Slashdot Mirror
Final Matrix Set for Synchronous Release
sdirector writes "'Warner Bros. has announced that in a whoa-worthy bit of synchronicity The Matrix Revolutions, the concluding chapter in the Wachowski brothers' hit sci-fi trilogy, will be released simultaneously in nearly 70 countries.'"
5th paragraph of the article says, "Such a release strategy has never before been attempted by Tinseltown. The closest a studio has come to doing such simultaneous, synchronized release was in May, when Fox opened X2 on the same day in 80 countries, but not at the same hour."
So, I guess another movie some day will top this in press release land by saying, "Yes the Matrix did something similar last year, but not with the same color carpet!"
"The Matrix 3 will be released simultaneously in 70 sectors of the matri.. I mean... the world. CRAP!"
First post?...
* plonk *
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Why wouldn't they be able to release it simultaneously in all 70 countries? They're all just the matrix anyway, it isn't like there's a real difference between them all
It will be interesting to see how many people call in sick on the release day, especially in places where it is being released during the day. Anyone do such a study for Star Wars?
someone decides to do this.
christ, the final Matrix? I'll bet all my Star Wars action figures that its gonna seriously suck...wait, except Boba Fett, no matter how sure I am, I never bet the Fett Man
"My shit always works sometimes!"
...except for Internet-land, where it'll be "released" several weeks early.
Since where I live movies are much cheaper than in the US, now I can not see it for $2.50 instead of not seeing it for $8.50. Woo hoo!
Does that mean that the DVD will not be region coded?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
doing this to help curb warez maybe?
HOPEFULLY it will be more synchronized than the lame-ass Hollywood fights. =\
So that they can capitalize on a big crappy ending.
I just hope they don't waste 15 mins of time showing us a stupid dancing wild orgy scene.
..is the MOVIE any good?
:-)
(You KNOW you have to see it, right?
Harald
The only reason I keep my Windows partition is so I can mount it like the bitch that it is.
What I would like to know, is will they be released simultaneously, as in the same time (7:00 here, and 7:00 in Tokyo) or will it be at, say, 7:00 pm here and 10am in Tokyo.
I got this sig off of KaZaA this morning
...how one group will rip and distribute this one first. If everyone gets it at the same time (presumably from the theater), there should be guaranteed diversity.
Then again, an insider always hands some group a dvd screener and you know the rest.
This sounds like an ideal time for some evil villain to release the next SoBig or Slammer into the wild - all those techies skipping work to go to the movies...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Cool! On November 5, people around the world will simultaneously get to watch Revolutions again on the big screen.
2003-10-03 07:28:56 Metacortex Launches Website (articles,movies) (rejected)
Metacortex has recently launched a website to promote their products and services, while announcing their involvment with some rather large projects. If the name of this company doesn't sound entirely familiar, maybe you will remember the name of one of their former employees, Thomas Anderson.
If anyone remembers the web-based game/puzzle for the movie A.I., this looks like it may be something similar for Matrix: Revolutions.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
I think that with the globalization of P2P networks, and the fact that volunteer subtitiles are quite simple to produce, more and more movies (and especially those with high 'geek-appeal') will need to be out simultaneously.
If I can see a divx a few month before a movie on divx I would have been able to see in a theatre, I'll only go to see only good movies which are worth the 8 euros I'll have to pay to see it on big screen, which might be less than "every movie".
We may have a big surprise then... well, either that or they think it'll help twart piracy issue...:)
They definitely aren't taking any chances on losing money with this one. I predict the strongest opening weekend ever and the biggest drop for the second weekend... gotta get people in the theaters before the word gets out you know...
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
...in order to stop bootleg copies production. Here in my country (Ecuador, Southamerica), Reloaded was released two weeks after the American Release. But you could find at streets bootleg copies of it as soon as May, 16!!
...97% of the world's sysadmins will be gone for a couple of hours, starting at the exact same time. Sounds like time for "Black Hat Fun Fest 2003"...
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
This might be a money grab for a big opening weekend without contaminating the foreign markets with news that it is not that great...
i dunno: i think it's actually pretty fair. scheduling the release time while working with time zone differences globally is actually pretty difficult to accomplish, i should think.
what i found most interesting in the article:
"revolutions will also screen at selected imax venues, the first time a major hollywood release has ever premiered concurrently on both 35mm and the large-screen format.
OK, you just know people are gonna be going from imax to stadium-seating theatres to compare film experiences. heck, i might do it myself.
ed
I for one welcome our new matrix overlords, but I can't imagine a beowulf cluster of them because I can't watch the movie you insensitive clod!
...in bed
I wonder if this was done to prevent word of "Internet" from spreading faster then the release of the movie to different times zone saying that it sucked. With the movie lauching at the same time everywhere you will kill that effect for the first day at least.
I'll still see it though. Hell, our company is having an outing when the moview releases here in Chicago (8 am I beleive).
"Attention Citizens, 2+2 now equals 3.947547175. Please recalibrate your equipment now" --The Computer
After I watched the matrix and found out they were making reloaded, I had something to look forward to in life. Even now, I have something to look forward to in form of "Revolutions". But, what next? There will be nothing to look forward to after that and our lives will be filled with void. Maybe I should not watch revolutions till for many years just so that there will be something worth doing left in life.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
Unfortunatly the second installment of the Matrix series was terribly disappointing. It felt drained of the humanity and cleverness that made the first one so great. Hopefully this problem will be fixed in the third one. Otherwise the Matrix series is going down the same God-awful road that Star Wars went down. *shudder*
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
"Whoa"
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
Ok, I'm sorry, but I really don't see how this is newsworthy. Is getting everyone to press the play button on the projector a great feat of technology or something?
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
But I bet it will be on the Internet first.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Forget III, like II it will be nothing like I. Who ever got their greasy hands on the Matrix production ruined it. If I want to see sweaty animal bumping and grinding I'll watch MTV. They ruined a get series, on purpose more then likely.
Now, when can we expect:
1. The boxed set ?
2. Each title in letterbox/wide-screen ?
3. The letterbox/wide-screen boxed set ?
4. Each title as a 'limited editition' with a bunch of extra crap ?
5. The limited-edition boxed set ?
6. Each title released individually as 'Director's Cut' ?
7. The director's cut of the boxed set ?
'Cause you know they're going to take a page from George Lucas and whore the titles like he did with Star Wars.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
So, when the DVD ships it will be region free since the studio released it world wide on the same day, right? Isn't that the only justification the DVDCCA uses for region codes?
Don't look at the scrolls! It will snow crash your brain!
Wow.... That's a really slow post time, considering Matrix news.... This has been on their site for like 4 days now?
/. system now ;)
I have lost all faith in the
Insert Sig Here
"It was a thought that came up a long time ago about almost a year ago, and it did not come from the Wachowskis, it actually came from inside the studio," says Veronica Kwan-Rubinek, president of international distribution at the studio.
People working for a major studio actually generated a creative thought.
Whoa.
Didn't I see this article already posted on slashdot?
Warner Bros. has announced that in a whoa-worthy bit of synchronicity The Matrix Revolutions, the concluding chapter in the Wachowski brothers' hit sci-fi trilogy, will be released simultaneously in nearly 70 countries
:-)
Hmmm.. a nice example of parallel computing on a macro scale, don't you think? Gridwars anyone? http://www.gridwars.com/
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
Normally Americans had to go to cinema, screen the movie and other countries could have it... Now finally it will leak a week before release through some 3rd world country and FINALLY americans will be able to see it before it's released and it will be the others who contribute :)
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I misread the post and thought it said that The Matrix Revolutions is going to be simultaneously released in the 70s. THAT WOULD be an accomplishment. I wonder what that would do to Star Wars and the LOTR trilogy in retrospect? ;P
Un-news
at 9:30 a.m. NYC time since they will most likely put a s**t load of freaking commercials before the movie starts?
;)
That would lead to some odd showtimes in certain time zones. I also believe all the profit would be eaten up by the atomic clocks needed to get the individual frames synced. Sounds like typical Hollywood hot air.
messaging let down, if it sucks as bad as the 2nd one did....If everyone is seeing it the same day they will get their peice of the pie even if it does suck really bad...good strategy...Here's to hoping IT ROCKS......
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Any idea which countries these actually are? Is Israel in the lucky 70 or do we have to wait 2-3 weeks as usual?
I never liked the "machines are using humans as energy cells" aspect of the plot. There are far better sources of energy the machines could have used, such as nuclear, geothermal, etc. I always thought wouldn't it have been cooler if the machines were imprisoning humans and using their brains in a sort of massive computing grid? That the machines needed our collective brainpower for some task, and the purpose of the Matrix is to keep all of those human brains humming along and doing their machine-appointed task in the backround.
The hype has you! Otherwise you might have slowed down and hit the enter key, or *gasp* the preview button!
C'mon...I want to see the movies digitally projected in the theatres. Just about every Regal Theatre (part of Regal Entertainment Group) is equipped with a digital projector for each screen (they show the ads that way before switching over to the film project for the feature) now. I guess they used their bankruptcy as a way to fund the acquisition of the projectors. Anyway, I want to start seeing films projected in that manner. I'm tired of the "cigarette burns" and everything else that happens to the prints in days from the original presentation. And I don't want to wait until 2005 before Episode III comes out to enjoy it. If Warner Bros. was smart (which "Catwoman" proves they are quite the opposite), they'd be showing Matrix III in digital for those theatres with the projectors.
Oh well. At least Monica Bellucci is in it.
By the way, is anyone else out there in Slashdot land pissed about Regal disavowing their "Regalators" starting in November?
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
i think its not P2P that is the main reason, but the quicker word of mouth that they are afraid of. thanks to IM and email the message that movie xy sucks gets out way faster ... as some other poster did point out allready, #3 has to suck quite hard ..
Cool special effects.
Bad script
Bad acting
Uninteresting directing
CRAP!
Don't let those pesky consumers ruin the fun...
What you reap is what you sow.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Many miles away...
Skynet will become self aware.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
"The Matrix Reloaded" can be jumbled to spell "Hexameter Dildo Art".
This was a public service announcement. If it had contained any real content, you would know by now.
follow the bloated rabbit...
- Lower price DVDs
- Simultaneous worldwide movie releases
- Crackdown on illegal recording in cinemas
- Reduced cinema-to-DVD time
- Tracking online movie file-swappers
- Advertising campaign
Notice some of these are good for consumers!
Instead of wasting your money going to see the
Warchowski ripoff, go out and buy yourself a copy
of the original Ghost In The Shell, and see
animated characters out-act real live people.
Ghost In The Shell makes The Matrix look pathetic
and adolescent.
And don't get me started about that epileptic
abomination, Animatrix.
judging from reloaded, when the reviews start to hit for revolutions - the wind will be completely out of the franchise's sails.
the international demand at release would have totally fizzled with a traditional release scheme.
looking at the numbers, the US gross for the first matrix was about 30% of the worldwide grosses (US:$171m, world:$450) and the US gross for reloaded was still about 30% of the worldwide(US:$281m, world:$738m).
Then consider that the first film made the bulk of its money fairly evenly over time, as word of mouth about it being good took time to get around.
In stark contrast, the second made $200m in the first 2 weeks. (with the 5 week total of $258m).
It's huge rate of dropoff is heavily indicative of the very negative reaction the bulk of the fans gave it.
(Weekly box office data not available for the original.)
source
My guess is they're just protecting themselves from a possible implosion in their biggest audience.
Whether or not the movie will be good is up for debate - but decisions like this come from suits who look only at the numbers.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
To me, this is indication that they are afraid of bad reviews. If the movie is released in the US first and people here don't like it, that may hurt profits overseas.
15 min after it hits MIRC
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
As a long term pirate. And I do mean long term I have not now, nor will I ever pirate a movie in the Matrix series.
Only people with absolutely no sense would pirate it. The movie is worth the money. I've paid to see both the original, and the sequel at the movies many times. I will also pay to see this one many times.
People that pirate something worth money, are just losers.
is it just me or when i stick my finger in my butt is smells like farts? how come when the W bros stick their fingers in their butts it smells like 800 million dollars?
and of course here's the obligatory bit torrent... http://www.fileru.... oh.. nevermind.
By someone I mean a crusty old movie exec and by grave I mean his porshe.
Actually, I'm happy that they changing their business practices to better reflect the times/technology. I also don't think that it will really hurt them for second week earnings. A lot of people who would be waiting months to see it (who would be tempted to download it) will now have the chance to see it sooner.
Or I could totally have my head up my ass.
This
Supposing the release time at US is at 20:00 Eastern time, the Japanese will have to wake up at 4 am to get to the line, lots of Californians will sleep during the movie, some Germans will have to skip work to catch it. Pretty stupid marketing crap.
it's mostly bogus, with a hiNT of self-serving greed/fear based factoid here&there.
.asps.
for exampull: looking at the meteroric rise of the phonIE payper scam on wall street of deceit today, would synchronize US into thinking we are all gooing to be billyonerrors again, enjoying packing more&more phonIE FUDge in yOUR
pay attention. the rest of the wwworld isn't buying into the seemingly endless ?pr? ?firm? scriptdead scammage.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. stuff that matters, consists of much more than just won thing. see you there. never mind robbIE, we know you're soul DOWt.
Yeah, I got German and California upside-down (or better, left-side right)...
... as it would seem the Indies aren't the only ones put out by the screener ban.
Immediately after Lucas said he could legally make a 3 DVD Indiana Jones box set, he also announced plans for Indiana Four.
I whole-heartedly expect to see a Peter Jackson "The Hobbit" hit theaters after they box the ultimate LotR trilogy DVD set.
I also whole-heartedly expect to see a "Matrix 4" after they box the ultimate trilogy DVD set.
[
8. Profit?
Most definitely.
I'm on the west coast (CA), and was expecting to be able to see it at 12:01 on 2003-11-05, but according to the release I'll have to wait 6 more hours, _and_ get my ass up in the morning. I know I'd much rather stay up until 3:00, juiced up after seeing a good movie, rather than get up at 6:00 and have to drag my ass into work after instead of riding my motorcycle the wrong way down the freeway!
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I hear a lot of people called in sick AFTER seeing Episodes I and II because they felt sick!
"2 doesn't make an orgy"
/. reader.
It does to your typical
Trinity having sex...
or Trinity using nmap?
Oh man. I have to go to the bathroom now. (For an unrelated reason)
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
I felt very much the same way until I realized that the metaphor they were using was just that; a metaphor.
What if, rather than electrical energy, the occupying force needed something which could only be harvested from humans? Soul energy. I think the Wachowski brothers were either extremely clued in, or they were being cleverly manipulated to produce the message they did!
-FL
They'd be fools not to.
1) Guarantees the largest box office take.
2) Minimizes the effect piracy has on opening weekend numbers.
3) Avoid the worst effects of bad word-of-mouth by showing it to folks before they are warned away from it.
Studios never used to bother with this, as coordinating such a large release was an impressive logistical problem to tackle. Due to those three factors, however, they really have no choice anymore. The studios like to play it like they are doing this to please the fans, but it's really just to buff their bottom line.
They long for the days when there was no "buzz" on a movie except for the one they created with their marketing campaigns. Websites like AICN and Rotten Tomatoes have destroyed their business model of using an ad campaign to boost the box office for a bad film. News travels at the speed of suck from those websites and viewers are now warned away from crappy films months before the film is even released. Conversely, good movies get tons of free exposure and do much better in the box office, making it harder for studios to bury a picture. Be glad for those kinds of websites and pay them a visit, even if you don't read the reviews. They make it harder for hollywood to push crap product and get away with it.
Word of mouth is much faster these days as well. Thank your pagers, mailing lists, and cell phones for that. When you see a good movie, you tell your friends. Same goes for warning them about a bad one.
Piracy makes it dangerous to stagger a film release. Release it in the USA and tomorrow it's on the streets in Yugoslavia and Hong Kong, and floating around Kazaa or Usenet for anyone with a phat | to download. It's best to get the biggest bang out of opening weekend because piracy will damage the ticket sales more and more over time. Movies don't really have legs these days... Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding are the only ones I remember recently that had any real long term box office take. These days it's just a flash in the pan on opening weekend.
The studios like to moan about how all this technology is wrecking their business. Frankly, it's all bullshit. All the technology and piracy does is let us avoid wasting our money on crappy pictures. If it's a good movie, you'll see it in the theater or buy the DVD (still reasonably priced, as opposed to music) and they'll get their money. They are just pissed off because they can't sell us a crappy product anymore.
Hey, hollywood. Improve your product. Stop wasting time and money fighting a war that you'll never win. Take some of those annoying commercials out of the theater and perhaps I'll go to the movies more often. I don't like paying to watch a bunch of ads for products I don't give a damn about in the first place. The ads aren't even superbowl quality! That's pretty insulting.
Remember, every time you pirate a movie, they fire a producer (and baby Jesus kills a kitten). Pirate at least one a week so they fire all the crappy ones and they either go out of business or make some good films for a change. Keep the pressure on, and remind them who they really work for. You.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
They will already have 70 screenings of gross.
Are you sure Gigli has no real competition?
Losers like that don't have jobs.
I'd have to watch the thing again to be certain, but my first and last impression was that, unlike the first film, the second was a garbled mess with no message to speak of.
-FL
Cause the movie is gonna suck and the word needs to get out. Consider this: why do a simultaneous release unless you don't want people talking to each other about how shitty it is, don't go see it, etc. They want a huge opening day because as they experienced in the most recent matrix, thats the only chance the movie will get. They made very little money other than the first weekend with the most recent matrix. People saw it, realized it sucked, and didn't go see it again. With the first matrix a few people saw it, realized it was good, came back to see it the next weekend, bringing friends who hadn't seen it before. Then they did the same, etc. etc.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I haven't even seen 2 yet.
The above is not worth reading.
I, for one, welcome our new cinematic Overlord.
How can simultaneous release be seen as a positive attribute for a film? Any rational entity could rightly assume that the promoters are doing this because they must KNOW that there will be negative reaction to the movie. They have to try to get everyone to see it before word gets out that it really and truly sucks. Too bad.... but what can you expect from sequels. Maybe every sequel should have to carry a truth-in-advertising disclaimer that they are just "Milking it".
....downloading the matrix off the internet considered fractal reflection? or maybe this would then make the movie a worm?
I assume then, that they're doing digital distribution, to get around the prohibitively high cost of producing a film print for all those theaters?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Because the Matrix is REAL! And they want to wake us all up at the same time. Stand up and fight the
machines! Our hour has come at last! Long live Neo, long live Morpheous!
If they want the movie to last long term at the box office, then they should not hit the media, and spam the airwaves with hype and the sort, like they did with reloaded.
... that was the original idea of the Brothers W.
Reference?
GAH! - You'll Shoot your eye out!
Who knows ? You might die on the way to the theater !
Just like we knew someone would whore for karma by bagging on George Lucas in a story that has nothing to do with him.
Sometimes I wish they'd turn out no DVDs at all just to shut whiny bitches like you up for a few minutes. Inconvenienced by those legions of thugs holding a gun to your head MAKING you buy multiple editions of the DVD? Well, how about never seeing the movie in any form ever again? There, now you can find something else to fucking cry over, like your hamburger meat being too fatty, or no milk for your goddamn Cocoa Puffs.
Get over it, you fucking infant.
Hardly. As easy as Matrix::setYear(1970);
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the infamous Lone Gunmen episode of the X-files aired this week in Sweden (18 months after the US network premiere), but in this case I hold the swedish network responsible (wankers).
That's the Unix Time of the release hour. Maybe they want us geeks to start whipping up cosmological-numerological mumbo jumbo on this?
"Hmm, I better install this new Microsoft e-mail update."
I predict a much worse disaster than the 2000 bug.
..........FULL STOP.
It's fun to see the little things you can do to get a press release, isn't it?
Hey idiot, I can "get a press release" for $300 on the national circuit through AFP or $600 through Reuters; and I can release ANYTHING so long as I pay the money.
You don't have to do anything special, other than front the cash, to "get a press release".
70 countries, only 5 of which matter.
Hey WB, you'll get your revenue from the US, UK, Japan, Germany, and Canada. Who the fuck cares about the others ?
I guess there's some value to be had from a publicity stunt, but you'll be lucky to gross 1% of your total outside of those 5 markets.
Simultaneous worldwide movie releases
Funny, I was in Europe last week, and I noticed the movie advertising.. there were lots for current releases, but about 20% were for movies that were old. (Bruce Almighty, American Wedding, etc..)
Interestingly enough, pretty much every one of these movies are made by our old buddies Vivendi Universal.. (You know, the guys with the heavy history of trying to stifle new technology.)
I think it's kind of fitting that Universal is dying a slow, slow death. They are incapable of adapting, and it's slowly catching up with them.
The machines are said to use a form of fusion as well. Of course one ouwld say well they could just ust the fusion and stop there. However, what may be going on is that the machines lack the ability, the free will, to get rid of humans. They hate them and enslave them, but their very nature won't allow them to get rid of them.
Basically a sort of machine mental block. They don't lack the physical ability to eradicate humans, they don't really need them, but their nature makes it something they can't do. So they invent something for humans to do for them, as a reason for keeping them around and enslaved.
Who knows? We'll find out in the third one. It may end up just being a plot weakness. Certianly not hte first sci-fi movie to have one.
I live in the Dominican Republic, where often movies come out on DVD and in the theaters simultaneously. Kazaa is the only way to see a movie here without waiting sometimes for nearly a year, as was the case with LOTR and Episode 1, even then we had to sit through poorly dubbed audio in spanish by second rate actors.
soap poisoning
"More organs means more human." - Zim
aha. You were so close, but then you went and confused a protocol (IRC) with a windows client for that protocol (mIRC). So close, and yet so far.
Why not fork?
Gosh, I was kind of hoping they'd release Matrix Reloaded on DVD before Revolutions came out. I didn't get to catch it in the theater so now I won't be able to see Revolutions in the theater or I'll be completely confused. :-(
This reminds me of a very old short story... I can't remember the title or author, but it's about these intelligent robots that arrive at a planet and put the main character (an android salesman) out of business by giving away much superior ones. Eventually everyone has one of these robots and they become increasingly "protective" of people, eventually preventing them from doing anything at all. Ah, I remembered the title: With Folded Hands - "The title refers to the only thing left for humanity to do: sit with folded hands as the robots take care of all their troubles." Creating a virtual world, where humans could be happy but not be in any physical danger, would be a logical extension of this.
Perhaps it's a clue that MetaCortex is the heart of the Matrix? Or the beginnings of another one in the far future?
"Sufferin' succotash."
They were going to release a "special" version which was really the original with some tack-on Matrix Revisited footage.
The Wachowskis axed it because they don't want to milk it.
You don't "know" they're going to whore the Matrix. All actions suggest otherwise.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I'm sure the P2P networks will have something to do about that...
mIRC sucks. You don't know what you're talking about. Go back to your x-box.
Who cares, the only people trapped in the matrix are those dumb enough to go back for a second bad sequel. Fooled me once.....
Larry is getting a sex-change, remember? That's why the movie studio was changing the credits to the Wachowskis from the Wachowski Brothers.
Check this out.
Not to second-guess Hollywood's must cunning minds, but why is this important? You mean...they're just NOW able to do this? I'm sure they could have pulled it off in the past if they really cared that much.
You mean they finally got their distribution channels organized? They realized that people in the other 69+ countries were mad that they had to wait 6 months after the US release? That those people would just download the divx rather than wait, but now might buy a ticket? That we're supposed to feel the awe and wonderment of watching the same thing at the same time as n Million People Worldwide, that Fox or CBS would like us to feel during Major Television Event?
According to the A that I just FR (RTFA, get it?), this is, indeed, purely a money-making venture. They care not for the fans in other countries, just that they pony up the dough to see it rather than pirate it. And hype. Nothing improves a film like hype, Eh Mr. Lucas? (Full dicsulsure: I liked both the prequils, but hype did diminish them.)
The answer to these questions and more on a very special episode of "Why Should Anybody But The Movie Studios, Its Subsidiaries, and Shareholders Care?"!
Does this somehow improve the movie-going experiance? Make the tickets less expensive? Have any effect on anything significant anywhere?
Don't get me wrong, it's probably going to be an awsome flick, and I'm definately going to catch it (at least once...have to hit up the IMAX). However, other than being nifty in the "Hey, there's a sale on Super Soakers...those things are awsome" sense, there is no story here.
There is, however, fodder for an overly drawn out, cynical, holier-than-Hollywood rant. And in the end, isn't that the greatest gift of all? The answer, of course, is 'no'.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Please do more research, or just shutup while grownups are talking. ....Insightful....jeezus! I think the inmates are running the asylum now....
If the film blows goats, you don't get the rapid review via internet convincing people in countries that are a day behind not to go. This way they conveniently lock in their profits regardless of quality.
This is ageneral trend in "big" films anyway. Increasingly the studios look for the HUGE opening weekend. That way, even if the film sucks they still have most of their cash back before word of mouth can get around...
Oddly films with staying power tend to be, long term, better money makers. STudios don't think long term however.
The same is, of course, true of the record industry. No one is interested in the long term earners anymore - the fast buck is everything. Don't believe me that albums with ongoing appeal aren't worth more?
These days if an album manages to sell 10 million copies before it gets forgotten it's done very well. Back in 1973 Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon. It didn't seel stunningly well, but hovered around in the top 100 album charts. Eventually it left the top 100 album charts in 1986, before bounding back in several weeks later. It has sold 30 million copies and is STILL selling very well.
Similar things could be said about Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, etc. I just don't have numbers on hand.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
As discussed in an earlier
Movie Industry Blames Texting for Bad Box Office
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Pretty Bad Privacy (PBP) Public Key
6
While all the geeks of the world are watching the movie (with their cell phones and pagers politely turned off, of course), Warner and the Wachowski brothers will launch a multifaceted attack on the Internet and all things connected to it!
Don't fall for it! Don't let them root the net and build the real Matrix!
On a slightly different note:
I am curious as to how exactly the movie studio earns revenue on the movie while it is still in theaters. You know how the movie is a success when it earns xx million dollars on the opening weekend and how it is a flop, but how exactly does the studio make the money? Does the movie theater pay a percentage of the ticket price to the studio or does it pay a certain fee for playing a movie for a given amount of time and than pays more if it wants to renew? If it was as simple as paying x amount of dollars to play a movie for an indefinate amount of time, I just don't see the studio making more money of a successful movie vs. a flop before the DVDs and Tapes come out. Anyone?
I'm still going to wait for the second weekend because the one thing that spoils a movie more than anything else is other people in the theater.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Oog... it's been a while. I believe it was in an interview with the brothers that was linked to from the /. page a long time ago (like, pre-Matrix Reloaded), but beyond that I couldn't say.
But, yeah, take it with a grain of salt.
DNA just wants to be free...
the whole thing is about online piracy... it used to be the case that movies took as long as half a year or almost a year for them to premiere in europe after they've been on and gone in the US.
understand it, I just felt that the movie began to take itself seriously as a vehicle for philosophy rather than the hodgepodge of half baked ideas from 47 cultures crammed into one frozen custard shell. It hand some decent entertainment value but seemed to me to be lessened by its' very core of seriousness. If they were coing to try and treat the issue in a serious manner then I have major issues with hundreds of logic flaws in the the matrix and world structures. If it was just for fun then I still stand by my statement that it was much less enjoyable than the first Matrix...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
you just picking up this meme, eh? Nice haxor handle...sigh. I weep for your generation. Sorry to sound so bitter even if you were waiting weeks for a good time to use that already-worn-out line.
The morons I'm subjected to during ANY public viewing are the reason I wait until the hype dies a bit.
I had a wet dream that the Architect's man-given name was Skynet.
if it starts at 6am on Wed Nov 5 where I am, and I have to work at 9:30am the same day, and it's a 30 minutes commute to work from the theatre... I should make it to work right? (albiet on very little sleep... the lines will start forming very early I suspect... or maybe not... I'll show up at the theatre at say 4:30am... should get a decent seat...)
They didn't say anywhere in the article how the distribution to these countries was going to happen. If it's what I think, then there will be places where the movie will be in someone's hands but not on screens yet. This seems like an invitation to piracy, seeing as how so many leaks come from inside the movie food chain.
If it's some kind of digital transmission, that has even more potential for piracy.
I have this feeling that I'm missing something here please correct me if I'm wrong.
Ravi
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
does that mean in soviet union.... the matrix will be be shown at the same time? :D
my blog
Making sure that people in other countries will actually see it. I'm sure that, after Reloaded, word spread quickly out of the US about what a disappointment it was. Ha HA! We'll catch everyone off guard simultaneously!
--n
So they plan on giving everyone a really fat pipe and doing a multicast download as soon as the file gets slipped onto the net?
:).
Ohhh how generus of them!
Hope the know that most people like it in DivX/XVid/Ogg fomats
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
The site says that it opens at 2pm on the 5th in London... Eastern Australian states will either be 10 or 11 hours ahead of London (some have daylight savings, some don't) so if it is really syncronised then it will open in Oz at midnight or 1am on the 6th of November. The further east you go (NZ, for example) this will be more evident.
...world wide synchronised hype then disappointment, if the last one is anything to go by, followed by huge bad karma on the net as everyone writes their reviews.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
the massive online matrix will continue the plot where it leaves off from the movie.
then everyone can join in the matrix and do their stuff....
we shall see how it goes...
http://thematrixonline.warnerbros.com/
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I'm reserving judgement.
I didn't find the second one to be officially horrible, but then I didn't find the first to be brilliant, either.
I'm not sure that I agree with the industry's angle (as mentioned here) that too much communication between potential ticket-buyers is causing the problem.
This just seems like a run-of-the-mill marketing stunt to me. What the fuck would any viewer care if the movie is being released in one, five or eighty countries?
This sounds more like marketing scum sitting around saying things like "Hey! Let's try to leverage that one-world-unification thing that worked so well back when we were writing ID4!"
Of course, these are the same braindead 'tards that figured there was nothing better than throwing a three-for-one trailer in front of Episode I for Titan A.E., Fight Club, and Anna and the King. At the time, I said AatK was forgettable because nobody there would ever bother watching it (I still don't know for certain: I never saw it. Fucking period piece remake that it was.) Titan A.E. would be the most geek-friendly and get the most draw from that crowd (I understand that it didn 't. Didn't bother with that one either.) and Fight Club just looked awful from that trailer. Another braindead marketing move showing it off as yet another Brad Pitt vehicle (with all of the banality of something as artistic and intellectual as say, "The Fast and the Furious"). The only one of the three that I saw, and I've become a fan of Chuck Palahniuk's books since.
The movie industry has as much to blame for supporting films that nobody would care about, much less knowing how to spread the word about the (potentially) worthwhile ones. They've got no incentive to change, because thus far, they've been able to make enough money off the crapshow of the week.
Capitalism is supposed to be about supply and demand. It doesn't work if we consistently fall for the artificial stimulation of demand that is marketing.
-transiit
Which is, in turn, 1 hour after it hits internaltorrent, 45 minutes after it hits the FTP dumpsites.
Just thought I'd point that out. Oh, and for all you TRUE videophiles, you should be buying your DVDs here for the 576 lines compared to 480 of NTSC. And they're cheaper....
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
1) they don't want #2 entered in for the oscars, but WB did. They are only entering #3.
2) givin the little descarte and that line of thought I know about; I'd say they are going to upset people or go over everyones' head like they did with #2.
3) Lets see how secret they will be with releases. Will they let countries preview and ban it like egypt did? If they have too many advance screenings, and send out those preview DVDS before the movie gets out.... but if they don't follow the typical pattern, something is afoot.
4) the consistant outcome will not be a popular one is what I've been told my my experts. I don't let them spoil the plot and tell me about it. (since they got the whole thing so well figured out for #2)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
No kidding?
Now, I admit that I found Plato virtually unreadable, (I would have been among those eager to hang Socrates for being an irritating asshole), and thus never bothered to dig terribly deeply into the Big Greek's work.
However, I would have seen the cave allegory, (if anything) as a parallel for the entire Matrix concept; (to paraphrase, "If all one has ever experienced are shadows cast against a cave wall, then being exposed to the outdoors would be mind-blowing.") But I cannot, however, see how the 'Orgy in the Cave' scene had anything to do the Cave Allegory. Unless one is willing to do some fairly stretchy mental gymnastics.
Care to explain?
-FL
True. But I don't see how the scene helped to counter this effect, except in that it was psychologically, (for the audience), linked to the approval and encouragement of a respected figure, (Morpheus).
That on it's own made it powerful. But I'm still not certain I trust the film's creators. There were weak scenes, unclear and conflicting messages this time around. The first film, while it had some rogue messages in it, had a strong signal to noise ratio. This second confused me in many ways. Which is why I question the 'orgy' scene.
It seemed deliberately over-stated. The scene didn't attempt to include the audience, rather it appeared deliberately horrific. Somebody has already likened it to the opening vampire-dance-club scene from Blade. I'm not certain what the intent was behind it; to force people to look objective reality in the face? That on its own is a worthy goal, but I have trouble imagining that it was on purpose.
I'll certainly be watching that film again when it comes out on DVD to see if I can't figure out what the hell was going on.
Zion? With their doors all painted red? Now that's rich, these days, with Zionism showing its true colors. Makes me wonder. . . Just how clear are the Waters of Truth from which the Wachowski brothers have been drinking?
-FL
I think that this is the first time I've heard someone complain about not being able to see Episode One soon enough.
well to each his own I guess
So stay up all night and watch the previous two on DVD beforehand. Then caffeinate like there's no tomorrow ;)