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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!
How is it an ad if they aren't selling anything yet?
Anyway, I wish Amazon the best of luck. The incumbent film studios don't release many films for home streaming because they think people will have to go to the theater or buy the DVD. Instead, they are getting some competition that is willing to give customers what they what.
It worked for Netflix, it will probably work for Amazon. They are buying the content from actual film studios rather than producing it themselves, so it just comes down whether or not they can buy shows that will be popular. Some of the "Netflix-original" content is pretty good.
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.
WB and UPN, and they were already experienced players in the industry.
In times of rapid technological change, being an "experienced player" is often an impediment, not a benefit. Just ask Borders and Barnes&Noble.
As an Amazon Prime member, I have this to say: COOL!!
Did anyone notice during the Sony Pictures mess a revealed a gross margin of around 50%? And it seems Amazon has a captivate market plus millions of eyeballs a day to freely impress marketing upon, whereas traditional studios have to pay-per-eyeball to get the word out.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Does Amazon have any history of producing good content? Or is this just out of the blue?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Studios
They've been at it since 2013.
One of their original shows just won Best TV and Best Actor at the Golden Globes.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
So ... sales lies to you once the product exists, and marketing starts lying to you before the product is done?
Thanks for clearing that up. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Theater owners want exclusivity in releases. They don't want to show a movie that can be seen elsewhere in the same local market.
Well, good for them! I'm glad they want to hold on to a dying archaic model of overpriced sodas and popcorn in a big room.
This is how the businesses work.
Ah, no. This is how failed businesses work. By not adopting to the times.
In case the incumbants haven't noticed by now, the millenial generation of moviegoers is perfectly willing to watch a new-release movie on a damn 3" cell phone screen with earbuds. And content providers don't need a theater to make revenue. Sony likely paved the way with the rather forced online release of The Interview.
And as anti-social as "social" media has made humans in general, I don't see this trend changing. At all
Bottom line is incumbents better wake the hell up and smell what the single-serve k-cup generation is serving themselves.
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
The filmmakers would generally prefer theatrical, since it has the best reach, tends to present the work in the highest quality, and contractual royalties and residuals are most favorable to theatrical release.
The studios (the "producers" and production companies) are indifferent, they like making money off the movie wherever. They prefer theatrical because theatrical usually produces the most revenue but this isn't always true for all films.
The distribution companies would love to launch everything day-in-date, and they love streaming since they usually get a fatter cut of the revenue.
The theaters (the "theatrical exhibitors") are hell bent against day-in-date streaming because they believe they'll lose attendance to it. When a studio attempts to release a movie day-in-date on streaming or DVD, like Universal tried to do with Tower Heist, the theaters band together and refuse to release the movie. Theater chains generally won't agree to screen a film without a contractual blackout period.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
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.
Just speaking for 2014... Birdman, Unbroken, American Sniper, Selma, Wild, Grand Budapest Hotel, Whiplash. All sequels and reboots? This was an amazing year for movies and it's really not that exceptional. There's a lot of crap too but 90% of everything is crap.
The big budget movies are usually franchises because franchises are the only way you can get half a billion dollars in box office. A lot of great movies are made every year. Judging Hollywood by Captain America sequels would be like saying Boeing only makes bombers.
I mean, these Amazon movies won't be "big" budget by any standard, either, probably no more than $50 million.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.