The Culture Beat

How would you like your new release—in a theater, on television, or via DVD? The buzz in Hollywood for months has been the ongoing funk of lower box office earnings and what this bodes for Hollywood studios. The changing landscape of theatrical filmmaking has some wondering how long the release patterns of feature films, traditionally released first in theaters and then, months later on home video, will continue.

With far more profit being made on DVD sales, Disney head Robert Iger remarked
this past summer that the “window” of time between a film’s theatrical run and its DVD release should could shrink dramatically. This brought a scathing reply
from the head of the National Association of Theater Owners that such a change would kill the theater business as the audience could easily opt to wait a few weeks for the cheaper video release.

And independent filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven) has plans
to make six films shot on high definition video with each film to be released simultaneously in theaters, on the high definition movie channel HDNet and on DVD, letting consumers make the choice of which “channel” they wish to view the film. The first film in the deal will be Bubble, to be released this January. Soderbergh says the new deal reflects a changing market and audience:

“This is my response to certain trends in the entertainment industry,” says Soderbergh, who believes that the good old days of watching 35mm movies in theaters, where they play for weeks at a time “are gone. I wish it weren’t so. Everything changes and evolves and we’ve got to get with it, embrace it and find a way to make it work. The movies are not the way they used to be when I grew up. It’s 30 years later!”

Soderbergh is even talking of selling DVDs in the theater lobby raising the scenario of buying the film you just saw in a theater on the way to your car. Will audiences go for it and will, if the practice takes hold, this create more choices for movie consumers? Or, what if the audience opts to buy the DVD outright in stores or through pay per view that allows the film to be purchased for download to one’s Personal Digital Recorder, such as those made by Tivo or Replay? Will this lead to be the ultimate triumph of television? The ascendancy that began in the 1950s when the audience stayed home to create the Baby Boom and watch the small gray flickering tube caused the demise of thousands of theaters. With the growing sales of HD-ready big screen televisions gradually lessening the difference between viewing in a dark theater and in your living room, will the disappearing window between theatrical and home screening shut and foreclose the experience of theatrical filmgoing forever? Stay tuned, gentle viewer.