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Netflix Partners With iPic To Release Its Original Movies In Theaters, NATO Urges To 'Tread Lightly' (variety.com)
turkeydance quotes a report from Variety: The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) is sounding the alarm over a recent deal between Netflix and iPic, in which the luxury-theater chain will screen 10 movies simultaneously with their release on the streaming service. The lobbying organization represents the country's theater chains and has been a staunch defender of traditional release windows that keep films exclusively on screens for roughly 90 days before they debut on home entertainment platforms. In a statement, NATO chief John Fithian warned that while iPic was free to make its own decisions, "We all should tread lightly and be mindful that over the years, the film industry's success is a direct result of a highly successful collaboration between film makers, distributors and exhibitors." The deal with iPic should help Netflix' movies quality for awards. Variety reports: "iPic will release the war thriller 'The Siege of Jadotville,' starring Jamie Dornan ('Fifty Shades of Grey'), on Oct. 7. That will be followed by Christopher Guest's mockumentary 'Mascots' on Oct. 13. This summer, iPic first tested showings of Netflix's 'The Little Prince.'" "Simultaneous release, in practice, has reduced both theatrical and home revenues when it has been tried," Fithian said in a statement. "Just as Netflix and its customers put a value on exclusivity, theater owners and their customers do too."
Coming soon to a theatre near you!
Also warns people to "tread lightly" regarding this new automobile contraption. "Remember, the success we've seen is a direct result of collaboration between the carriage makers, blacksmiths, and horse farmers."
Hollywood keeps dropping bombs at the movie theater.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
"We all should tread lightly and be mindful that over the years, the film industry's success is a direct result of a highly successful collaboration between film makers, distributors and exhibitors."
Collaboration or collusion?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
NATO is outdated.
.. about a decade ago, why were movie studios really pushing ahead on the 3-D movie boom, when 3-D hadn't worked well before and audiences were ambivalent. He said that the studios were looking for something that would get people into the theaters, some way that they could differentiate themselves from just DVD entertainment, and special theaters with special gear to give you an experience you won't get on your couch. Think of arcades today -- if you can find them, they're full of games with fancy controllers, or Dave and Buster's styled attractions, not screens with games you can play on your X-Box. Same reason.
I then asked him why these same studios were also pushing 3-D TVs and projection systems and super-high-quality sound at home, and he said that the movie industry was not above shooting itself in the foot.
(This wasn't the head of Warner or Disney, it was a small independent studio that released about a movie a year)
Studios will get alarmed at something that threatens the traditional cash cow of the movie theater, just as they saw great gains in the DVD era, and also great great declines in revenue as the DVD era petered out. If the movie theaters fade, then they won't -really- know how to market and sell their films, and they'll work to protect what they know rather than face the great unknown.
... NATO chief John Fithian warned that while iPic was free to make its own decisions, "We all should tread lightly and be mindful that over the years, the film industry's success is a direct result of a highly successful collaboration between film makers, distributors and exhibitors." ....
A couple of questions, please...
.
1) WTF is NATO having anything to do whatsoever in the release dates of films screened in movie theaters? Doesn't NATO have more important things to worry about, like, e.g., Syria?
2) Why has the NATO chief effectively admitted that the success of Hollywood is not the result of the quality of the films being made, but the restrictive and limiting aspect of their distribution?
They're the only thing between us and the Warsaw Pact overrunning our theaters with Russian films!
please, please, please don't sue me for the massive anti-trust violations that are the back bone of our industry.
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Used to see a movie a week, until the theater going experience really started to suck. Last movie I saw in a theater was Return of the King, the second to last was The Two Towers.
NATO blew it by not controlling the idiots in the theater. Back then it was idiots talking over the movie, and unattended kids running around. For me the killer was when they started running ads before movies. I paid to see the damned movie, not a bunch of ads. About that time my home system was good enough that I didn't need to deal with the unwashed masses, just me, the wife, and cat. I really, really tried to get myself to see The Phantom Menace in a theater but couldn't do it. After renting the DVD I was glad I saved my money.
The other thing they did was replace unsweetened tea with raspberry flavored tea. I hate sweetened tea, I like it unsweetened.
Get F*#&ed!
The sooner you start implementing cell phone bans, and theater goer bans for movie interruptions, the more I'll start going to the movies. Reference 'Alamo Drafthouse' ..... And please remember. MY generation, the 25-40 bunch, are the ones who are your target demographic. You know, the ones who work for a living, and have some disposable income? NOT teenagers milking mom n pop for weekend bucks.
So to your 'Treat Lightly'? Unless you want to be replaced wholly by direct to streaming HD Hollywood blockbusters, get your shit together. There's a reason I go to the movies once a year at this point.
A) Other people suck, while at the movies
B) Hollywood has been releasing a significant amount of crap, that isn't worth my money.
"Just as Netflix and its customers put a value on exclusivity, theater owners and their customers do too."
Lolwat?
Pretty sure every Netflix customer would rather see all streaming video services have _exactly_ the same catalog. Namely: "Everything in existence, ever.".
_Hollywood execs_ love exclusivity. It drives up their asking price by fueling bidding wars. To customers, exclusivity means that they must have an assortment of streaming service subscriptions in order to get access to a reasonably complete subset of the media out there.
That's obnoxious as fuck.
Bring in some capitalism and test global streaming on the day of release.
Get rid of the fake 90 day monopoly and national regional lock in sales.
Go to your local theatre for digital projection or stream to your big screen at home.
The this sounds like some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or
Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The only reason this is happening is because Netflix is paying the theatres to "show" the movies, so that the movies are eligible for Oscars.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The film industry's success is a direct result of a highly successful collaboration between film makers, distributors and exhibitors."
...and not giving anyone or any company that disagrees with "the rules" the time of day. Same problem we're seeing with Car Dealerships vs Tesla - pushing through laws that stop Tesla (and other companies) from selling direct to consumers to protect an established business model. (A business model which works great if you're living in a pre-internet society - being able to duck down to the local dealership to view a large range of car models was the only way to do that sort of research in the 20th century).
Let's be perfectly honest: the cinema-going experience now needs to compete against the comfort of my house and the people I want to watch movies with. You need to move away from the "cram 300 people in front of a big screen with surround sound" idea. Everyone and their dog has a big screen and surround sound these days. If I'm going to the movies it's part of a larger night out - dinner, movie and probably drinks after.
You want to capture people? Take a note out of the concert & sport planners playbook and make a full night of it. Don't just throw Star Wars Ep 8 at us, run Star Wars Ep 7 beforehand. Don't sell tickets to 'the movie', sell tickets to "stadium entry", which gives customers access to all the pre-game and post-game fun.
Does this mean that the world will stay peaceful for all of human existence + 95 years?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
> that keep films exclusively on screens for roughly 90 days before they debut on home entertainment platforms. "We all should tread lightly and be mindful that over the years, the film industry's success is a direct result of a highly successful collaboration between film makers, distributors and exhibitors."
In other words we have a cozy monopoly the FTC has turned a blind eye too so lets pressure iPic because if he's saying that publicly you can bet the pressure being exerted behind the scenes is intense.
Just as Netflix and its customers put a value on exclusivity, theater owners and their customers do too.
The only people who enjoy exclusivity are the insecure, fanboys, and the deluded. Artificial exclusivity is anti-competitive and only hurts customers.
But don't care about exclusivity. I go for the experience and see both first run films and special presentations of classics. I prefer clean theaters with awesome staff and fresh concessions. That's where theater owners should focus: great popcorn served with an enthusiastic smile.
I'm surprised the Theater Owners haven't sued Brussels for copyright infringement.
If you sit in those disgusting seats and overpay to be controlled over when the movie starts and what you have to watch while waiting to see your movie, and arrive early to get a decent seat that won't put a crick in your neck, and then smell all the farts of everyone in the theatre while you eat your 10 cents worth of $4.50 popcorn, you deserve any and all bacteria that stick to your ass and come home with you. Enjoy the blinding cell phones during the movie you cattle. Netflix should take over the whole damn business so I can PAY to watch a new release at home. At least at drive-ins you had some separation from the assholes.
If the movie Guardian coming out soon is anything to judge by, I'll take Russian movies in my theatres!
Then again, I liked Nightwatch and Daywatch though, enough to go buy the book series.
First they came for Hillary, now they're after the MPAA too!?
The deal with iPic should help Netflix' movies...
It's okay, you know, to put an s after the apostrophe when something ends in x. It's even okay when the word ends in s.
Or you could have just left off the apostrophe altogether. It would still have been cromulent and you wouldn't look like you weren't sure what you were doing (or trying to look clever).
quality for awards
Oh dear...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Hollywood is a sequel farm. The hell with them.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Would these idiots create a group and give it the same acronym as an existing organization. the real NATO should sue, just like the WWF vs. the WWF
....I can get full bitrate film quality streaming with no buffering. Otherwise I'll still go to a theater for this.
NATO opposes the Netflix move, however the Warsaw Pact group of theatre owners headquartered in Warsaw, Texas, today announced that they are happy with the decision and are willing to fight NATO in order to keep Netflix movies open to the proletariat.
Kino-German Bundesfilms, a small East coast distributor, is being suspected of trying to infiltrate NATO headquarters to stop NATO's move to prevent Netflix's operation from proceeding but were found by the Movie-Intelligence 5 agents, and Movie-Intelligence 6 staffers. The Cinema-Infomercial Alliance has also been trying to combat the KGB with great success.
We are still waiting to hear from how the Electronic-Underwriters respond to this, but they have been known to side with NATO on most issues.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Reed Hastings is pretty much delusional if he thinks that Netflix original content can compete with regular movies and tv shows. It wasn't that the content owners or network studios did not want to license to Netflix, Netflix(Hastings) saw, in his mind, that all non-netflix movie and tv show content were sub-par. I rather watch smallville(netflix let this one pass like seinfeld) than Luke Cage or Jessica Jones. There is really something lackluster with their content, no energy, just bland and boring.
when your main point of value is a contractual construct you're doing something wrong.
creating a walled garden or an exclusivity window in an aim to increase desirability through limited availability is just fundamentally wrongheaded.
theatre owners should drive people to the film for the quality of the experience, not the fact that it's the only place you can see the movie.
i will never have a huge screen and massive sound system at home. i will never have high performance digital projectors that can deliver high fps.
deliver a good movie and a good experience and people will go, regardless of any wall erected.
What the hell is NATO getting involved in (or even interested in) movie downloads?
Unless the guy is simply writing as a movie downloader and viewer, in which case he should drop that title, ne?
The /. editor clearly wrote that headline for a response.
Sorry, but I both can't and won't be going to theaters again within my lifetime more than likely.
While I never cared for the experience itself growing up but still did it a few times for some movies I really wanted to see (But most of the time regretted), I haven't returned in years and medically would not be able to do so.
As it stands, I have nerve damage in my spine where I can't stay in the seat for that long so going to the movies is rather uncomfortable and painful if I try and force myself to stay down. My options are either don't go, or if I go I get to be the jerk who can't stay in his seat or sit still and ends up getting up repeatedly and getting in peoples way.
Sorry, but unless it is at the house where I can watch it alone and repeatedly pause it to move around or at the very least get up and move and change positions while watching it, I honestly can't watch it. And I am betting there are plenty of others with nerve damage who have similar issues.
If it isn't at home, I can't watch it and don't even watch stuff on the antenna honestly because I can't pause it.
Edit: HAHA, Captcha : Bitches
The only movie theater I'd be sorry to see go... the only movie theater that, so far as I can tell, gives a damn about making movie-going a pleasant experience... is the Alamo Drafthouse. And somehow, I very much doubt that the Alamo will go out with the rest of the chains.
The rest? They made their bed with surly, but neverltheless gutless in the face of screaming brats or prattling yackers, employees, extortionate prices for decidedly sub-par food and drinks, filthy theaters, uncomfortable chairs, and ticket prices damn near the cost to just own the BluRay or iTunes download outright. So now they can lie in that bed. Short of the Millennium Falcon, the USS Enterprise, or the Helicarrier; I'm much happier waiting and watching at home than I am going anywhere besides the Drafthouse.
Imagine all the people...
Netflix had better hope NATO does not invoke Article 5.