Studios and Theaters Battle Over On-Demand Movies - Michael Cieply

The corrosive impact of the web continues to reconfigure the movie industry, with advocates for old school movie houses battling with others who see the future as increasingly digital delivery to the home or mobile devices:

Studios and Theaters Battle Over On-Demand Movies - Michael Cieply

Last week, four studios — Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and Warner Brothers — took the first step in their arrangement with DirecTV to release films two months after their theatrical release.

The first premium on-demand offering came on Thursday, as DirecTV offered Sony’s “Just Go With It,” with Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler, for $30. Two dozen filmmakers, including James Cameron and Peter Jackson, fired back with an open letter criticizing the experiment as a threat to theaters.

The fight separated allies who had recently joined to spend billions of dollars to upgrade theaters for digital and 3-D projection, and had used their combined political might to thwart proposed trading in a financial exchange based on box office revenue.

The rift underscores how little Mr. [Christophere] Dodd [chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America] or anyone else can do to buffer the jolts in a film business where the greatest challenges are not the labor disputes or public policy battles that were wrangled by past Hollywood statesmen like the MCA chairman Lew R. Wasserman or the long-serving M.P.A.A. chief Jack Valenti.

Rather, the greatest challenges are philosophical and include business choices largely outside the reach of a trade association, which is limited by antitrust law from interfering in decisions that are really about business rather than public policy — hence Mr. Dodd’s unaccustomed restraint. In fact, the difficulties facing the industry are likely to become tougher as film companies feel their way toward a digital future that is only beginning to unfold.

The stark reality is that movie houses — in general — are doomed, just like Tower Records, Blockbuster and Borders were doomed. Time to short the national movie chains, folks.

It comes down to user experience: the experience of watching movies where you are is simply better in many ways than where the concession stand is.

James Cameron and others want to make 3D movies — I hate them because they are blurry and make my head hurt — and other spectacle. However, nothing will beat the opportunity to select from 10,000 movies — including recent one — and watch them in the bathtub, on the train, or in the living room.