Why I can’t wait for day and date movie releases from iTunes & The Screening Room
I can’t wait for Hollywood to embrace home entertainment day and date release windows for movies like that being talked about by tech wunderkind Sean Parker’s The Screening Room and the rumoured two week after cinemas iTunes Movies release strategy currently being negotiated by Apple and the film studios.
No doubt unless Apple’s iTunes & The Screening Room can get the encryption/protection of the movies themselves right we could be seeing massive amounts of piracy as keen movie fans seek to avoid paying the presumably premium prices wanting to be charged by the day and date release companies said to be at $50 a movie.
With 2016 shaping up to be the worst year in ticket sales to films in a century despite record box office returns it’s clear that Hollywood needs to do something like day and date releasing to stay relevant.
The movie theatres themselves are going to fight this every step of the way as anything that takes away from the cinema experience will affect box office takings.
Netflix are already releasing many movies a year directly to their near 90 million subscribers although they keep how many people are watching close to their chests. They’ve even done a deal with small theatre chain iPic to screen their movies when they are released to the service. But iPic is in the minority as many big theatre chains won’t touch Netflix original movies. Amazon on the other hand with their Prime Instant Video service are having more success getting their original movies into cinemas because they have a release window that satisfies the theatre owners.
Movies traditionally have a 90 day or more release window before they come out on home video, usually on DVD or Blu-ray but with those formats becoming increasingly irrelevant to Video On Demand services like iTunes, Amazon & Google Play are picking up the slack. And with set-top boxes like Apple TV & Google’s Chromecast more people have the means to watch movies via Internet delivery directly to their big screen TV. As well as on smaller devices like tablets and smartphones however much director David Lynch wouldn’t be happy with you watching movies on such a small screen.
Ultimately this 90 day release window is to protect the cinemas’ revenues from being cannibalised by home entertainment services and presumably piracy to an extent. I think it would be an interesting experiment at the very least to see how a few big budget movies would perform at the cinemas while simultaneously being released on VOD services. Will people still go to the cinemas when they can just watch at home?
My thinking is that price will have a lot to do with it. If Apple or The Screening Room or even another player set the price too high will that encourage consumers to still go to the cinemas? Will people turn to the pirated versions of these films that are inevitably going to turn up online? Is this just like awards season where some of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year leak and end up on pirate sites as DVD screeners?
I’d love the chance to watch movies on my home theatre setup the day they come out in cinemas. But some of that has to do with me living in a small town where the nearest cinemas are an hour drive. So if the price were right I think I would be happy to pay for the privilege of watching in my own home the day it comes out. Petrol can cost $30 AUD to get to the cinema and back. Plus parking and the actual ticket. Of course that is for one person only. Couples and families may find even more value in a home box office. I realise not everyone lives an hour or more from a cinema so cinema-going might be a lot more practical for them. Yet a lot less people attend the cinemas year after year.
The reality is that Netflix, Amazon and other subscription & transactional VOD services are not long away from out-earning Hollywood’s box office grosses per year. Couple that with the fact that director Steven Spielberg has said that there could be a coming box office crash coming with successive box office failures of big budget blockbusters possible. And with the amount of tentpole releases laid out for the next few calendar years it’s going to be interesting to see if cinema goers continue to shell out enough to sustain week after week blockbusters. Not to mention the overabundance of sequels in the pipeline that have no regard for the failures of some of 2016’s sequels.
In summary the movie studios could keep doing things the way they always have. The cinemas could try to attract people to them by making the experience better or even dropping the prices of tickets. The Alamo Drafthouse theatre chain and even Cinema Nova in Melbourne, Australia are examples of cinemas doing it right with their comfortable seating, strict no talking or using mobile phones during the movie policy, food and alcohol service and large selections of mainstream and arthouse films. But I fear the change would be too large on a worldwide scale. Whereas the change required to deliver movies over the Internet to massive amounts of people is minimal. Don’t get me wrong; systemically it is a massive change for the film industry. But technically Silicon Valley companies are well equipped to solve problems like these. I just don’t believe that Hollywood can build something themselves, as past efforts like Ultraviolet have been very so-so. The cinema experience is over 100 years old at this point. It’s evolved through television, VHS & pay TV. Will it evolve in the Internet age? Will it become irrelevant? Or can Hollywood save itself by partnering with Silicon Valley with strong opposition from theatre chains? Time will tell. But change is coming.
Anthony Eales is a media, news & tech junkie from Australia who has an interest in the film industry. You can follow me on Twitter @ants000
