpedo award eligibility, a la Memento and The Croupier.

 

[Mark Lucas]

How to get people into theaters? Stop releasing the damn dvd 3-6 months after release! Better yet, don't even release to home video. Just like the old days where if you wanted to see a movie you went to the theater, as an event. Now I have a headache.

 

[TravisR]

It seems unlikely that a stuido is going to give up millions of dollars in home video revenue to make an 'event' out of a movie.

 

[Mark Lucas]

Well, that solves it. Direct-to-video for everything.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Porn's been direct-to-video for almost 20 years now....

 

[BrettGallman]

I don't think it would be such a bad idea to expand the window between theatrical and home release. I remember back when I was a kid ('80's and early '90's), a movie sometimes wouldn't come out on VHS until a year after its theatrical release, and that eventual home release seemed like just as big a deal as the theatrical release. Of course, that might just be my bad memory talking, but it sure did seem that way when I was younger.

 

[FrancisP]

A lot of the problems that theatres are having can be traced to the studios. $250 million for King Kong, $175 million for the next Superman movie? It used to be that the studios got around 80% of the box office and theatres 20%. Now, around 95% of the take goes to theatres. By the time the percentage goes up, the movie is played out. Unfortunately the only place that they can make it up is popcorn and commercials.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

I suspect you meant to say "studios" and not "theatres". Can you please cite your source for that data? My understanding is that the typical distribution contract given studios anywhere between 80-90% of the box office take for the first week, and typically gets smaller each following week. Yes, there are exceptions, but I don't think you'll find any film where the studios made 95% of the entire box office tally for a film.

On the other hand, I agree that most theater owners must rely on the profits from concessions and advertising to stay in business, which is also why more theaters are quite liberal in allowing unpaid walk-ins, and screen jumpers in order to increase attendance and keep people in the theater where they might buy more concessions and watch more advertising.

This has become an even more critical strategy as films have shorter and shorter theatrical life spans.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

Scott Kirsner, owner of the blog CinemaTech, wrote the following article for Perspective which relates directly with this topic, and how both video piracy and home theaters is changing the film industry: