It’s movie night – that decision is made.
Now, quick: Choose from nearly a dozen ways to entertain the family with a motion picture.
Will you download a hit movie to your computer from the Internet for $4.99, then connect the computer to your TV to watch the film?
Did you remember to put “Hitch” in your Netflix queue in time for a weekend showing?
Are you looking forward to “Bubble,” the new movie from Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh? Texas entrepreneurs Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who commissioned the film, plan to release it simultaneously this fall in nearly every format they can think of: via their Landmark theater chain, on DVD and on cable pay-per-view.
Should you watch Steven Bochco’s acclaimed Iraq war series, “Over There,” live on the FX network? Or buy it on DVD, available in stores five days after the first episode aired? Maybe it’s time to hit the cineplex to see “Stealth.” Then again, the film will be out on DVD in three months, selling for $19.95 instead of the $75 you’d shell out for tickets and snacks.
When it comes to movies these days, it’s your world – moviemakers just live in it. Consumers increasingly control how they see their favorites, and an entire industry is scrambling to keep up.
According to Hollywood author Edward Jay Epstein, writing for the online magazine Slate in late July, insider numbers show studios took less than 15 percent of their revenues from theater box offices in the first part of this year. People watching videos, cable or dish at home provided nearly 86 percent of the take.
“We have to be smarter than the market,” said Michele Shane, a producer of hits including “I, Robot.” “The marketplace is getting more educated and demanding. It’s harder to fool them.”
Two issues worry film producers more than any others: theft, and broken windows.
Though some movie distributors are rushing to meet consumer demand for downloadable movies, they make sure the file disappears in 30 days whether you have watched it or not. Studios body-search customers at movie premieres, fearing pirates who copy the film with a video camera for later sale.
And windows are crashing down all over.
“Windows” are the carefully calibrated time periods studios once allotted for different presentations of the same movie. First to the theater, six months later to consumer video rental, then cable pay-per-view, then consumer sales, and finally to a cable or broadcast debut. The goal: maximum sales.
Movie fans have happily watched those sacred windows shatter. Perhaps you missed the action flick “XXX: State of the Union” at its April 29 theater premier; no worries, the DVD came out July 26.
Alamosa theater instructor Paul Newman thinks his local movie house doesn’t project movies brightly enough. For many movies, he will wait out the ever-shrinking gap between a big-screen release and appearance on DVD, which will allow him to crank up his TV’s luminosity as high as he desires. Newman’s unpredictable moviegoing habits will not settle the stomachs of any studio executives trying to plan for the future.
“Usually our decisions to go to the movie theater or to rent a DVD are extremely impulsive,” he said.
Capitol Hill video customer Pat Fasano gives another reason for frequenting Videotique and its unpredictable mix of VHS tapes and DVDs. Movie theaters are now showing so many commercials before the feature, she said, it feels like watching TV.
Invasion of commercials
“My husband really doesn’t like paying the money for movies,” said Fasano, who said the retired couple still sees art-house and film-festival showings in theaters. “In England, they show commercials for 25 minutes – and we’re getting there. We saw three commercials in a row the other night. What bothers me more than the commercials is that the commercials don’t seem to bother anybody else.”
Like others, Fasano is also suffering from format confusion. She’s one of the shrinking roster of Americans left without a DVD player, renting VHS tapes instead. But the last time she went to Videotique with a list of four possible movies for the weekend, she learned the studios had decided to issue only DVD versions of three on the list. A cheap DVD player is in her near future, she said.
Other consumers find themselves intoxicated by the possibilities of new choices. Connecticut movie fan Mike Kaltschnee fell so hard for the thousands of movie-by-mail options on Netflix that he started a popular blog called HackingNetflix, to share secrets about the tight-lipped company. He and his online friends post scoops on new warehouses being built by Netflix and Blockbuster, which means more frequent one-day delivery of movies in their queue. They spend their free time creating algorithms that might predict which kind of favored customer gets new movies fastest when supplies are limited.
“It’s all at your convenience, instead of the movie theaters’,” said Kaltschnee. “Even the largest video store has only 5,000 titles. Netflix has more than 50,000 now. I used to walk into a store with a list of movies, and they never had them. Now I keep 400 movies in my queue.”
Kaltschnee still goes to the theater, but far less than he used to. He wanted to see the new “Star Wars” movie with a big-screen digital projection. But a light comedy like “Hitch”? “We would never go out to see that movie,” he said. Imax movies and other specialty films can still do well, but “the theaters will have to change the way they operate to draw people in. The niche experience can do very well.”
Whither the cineplex?
While the studios decide when to shrink the window between their theater openings and DVD releases – a matter of two branches of one company holding a scheduling meeting – the same studios complain bitterly about the changes. DVD sales far outweigh theater tickets in their revenue piles, but they don’t know what the world will look like if the cineplex business implodes altogether.
“In this world, people don’t want to wait,” said Wagner, who as co-owner with Cuban of 2929 Entertainment rocked the theatrical world with the unique plan for the widespread same-day release of Soderbergh’s fall movie.
Despite tossing out a potential solution, Wagner doesn’t claim to know all the answers. He just knows that things have changed forever. “You assume that by sequentially releasing things, you maximize the revenue,” he said. “Hey, it’s been a great model. What if there’s an even better model?
“You have people buying Bono’s ‘Live 8’ song 45 minutes after the concert was over, to download onto their iPod. In a digital world, it makes sense to experiment with the model. We’re not kamikaze pilots – if it’s dead wrong, we won’t keep doing it.”
Wagner thinks most everybody who wants to go out for an evening will still go to the theater, even if they know Soderbergh’s movie is already on DVD that day. What he thinks his company will gain is “spur-of-the-moment” DVD sales currently being lost because people have forgotten about the movie by the time it’s available.
Critics point out Wagner and Cuban are filling another pipeline: They are heavily promoting a cable channel available in some areas called HD Net, which airs content shot and produced in high-definition picture quality. Soderbergh’s movie will be on HD Net for subscribers the same day.
Wagner says, yes, of course; but the company is also putting digital projectors into its Landmark theaters, scheduled for Denver within a year, to improve picture quality and cut print costs.
He likens it to Cuban’s NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks. People still go to the game, even though they could watch on TV. “It’s two different audiences, after two different experiences.”
“A subliminal seduction”
To assuage theater exhibitors, the company is rebating some DVD revenues to the screens that showed the movie during theatrical release. They started that with the acclaimed documentary “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.”
“The theaters have always been mad that they don’t benefit from DVD ancillaries,” Wagner said. “We’re technology-agnostic. We will watch and see where the trends go, and try to be there when the customer arrives.”
Entertainment stories tend to focus on the $400 million DVD sales of “Shrek,” he added. But digital means huge opportunities for makers of tiny films, “95 percent of which never make it out of the film-festival circuit.” Filmmakers can now put their prints on DVDs, then contact digital Landmark theaters to rent various showing times and do as much marketing as they can handle. “More ideas onscreen. I think that’s exciting.”
With all the talk of money, said producer Shane, filmmakers need to step back a moment and realize their real challenge is not revenue streams, but creativity. Yes, consumers have endless program choices when it comes to TV and movies. But there are now dozens of digital avenues an artist can try in search of an audience.
“It must become a subliminal seduction,” Shane said.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
