Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Plans To Release 12 Movies a Year In Theaters and On Prime
An anonymous reader writes "Amazon has announced that it will begin to produce and acquire original movies for theatrical release and early window distribution on Amazon Prime Instant Video. From the article: "This is a big move from Amazon, as it seeks to narrow the theatrical release window to between four and eight weeks. It can often take up to a year for films to land on subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video, however they do typically land on DVD/Blu-ray within around four months. Production for the aptly titled 'Amazon Original Movies' program will kick off in 2015, and plans are afoot to create around a dozen original titles for release in cinemas each year."
Thanks for the Amazon ad!
You're getting paid? I hope.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Blah blah blah on the internet!
Our grandchildren will envy us for the heady times we live in.
They have run out of ideas and have officially gone insane. The best way to lose tons of money is to get into the entertainment industry. Remember how it worked out for the WB and UPN, and they were already experienced players in the industry.
Theater owners want exclusivity in releases. They don't want to show a movie that can be seen elsewhere in the same local market.
This is how the businesses work.
for "buy to own" download and if it sells for $2 a year later just in case I delete it or lose a hd. at $2-5 "to own" I'd probably buy 100's of movies per year, yah eventually I'd have them all but if they're so cheap I wouldn't care if I lost them.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
...considering the kind of crap they sell on Amazon, it's more like they will release 12 flops a year.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
Quantity over quality, basically pooping out flicks on the reg. It's batshit insane but strangely I think something good night come of it. Some of their shows have been decent and I really liked their run of pilots a year or so back. Meh it's not my money, let's just wait this out
I think Amazon's doing this to blunt attempts by content providers, whether HBO, ESPN, etc. (or even the production companies themselves) to bypass middlemen like cable companies, Netflix, Amazon, etc. by bringing their own paid streaming content to market.
As an Amazon Prime member, I have this to say: COOL!!
Instead of "Amazon Original Movies" they should have called it "Amazon Original Library". Then they could boast about how many AOL subscribers they had.
and Netflix sucks. The stores had literally thousands of movies to choose from, but Netflix? A few dozen mediocre titles... I want my DVD backlog opportunity back, not more productions, from yet another source!!!
Oh come on, Netflix has several hundred mediocre titles available for streaming, give some credit :)
Also just FYI, Netflix does have a service where they mail you DVDs with a much larger library than streaming, you might not have heard of it it's only been around since 1997
Transparent won a couple of Golden Globes, but "Bosch" hasn't started streaming yet and Chris Carter's "The After" mysteriously got cancelled almost a year after it was a winner in the same pilot voting "election" as Bosch.
I think someone trying to reinvent the "system" of creating filmed content is laudable and worthwhile, I'm just curious if Amazon really has put more thought into this than "vertical integration" and assuming that whatever insight they have into package delivery logistics and cloud computing is somehow universally applicable to something like film/tv production. They wouldn't be the first "geniuses" to take hubris to a new level only to discover that doing A well means nothing when it comes to doing B well. We see plenty of that when A and B aren't all that different.
I think faster (and more complete) turnaround of announced content would definitely help, I also wonder if it would make sense to rethink some of the streaming assumptions -- like, why straightjacket yourself into the one hour episode format? Why not two hour episodes, but fewer of them? Does the entire series have to available all at once, or could faster release cycles from pilots to episodes be accomplished by releasing a group of episodes every 60-90 days to allow for simultaneous shooting and releases?
Should they dilute their resources producing a bunch of one-hour pilots, or should they be a little more discriminating and look at a pilot instead as a more complete story arc and make 3 episodes? That way even failures that didn't become series could at least be watchable, self-contained miniseries adding value to the catalog instead of just becoming trivial ephemera? Maybe the desire to make more typical "movies" is part of this.
Movie financing is a weird game. It is easy to get hosed for a lot of money if you don't hedge your bets. Also you are dealing with a lot of different unions. I know it seems easy, find a good project, fund it. But tripleAAA titles are hard to come by, then you have to secure a director that is free, sign actors with a free schedule. That's the easy parts. Plus the exhibitors have close relations with the distributors who might not want AMC releasing other products. They can and will hold back the number of screens you can show say X-men on if you don't play ball. Costing the exhibitors a lot of their profits. Everyone worth getting has part of the profits in their contracts. Don't forget cost overruns, city funds, agent lawyers. And that is still the easy parts. The movie has to be advertised, and compete with over movies in theaters. Also see Hollywood Accounting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... https://www.techdirt.com/artic... http://www.theatlantic.com/bus... I predict this will end very badly
Books overtook sermons and story reading/gatherings...
Radio overtook book...
Movies overtook radio..
TV overtook movies...
Stupid internet videos (Youtube, Vine, Snapchat) overtook TV
If Amazon is to be successful, what's the next thing, the thing that takes over youtube (the sooner the better and I hope it's NOT VR)?
And it's accelerating on every jump....
If only Amazon could release a set of Serenity/Firefly movies, perhaps done as cartoons, with the original actors providing voicework. Much like we saw with the second film in the Pitch Black / Riddick movie franchisee.
Could you imagine the profits for Amazon?
"The After" was absolutely terrible. I am pretty sure it was a ballot box stuffing / fake user rating bonanza. IT had 15,000 reviews which is 5-10x as many as most classic shows (like X-files, Firefly, Star Trek), and as much as Transparent which won 2 major awards (not my cup of tea but clearly more popular than The After).
It had 2x the reviews as many popular movies such a Hunger Games 2, World War Z, the new Star Treks, etc etc. The whole thing was like the start of a bad joke. "A clown, lawyer, hooker, cop, escaped con, etc etc walk into a garage and the world ends. What do?"
Amazon was right to can it. I hop they toss it off the site entirely. /my 2c
meep
Try your local library. Obviously, local selection will vary, but my library has a decent selection of movie titles and gets new ones in as they are released. They also have a website where I can request titles from the regional library system so that a DVD will be sent to my local library for me to pick it up. I can also renew online so I don't need to drag it back to the library just to get another couple of days with the DVD before paying late fees.
And the best feature of all? It's free. Well, effectively free. You pay for it in your taxes but you're going to pay for it whether you use it or not so you might as well use it. Plus, I'd rather my tax money go to local libraries than some other things it goes to.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
All these third party people making movies and nobody has thought about a firefly movie which we all know will make money given how much its short tenure has woeven its way into pop culture.
What the heck are you talking about?
Netflix has FAR FAR more DVDs than any local store can have.
(BTW, I haven't been a subscriber for a while now, but was for well over a decade...)
Netflix already started doing this with Kevin Spacey / House Of Cards.... at least in the sense of producing significant original material. Will be interesting to see how it pans out.
this is how Amazon will finally become profitable!