Although this is a formalization of an already existing practice, Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes' move to eliminate the window between DVD and VOD is actually a big deal. The dominoes are starting to fall on the old ancillary market windows.
This a strange and significant story. It was inevitable that a studio would sever its pay-TV ties and start its own movie channel with a deep library and downloads, but I didn't think it would happen this soon and in this way. It's the wave of the future, and will accelerate the pace of change. So far the studios have been talking behind closed doors about how to take charge of their own delivery windows free from the impediments of their Pay-TV deals with HBO, Starz and Showtime. But not one had been willing to walk away from millions of dollars.
Now Viacom chief Sumner Redstone has done it--but at the expense of one of his own units, CBS, which owns Showtime. When Paramount and partners MGM and Lionsgate all withdraw from Showtime, it leaves open the question of what movies the channel will show. Variety's Dade Hayes explains. Here's Reuters. And the NYT. And PaidContent. And the LAT.
Apparently Redstone and Viacom prexy and CEO Philippe Dauman realized they had an opportunity, because Paramount and Paramount Vantage's Showtime deal ended at the end of 2007, and Lionsgate and MGM's were up at the end of 2008. In effect they had a chance to get a jump on the other studios which are tied up in other deals for years to come (including Paramount sibling DreamWorks, which has a separate deal with HBO).
UPDATE: Many questions remain about how long it will take--this thing won't launch until January 2009, apparently--to set up distrib agreements with major carriers and infrastructure.
What took Hollywood so long to miss this clear marketing opportunity? Paramount, FanRocket, VooZoo and Facebook are joining forces to make thousands of clips from Paramount movies available on Facebook. Other studios may follow suit. I've been looking at more film clips on Facebook via Flixster, and I have no doubt that viral exposure to fave clips will boost DVD rentals and sales down the line. This is one sign that studios are prepping for the long tail world.
Meanwhile, at SXSW, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's key note speech was a huge sell-out, as rooms full of folks watched him on videoscreens. PaidContent has coverage and video. UPDATE: Zuckerberg's interlocuter got twittered by a hostile crowd.
Here's the 2002 Paramount logo with fanfare:
And a history of the Paramount mountain logo with stars:
In his April cover story, Wired editor Chris Anderson expounds on the new free economy, citing Yahoo, Google, Craig's List and other examples of wildly successful enterprises that provide free services. This article will surely chill the blood of entertainment execs who are terrified that all their hard-won revenue streams will trickle into nothing if they are forced to make their costly content available for free. As DVD sales continue to decline, what if the Blu-Ray vs. HDTV contest is irrelevant and consumers skip that upgrade altogether in favor of some mix-and-match combo of all the following: VOD, XBox, iTunes, Apple TV, Netflix streaming, and Amazon Unbox downloads?
I just had a conversation with a pal about the dwindling newspaper economy. We are not alone in expecting to read content online for free. When anything we want to find is behind a firewall, we get pissed. Another pal of mine routinely illegally downloads all his films. He expects to watch his entertainment for free.
Obviously there will be ways, whether it's iTunes or Google ads or sponsorships and product placement, for companies to gain value from content. But in a recent conversation with a studio head, I was struck when he admitted that they had just renewed their HBO Pay-TV deal. That he considered any radical shift in the ways the studios collect their revenues to be far off. He wasn't worried, because he's sticking with the old-fashioned theater/DVD/VOD/Pay TV/TV model for as long as possible. By taking this course and delaying the pursuit of an alternative distribution paradigm (which they are keeping in their back pockets), the studios risk eventually getting stuck with a lot of content nobody wants to pay for.
Wired also has an update on the Netflix $1-million competition to invent a new movie recommendation algorithm 10 % better than its own Cinematch. The probable winner: a Brit psychologist.
After a disastrous year for indies and docs at the boxoffice, at an IDA pre-Oscar gathering Michael Moore calls for change.
[Photo courtesy indieWIRE]
You know something's wrong in Hollywood when movies with stars can't get a theater opening. Edward Burns took his latest relationship pic Purple Violets exclusively to iTunes, and Madonna is threatening to do something similar with her badly reviewed Berlin flick Filth & Wisdom. That would be an interesting test of the power of the Internet, if Madonna used her marketing machine to sell her film online.
This weekend, Ebert & Roeper critics Tony Scott and Richard Roeper did a segment about movies with marquee names that have gone direct to DVD. Scott recommended the Michele Pfeiffer/Paul Rudd romance I Could Never Be Your Woman, while Roeper thought Jennifer Lopez was strong in Gregory Nava's The Border. And here's a review of a 2001 unreleased Alan Rudolph movie finally hitting video stores.
Nowadays a minimal theatrical release is just a short-cut to the video store. With the current indie-finance glut, there are more movies seeking alternative distribution than ever, judging by how few got picked up at Sundance. Here's my column on alternative distribution on the Internet.
Many small-scale success stories are out there, as filmmakers and online distributors such as B-Side, IFC, Withoutabox, Cinequest, iTunes, Amazon and Netflix experiment with economic models. It's only a matter of time before we have more breakouts to show the way. Check out the online break-through flicks Head Trauma, Blood Car and Four Eyed Monsters (pictured) as well as the hockey doc In the Crease.
Michael Eisner so perfectly reflects the OLD STUDIO state of mind. Call him a dinosaur. On some level, Eisner helps to make new Disney chief Bob Iger, who does get new technology, look, well, almost cool.
As the writers strike grinds on and TV continues to shut down, I can't help but wonder if the studios, which are so wealthy and enormous, don't realize how vulnerable they actually are. Sure, they're worried about changes in distribution models, the digital future, piracy, and so forth. But they're still making so much money.
I have long thought that the studios are foolish to treat consumers as little gnats that should be grateful for all the pap they they sell them. The studios are coming from a place that is large and all-powerful. But what if their customers slowly, quietly, in little increments here and there, stopped watching TV and buying DVDs in favor of other sources of entertainment and delight? Why are DVD sales going down? Games, FaceBook, Flixter, Quarterlife, My Damn Channel, JibJab, FunnyorDie...the list goes on. The TV networks and studios should be very worried about people abandoning live television and purchased DVDs in favor of Netflix, downloads, internet viewing, saved TiVo shows, cable OnDemand...the list goes on. (Ironically, the movies are less likely to suffer--although the marketing challenge of cutting through the noise is an issue.)
Netscape founder (and Loudcloud billionaire) Marc Andreessen posits that the WGA strike is the ideal setting for an end-run around the antiquated studio distribution system. Here are a few choice pieces of his argument (the entire story is posted on the jump):
In Silicon Valley, creation, marketing, and distribution of a compelling new product is not very expensive. And with the Internet, marketing and distribution costs drop nearly to zero. Most successful Internet companies, large and small, use free viral marketing techniques and never run ads. And the whole concept of distribution costs goes away when everything is digital -- the next set of bits costs nothing to manufacture. Therefore, there are no bottlenecks. Many companies, large and small, can afford to be in business -- can afford to develop new products and bring them to market, market them and distribute them. And nobody can really block you. In Silicon Valley, the creators of the product -- the talent -- are owners: owners of their product, and owners of their company. In fact, the entities that finance the companies -- venture capitalists, private equity funds, the public stock market -- want the creators to be owners: in a world where there can be many companies, the best creative talent will be drawn to the situations in which they will be owners, and will be compensated as owners. Because of that, in technology, creators get paid like owners. Therefore, there are no unions. There is no reason for the creators to unionize -- they would be negotiating with themselves. The concept of residuals does not exist -- they'd be paying themselves. And alignment of interests between creators and financiers is near-perfect. I believe the entertainment industry is in the early stages of being rebuilt in the image of Silicon Valley.What would a new entertainment media company, producing original content, look like in the age of the Internet?
Starting from the end of the process: you know distribution is now nearly free. Put it up on the Internet and let people stream or download it.
Marketing is also free, due to virality. Let people email your content to their friends; let people embed your content in their blogs and on their social networking pages; let your content be searchable via Google; let your content be easily surfaced using social crawlers like Digg. All free.
Production is very cheap. Handheld high-definition video cameras cost nearly nothing. You can do almost every aspect of production and post-production on any Mac. Hell, you can even score an entire movie for free -- there are hundreds of thousands of bands on the Internet who would love to have their music embedded in a new entertainment property as promotion for the bands' concerts and merchandise.
The creators of the content are the owners of the company. The writers, actors, directors -- they are the owners. They have a direct, equity-based economic stake in the company's success. They get paid like owners, and they act like owners.
Financing is straightforward: venture capital, just like a high-tech startup. We live in a world in which financing a high-quality startup is simply not difficult -- not for a high-quality technology startup, and increasingly not for a high-quality media startup. Modern financiers love being co-owners of a new company with the talent that will make the company successful -- and that's how it will happen here.
This is not a difficult thing to envision. And in fact, it's already happening. Will Ferrell's Funny Or Die, in which I am a minority investor, is one early existence proof of this model. And there are a ton of other such new companies either already underway, or currently being incubated, or currently being negotiated.And in fact, there are a lot of historical precedents even in the media industry for the model of talent as owners, going all the way back to the original United Artists in 1919. Some of those precedents worked great -- George Lucas, for example. Some flamed out. Of course, they were all up against the bottlenecks.
But here we are, living in a world in which the bottlenecks have suddenly become irrelevant.
I don't think there's any question that this is the logical model to pursue in the age of the Internet -- the age of free distribution and marketing.
And here are some ideas on Screenwriters DIY:
Written by Wagner James Au Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 at 12:00 AM PT Screenwriters, DIY!In the mid 90s, during a strike against The San Francisco Examiner, a bunch of staff writers and editors abandoned the newspaper to start up their own “web magazine.” Though it seemed like a weird idea at the time, the web mag eventually became Salon.com, now a site with more readers than most newspapers — including The Examiner itself.
As the WGA strike moves into its second week, it’s hard not to see a similar opportunity: What’s to stop WGA writers (especially those associated with well-known TV shows and movies) from doing a similar thing with YouTube? Create new, low-budget shorts à la Lonely Girl, then leverage them as spinoffs for new TV series/movies when the strike ends? Or perhaps even better, come up with a Net-driven revenue model and leave the dinosaur conglomerates of Hollywood behind?
Marc Andreessen and other Internet mavens have recently made that case, but I was curious to know what working screenwriters thought of the idea. So I put the question to my friend Howard A. Rodman, who’s in a unique position to answer: As a writer, he’s worked for filmmakers as varied as Steven Soderbergh, Errol Morris, and Tom Cruise; he’s the writer of the upcoming Savage Grace with Julianne Moore; and, most pertinently, is a board member with the WGA. What did he think of the “Go Internet” scenario? His characteristically urbane answer came with a clarion call:
“[O]ur Lonely Girl, our Dziga Vertov, our salon des refusees, has yet to emerge,” he acknowledged via email. “Give it time. More conjecturally, the Googles of this world, the Mark Cubans of this world, the Jeff Skolls of this world, might see an opportunity to work with world-class writers, without having to take 30 percent off the top as the studios’ distribution fee.”
“Increasingly,” he continued, “as the studios want you to come to them with a script, with stars, with attachments, with financing, the question becomes, what’s the value added? That question will be asked, more and more frequently, and more and more loudly. Big Media’s refusal to bargain and end this strike only assures that this question will continue to be asked — until some brave and imaginative soul answers it. Loudly.”
His advice to daring writers and Internet financiers who would rise to the challenge? “DIY!” he wrote. He pointed to a witty pro-WGA YouTube video that turns the corporate owners’ words against them. “Take a look at this: created with no more resources than you or I already have on our desktops.” (For myself, I’d point to someone like Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress Felicia Day, who did that very thing months before the strike, creating a series that’s so popular online, the show’s fans willingly finance it with donations.)
For more resources, Howard pointed to Variety’s compilation of screenwriter blogs, and another at Huffington Post, where Howard is a contributor. For that matter, read more from Howard in a group interview I’m currently hosting on The Well, the legendary online community now owned (to tie this post up nicely) by Salon.com.
In 2001, Wagner James Au optioned his sci-fi action screenplay Future Tense to Canal Plus, a deal which pretty much summarizes the entirety of his screenwriting career. More recently, he’s GigaOM’s games editor and writes about Second Life for his blog New World Notes.
Continue reading "Writers Strike Watch: Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley's image " »
Anyone who likes old movies and freebies might want to check out Amazon Unbox's Free Classic Movie Week (ends Nov. 18). They're all digital downloads, most for rent, a few to own, all for free. Laurel and Hardy: Lost Films Volume 4 has skyrocketed up the Amazon Unbox chart to Number 8 bestselling download because of this sale.
I'm still not sure that Mark Cuban has ever understood the movie business (2929 Entertainment), theatrical exhibition (Landmark Theatres), indie film distribution (Magnolia Pictures) or even high def cable (HDNet). But he does understand the Internet --love his blog: his latest post, "the internet is dead and boring"-- and insists on doing his press interviews by email. Judging from this Portfolio Q & A, clearly, Cuban is impatient with the pace of change.
In the online video age, everyone is trying to figure out the best way to advertise.
Amazon.com and Custom Flix will release old films from the National Archives:
The National Archives and Records Administration announced yesterday that it has reached a non-exclusive agreement with Amazon.com and one of its subsidiaries to reproduce and sell to the public copies of thousands of historic films and videotapes in the Archives' holdings.The arrangement allows Amazon and a California subsidiary, CustomFlix Labs, to make digitized copies of some of history's most famous, and infamous, footage and make them available in DVD form for purchase via the Internet.
For any indie filmmaker lacking a theatrical distributor who is eager to get their DVD reviewed, Last Night With Riviera knows a web critic who will review your film. Chris Gore at Film Threat will also review some indie pix.
Not only has the last Harry Potter book The Deathly Hallows been leaked, the movie's already online:
One of my colleagues passed on this alert from the National Legal and Policy Center:
Yesterday afternoon, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) discovered full-length versions of the new Harry Potter movie, the latest installation of the Die Hard series, and Hairspray -- not slated for release until later this week - posted on Google Video. Following reports noting the apparently pirated movies, the films were removed, though Die Hard has since reappeared posted in two parts.In an ongoing observation of Google Video's lackadaisical approach to screening for pirated content, the NLPC also released its second "Top 50" list today of full length movies, television shows and music concerts hosted on Google Video.
Th NLPC's full release is on the jump:
Continue reading "Harry Potter: It's on Google Video, Along with Hairspray" »
How appropriate that William Gibson, the sci-fi novelist who invented the word cyberspace in 1984's Neuromancer, would be using an avatar to promote his new book Spook Country in Second Life.
[Hat Tip: mediabistro galleycat]
Watch out for the MPAA Police! Once a popular genre movie like Live Free or Die Hard is in release, countless movie pirates infiltrate theatres with their camcorders and cell phone cameras, ready to upload their data files online. The MPAA has tracked down five movie thieves with camcorders at Transformers showings in New York, California, Georgia, Illinois and Florida.
Inside the movie download community, which is wary and watchful of the MPAA, pirates like these are seen as rebel warriors. ""These are the unsung heroes that sacrifice so much for the enjoyment of so many," writes one unapologetic movie downloader. The studios see themselves as fighting the good and righteous fight against movie pirates to preserve the status quo for everyone who works in the movie business. But on some level they are turning their own customers into criminals, who enjoy their maverick status in the download underworld.
It's a tricky wicket. Lowering the price on legit high-quality downloads ASAP is one solution--which the studios won't do because they are still making so much cash on DVD sales commandeered by giant retailers like Wallmart, who call the shots. But that won't last forever.
Classic library titles are one place to start. I still don't understand why the studos don't sell those titles themselves online and let the long tail rule, as it does on Netflix.
Here's the Variety story.
On Thursday morning, I watched about 20 minutes of "Live Free or Die Hard" on iklipz.com, and liked what I saw. (iklipz took the movie down.) iklipz boasts a terrific streaming video player; the movie looked great on my Dell at work. (I suspect it wouldn't look so good on my clogged old Mac at home.) It made me think that the studios should release more footage to YouTube and other sites. It didn't make me want to sit in front of the computer for two hours. I was at the office! I had work to do! But it made me want to run to the movie theater.
Anybody who looked up "new release" could view the streaming video for free. Only a member could upload it, and I emailed the member (I'm a member too) and found out that she has done this before. She wrote back that if you don't reveal the title, usually nobody finds out. I have friends who belong to private members-only download clubs. Apparently you can get anything you want.
Here's the Variety story:
"Live Free or Die Hard" was living a free if illegal existence in cyberspace over the July Fourth holiday. A copy was unlawfully uploaded Wednesday and then removed Thursday from iklipz.com, a year-old, filmmaker-friendly website for independents. The feature was viewed 29 times.After a junior exec spoke up at the weekly iklipz Thursday staff meeting, company prexy Arthur Cohen, the former marketing head for Paramount Pictures, called producer Larry Gordon and 20th Century Fox co-chairman Jim Gianopulos to let them know he was removing the feature. "Forgetting copyright issues," he said, "it's not fair."
An iklipz member in Tucson, Ariz., who described herself as a 38-year-old female, uploaded the movie, which Fox released on June 27. She declined to disclose where she obtained the movie, the online version of which was high resolution, but gave the URLs for two popular sites where summer hits are easy to find. Many peer-to-peer sites that use BitTorrent file-sharing are private and members-only to avoid detection from the MPAA police.
Iklipz's streaming flash player, which was "very expensive and cannot be pirated," Cohen said, was designed by Faction Creative's Bill Snebold. Iklipz supports films on their server, which improves the quality of the streaming video. Iklipz sent the member who posted "Live Free or Die Hard" a warning outlining copyrighted materials guidelines.
Iklipz boasts some 10,000 members who are encouraged to "see, show and share" their shorts, features and clips. The studios supply the site with trailers.
Supported by advertising, iklipz is registering 700,000-800,000 page views per month but got 2.5 million in May. So far, more than 5,000 films have been uploaded.
New York Magazine takes a close look at Steve Jobs as he makes his next moves, including the Apple TV, iTunes, Video iPod, movie downloads and the much lusted-after iPhone:
The cliché of Jobs as rock star is, of course, hoary to the point of enfeeblement. From the start of his career—which is to say, for his entire adult life—he has radiated a mesmeric presence, his “reality-distortion field.” But as Jobs makes clear today, Apple’s reality is no longer in need of much distortion. On the back of the first two businesses he names, the Mac and the iPod-iTunes tandem, Apple racked up $21.6 billion in sales in the last twelve months, and $2.8 billion in profits. Its stock price has doubled in the past year; last month, AAPL was named to the S&P 100, making it a bona fide blue chip. With what Jobs dubs a “hobby,” Apple TV, the company has invaded the sanctum sanctorum of living-room entertainment. Then there’s that third, impending business, which revolves around a gorgeous sliver of palmtop gee-whizzery that you may have heard about: the iPhone.Ten years ago, when Jobs retook the reins at Apple, the suggestion that the company would be where it is today would have seemed a fantasy—or a joke. Apple was bleeding cash, bleeding talent, bleeding credibility. Its laptops were literally bursting into flames. Its war with Microsoft had devolved into a self-lacerating pathology. Today the Mac is, albeit slowly, gaining ground on Windows. And the iPod, which in less than six years has sold north of 100 million units, has Microsoft choking on its dust.
Mossberg notes this astonishing achievement and inquires of Jobs how many copies of iTunes software are in circulation. At least 300 million, Jobs answers, prompting Mossberg to follow up: “Does the scale of this surprise you?”
Nodding sagely, Jobs responds, “The scale of a lot of things we’re doing surprises me.”
On the one hand, I wonder when the studios will adopt a long tail strategy and put all their content on websites for audiences to find them. On the other, it drives me crazy when I can't just go to you Tube to find the clips I want to see, easily, effortlessly, and grab the code and put the clip on my blog if I want to. Otherwise you have to go hunting around on these cluttered web sites with lousy search engines and then the code isn't available (that's how you get the nice box) and even if it is it doesn't work. Comedy Central is one such site.
So CBS may be on the right track by abandoning the strategy of distributing their own videos on one site.
Comedy Shorts are the "killer app" of the new video world, writes Thomas K. Arnold in USA Today:
So it's no surprise that websites devoted solely to comedy videos are proliferating, from amateur sites to big-budget efforts backed by entertainment heavyweights.Among the latter: SuperDeluxe.com, a comedy broadband network launched in January by Turner Broadcasting, and FunnyOrDie.com, a partnership between Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's Gary Sanchez Productions and Sequoia Capital, venture capital firm behind YouTube and Google.
The business model is simple: Build it, make it funny enough, and the public will come. And once you get enough eyeballs, you can make money through advertising, just like regular TV networks.
The new stateside movie download service Jaman will make six movies unspooling at the Tribeca Film Festival available for free download for seven days, reports Adam Dawtry.
Will Ferrell and Adam McCay's short video experiment funnyordie.com has taken off, reports Wired.com. Their two-minute short The Landlord scored 7 million hits in 24 hours:
Given all his hit movies -- McKay co-wrote and directed Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy -- what drew McKay to the internet?"On the web you do ideas you can't use anywhere else," McKay says. "Like, a baby landlord would never work as a movie. We were excited by getting this chance to goof around with those kinds of ideas."
McKay can't help riffing when asked about the site's business model. "It's what we call TCBY -- the yogurt chain. We want to be that. Our business model is the career arc of the Eagles. We want to be exactly like that."
I'm getting the sense that indie digital distribution is starting, finally, to take off.
Cinematech ranks the best movie download services, the ones most likely to succeed in the digital distribution future:
1. iTunes Store
The big dog. Works for both Mac and PC users, and as of January 2007, had sold 50 million TV shows and 1.5 million feature films. New $299 Apple TV device makes it easy to wirelessly transfer iTunes content to a television and view it there. The negatives: no rentals (only download-to-own, at $9.99 and up), no way yet for indie producers to sell their content, no simple way to burn shows or movies from iTunes to a DVD. Also: only a few studios offer features on iTunes, including Disney, Paramount, and Lionsgate. Others have so far been reluctant to cut deals with Apple CEO (and Disney board member) Steve Jobs.
2. Amazon Unbox
Unlike iTunes, Amazon Unbox makes movies available for digital rental and purchase. Movies can be sent directly to an Internet-connnected TiVo device for viewing on a TV. While Unbox hasn’t yet built much momentum in the marketplace, Amazon has a built-in advantage over the other players on this list: hundreds of thousands of consumers already trust the company with their payment information, and have Amazon accounts already. Amazon can also make movie recommendations based on past purchases.
Indie producers can make their content available on Unbox using Amazon’s CustomFlix service, and keep 50 percent of the revenues. That makes Unbox the most “long tail”-friendly movie service. Among the studios offering features: 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, Universal, Paramount, Sony, MGM, and Warner Bros. Movies from Lionsgate, Sony, Warner Bros., and Fox. Works well with Windows-compatible portable devices like the Creative Zen Vision. PC only.
3. CinemaNowCinemaNow has been in the movie download business longer than most anybody else: since 1999. It helped pioneer technology to download a movie and then burn it to a DVD (more than 100 titles are now available, mostly older movies), and CinemaNow also hasn’t been prudish about offering “mature content,” working with porn providers like Vivid and Hustler. CinemaNow is the only service working with all six major Hollywood studios. Offers some movies for free, as ad-supported streams. Movies can get to TV with a Windows Media Center Edition PC, and to Windows-compatible portable players. PC only.
4. Vongo
Vongo is unique in offering an “all you can eat” movie service for a dirt-cheap $9.99 monthly fee. About 1000 movies are available at any given time, but some titles rotate in and out of inventory. Works with various Windows systems (Media Center Edition, Vista Ultimate, Xbox 360) to display content on a TV. Content can also be synced with Windows-friendly portable media players. Vongo also offers a live, streaming version of the Starz TV channel. Rental only, PC only.
5. Microsoft Xbox 360 Video Marketplace
Microsoft has sold more than 10 million of its Xbox 360 gaming consoles, as of December 2006. The video marketplace offers standard-def and high-def features from Warner Bros., Paramount, Lionsgate, and New Line. (As of April 2007, Xbox and CinemaNow are the only of these services offering movies in high-definition.) Rentals only; no download-to-own. High-def new release movies cost $6, and standard-def new releases cost $4. Since the gaming console is already connected to a TV, viewing on the big screen is a breeze.
On a Future of Film panel this week and at lunch today with some folks from ILM, we keep debating the same issues. Will people watch big movies on small devices? (If it's a sidekick or a new iPhone, the answer is an enthusiastic yes.) But even with a low-res TV show on a desktop computer, the iTunes download experience is not ideal. I've been miserably slogging through an old episode of Lost on my PowerMac. It freezes and skips and moseys along of its own free will. I hate it. But Nora's new MacBook works much better.
Dave Kehr responds to last weekend's double take on the new digital movie universe from Tony Scott and Manohla Dargis, who didn't have much luck with downloading. Am I the only one who feels like they're getting around to this a tad late? Better late than never.
I myself sounded like an old fogey at DigitalMediaWire's Future of Film panel Wednesday morning, defending the role of movie theaters as the best way we have, for the moment, of not only experiencing movies but establishing a brand identity for a "product" that will be then sold in many different forms down the line. I've been arguing for the collapsed window future for some time--yet I am not yet a believer in the day-and-date paradigm, because movies do need at least a few weeks to establish themselves in individual markets.
Soon, the right movie with the right elements (not Soderbergh's The Bubble) will break through in different simultaneous formats and prove that there's a way to catch hold and make some money, too. So far Amazon, Google Video, First Take and other experiments in VOD, DVD and theatrical have yet to score big with audiences, possibly because the movies involved are so resolutely small. Many filmmakers and indie distributors have tried to marshall the power of MySpace and YouTube, which can be effective marketing devices on a mass scale, but seem less so with small-niche movies.
The Pay-TV issue is finally coming to the fore now that Starz is suing Disney. When will the studios be willing to break free from the Pay TV deals that provide them with millions in hand but are preventing them from pursuing the promise of the long tail on the web by making their entire libraries available for download?
Variety.com deputy editor Anne Thompson writes a weekly Variety film column as well as this daily blog.
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