LAS VEGAS – The National Association of Theatre Owners called on studios Tuesday to stop releasing uncensored and unrated DVDs.
The comments, made by association president John Fithian at the ShoWest convention of theater owners, marked the latest split between the people who make movies and the people who show them.
The association, which represents operators of more than 29,000 screens, has criticized studios before for releasing too few family films, too many R-rated movies and for allowing the window between when a movie is released in theaters and when it hits video shelves to get too small.
Some popular DVD titles, particularly R-rated films such as American Pie and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, offer unrated discs that include risque scenes not seen in theaters.
“The marketing campaigns say ‘unrated’ and ‘uncensored,’ ” Fithian says.
But what the studio is really saying, Fithian maintains, is ” ‘Kids, don’t go see the rated movie in cinemas. Come get the real stuff here.’ It’s bad for the ratings system and it’s bad for the cinema business.” Representatives from several major studios, including 20th Century Fox, Disney, DreamWorks, Paramount, Sony and Universal, did not respond for comment Tuesday.
But Gregg Kilday, a film writer for the Hollywood Reporter, says the theater owners’ request could cause conflict between a studio’s theater division and its home video division.
“Obviously, the studio side has to work within the ratings system,” Kilday says. But the DVD divisions probably will drag their heels “because the executives who market DVDs have found a gimmick to be mined.” An eye on video piracy Since video piracy was made a crime in 39 states and Washington D.C., much of the theft has moved to Canada, Fithian says. Canada has no state or federal piracy laws.
According to statistics from the theater owners association, Canada makes up roughly 9% of box office revenue every year in North America.
But it now accounts for about 35% of video piracy. Industry statistics say piracy costs the film business 6% to 9% of its overall revenue.
Lots of eyes on smaller films At the Independent Showcase Monday night, where smaller films are shown to pique the interest of theater exhibitors, the strongest reactions were for Gracie, about a teen fighting to let women play competitive soccer, and Talk to Me, starring Don Cheadle as disc jockey and ex-con Petey Greene.
Gracie is something of a Shue family film; it’s directed by Davis Guggenheim, director of the Oscar-winning doc An Inconvenient Truth, and stars his wife, Elisabeth Shue, and her brother Andrew.
“People have been saying they love it,” says Carly Schroeder, 16, who plays Gracie. “I just hope that means they make room for it.” The key is finding the vacuum in blockbuster-heavy summer for something small, says Picturehouse president Bob Berney. “You want to wait until you are thinking people need a break, and June tends to be a good month,” says Berney, whose company is distributing Gracie and the current Pan’s Labyrinth.
Theater owners also packed both showings of Talk to Me, which relives the time of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
“It’s not always the easiest movie to see,” says Carrie Ruttman, a theater manager from Indianapolis. “But not every movie has to be cotton candy.”
