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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Timeframes on DVD releases
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 06-16-2005 07:22 PM
"Be Cool" sucked ass. So its no surprise why its hitting home video so early. The studio has to try to squeeze whatever it can out of that venture to avoid as many interest payments as possible on the financing of that turd.
Still, there is a very direct correlation between the much shortened window of theatrical to DVD release and the downturn in attendance at the theatrical box office. Sure, part of the problem is the shit quality of many films (some actually being videos) these days. It is a fact a lot of people are content to wait a mere season to watch a movie on DVD and save lots of money in the process.
Movie studios would get larger levels of attendance at the box office if they would bother to let movies play out their useful lifespan at the theaters properly. They need to stop making 7500 prints for a major release and they need to wait at least 8 months to a full year before the movie appears on DVD.
One of the things that got this bullshit of shortened windows started is all the marketing of "summer movies" being released on DVD. A few years ago, a major summer release didn't appear on DVD until spring of the following year. Now everyone can count on a June theatrical release having a November or December DVD release -if it doesn't hit store shelves sooner than that. Gotta to be there in time for the Holiday Shopping Season, which seems to start earlier and earlier every year. Halloween has been kicking it off lately (instead of Thanksgiving). In a couple more years you'll start seeing Christmas decorations the day after Labor Day.
When the big pictures adopted short release windows, that put a ton of pressure on "lesser pictures" to go to even shorter windows. Recouping all that borrowed investment money (most movies are made with borrowed money) is priority one. Make it all back as fast as possible to lessen those interest payments to the lowest extreme possible. Some executives need to do this just to keep their jobs.
Amerian business culture is currently all about the stock holder and everything else can get fucked. Product quality, employee morale, 5 year plans....all bullshit. They don't mean anything. Just do everything humanly possible to make the books look improved for the next quarterly report. It doesn't matter if you sell your best friend's wife into slavery to do it.
This short sighted business model will be the thing that eventually ruins the dominance American companies have on the worldwide film industry, and business worldwide in general.
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Robert Harrison
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 239
From: Harwood Heights, Illinois, USA
Registered: Jun 2005
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posted 06-18-2005 04:54 PM
Does anyone remember 20th-Fox putting out "9 To 5" on video three months after its Christmas release in theatres? And how about "The Pirates of Penzance," which was DAY AND DATE. Hardly any theatres played that one in protest. In the 1980s, the place I work at was a single screen, 1400 seat neighborhood house. We could routinely play movies that were six months old for $1.50 per person and regularly attract 500 people on Fridays and 1000 people on Saturdays. Now, we are what is called mid-run in the Chicago market. We opened "The Longest Yard" last night after only three weeks of its nationalopening and drew 60 people! We are starting to get first-run films, though. Through some miracle, we picked up "Revenge of the Sith," but it's playing at so many other theatres, that, even with our reduced admission of $6, we could only draw 714 people for the first Saturday total. We also got "Cinderella Man," but audiences weren't as big on that as they were "A Beautiful Mind." Next week, we'll see what happens with "Bewitched." I love my DVDs, but I could wait a while longer to buy them. There's always catalog titles, too. But, to quote an old King Crimson song, "I talk to the wind, but the wind does not hear."
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Dustin Mitchell
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1865
From: Mondovi, WI, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 06-19-2005 04:44 PM
Yes, I remember the days when if my family wanted to watch a movie at home we had to rent the VCR along with the tape. Now between myself and my two roomates we have 3 DVD players, 2 VCR's, 3 DVD capable gaming consoles, and two DVD ROM drives.
In 1989 'Batman' made $251 million. Its production budget was $35 million. So far 'Batman Begins' has made $71 million. Its budget was $150 million. If attendance at my theatre was any indication I'd be surprised if 'Batman Begins' will break even, especially considering the raw box office numbers don't take into account the share the theatres do get.
People are always talking doom and gloom about the theatre idnustry, but there is more truth to the 'sky is falling' attitude than some of us like to admit. Sure, 2003's attendance was the highest since 1959, but in 1959 there were 177,000,000 Americans, in 2003 there were 258,000,000.
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Lyle Romer
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1400
From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-21-2005 09:45 PM
quote:
The CBS Evening News ran this story last night. An interesting quoted stat:
quote:
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Batman was powerful enough to rule the box office, but the superhero was unable to pull Hollywood out of its worst slump in 20 years.
"Batman Begins" debuted as the top movie with $46.9 million, while overall movie revenues skidded for the 17th straight weekend, tying a slide in 1985 that had been the longest box-office decline since analysts began keeping detailed records on movie grosses.
The media keeps making a huge deal about this box office slide. If I'm not mistaken, it's year on year for the arbitrarily chosen top 12 films. Since they use the top 12, a few bombs early in the year will trickle effect weeks and weeks of data until enough movies don't bomb to fill the pipeline with a top 12 that is decent.
I'm willing to bet that when the DVD's start coming out for this slump, those DVD's will not sell or rent as well as the DVD's that resulted from the same release period last year. The news won't report about it because the immenent demise of the theatre industry is a much better story.
I'm not so sure that increasing the DVD release window will necessarily increase theatrical gross. The problem is with the 10 zillion prints that are released so that everybody that has any desire to see the movie will do it within a month. If you want to see the grosses go up real fast, make the terms so that the studios benefit from the movies having legs. If the studio take increases instead of decreases as time goes on, you will see a lot more marketing like the famous Lion King, "If you've only seen it once, you haven't seen it all."
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