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Hollywood Is Fighting Billionaire Sean Parker's Plan To Let You Rent Movies Still in Theaters For $50 (businessinsider.com)
Billionaire Sean Parker's plans to bring movies to your home as soon as they release in theatres has hit new roadblocks. After receiving praises for "Screening Room" from directors and producers Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, J.J. Abrams, and Peter Jackson, as well as Hollywood studios, the buzz for the startup has started to wane. From a report: Though Parker and cofounder Prem Akkaraju have promoted the company in the last two years at CinemaCon, it's gotten little traction due to a naivete of the industry, competitors, and studios' and theater chains' decade-long discussion about how to move forward on Premium VOD (PVOD) (alternative source), Business Insider has learned. "Everything you've heard in the press about studios and theaters wanting to explore a PVOD window, nothing about that revolves around Screening Room," a source close to the talks told Business Insider. Screening Room's main pitch to studios and exhibitors has been that it can bring added revenue to all sides of the equation. Out of the proposed $50 rental fee, 20% would go to the movie's distributor, and a participating theater chain would get up to $20 of the fee, plus each customer receives two tickets to see that rented title at their local theater. Screening Room would take 10% of each fee. Sources told Business Insider that all of the bells and whistles Screening Room is selling don't matter until the studios and theaters can agree on a Premium VOD (or PVOD) window. Industry players don't want movies to be available on PVOD simultaneously with theatrical release dates because the first two weeks of a theatrical run are still when studios and exhibitors get a majority of a movie's income. Also read: Sean Parker Is Going To Great Lengths To Ensure 'Screening Room' Is Piracy Free, Patents Reveal.
At that cost I'd just go to the theatre, or better yet just skip the movie altogether.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
drop the two tickets / price part!
also cable / sat system want to be able to sell VOD / PPV at the same time as well They may want to sell them for $20-$30 a pop with them taking there cut.
participating theater chain I have over 4+ of them in my local area so what one will get it?
Opening weekend of new kid's movie, under existing system. Family of four:
Tickets: At least $40
Popcorn and concessions: At least $30
Opening weekend of new kid's movie, under "Screening Room." Family of four:
Theater cut: $20
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why is the physical theater getting a cut? I would reject it on this principle alone. There is no reason to give the physical theater anything at all (other than they want their customers to pay for Parker's failure to negotiate a proper deal.) It is obvious that they have to give the theaters something and the tickets are the bone they threw back. Its like having a tax on cars to assuage buggy whip makers that it will all be ok.
Good-bye
fight change, even if it means we will lose money in the long run. Instead of embracing change (streaming) and making a lot more money, but we can't see that because this is all new and frightening and we have can't deal with the very minuscule possibility this might lose money instead of what will really happen and make tons more money.
NOBODY (well maybe 0.01% of people) want to go to the fucking theater. Most of them suck ass and you have to deal with low level inbred assholes who want to watch their phones instead of the movie. Theaters are outrageously expensive, not from the movie ticket aspect, but you could easily spend an extra $30 on drinks and crap for a family of 4.
The movie theater, unless shit changes drastically, is dead. The industry just can't see it yet, but in 30 years going to a movie theater will be as popular as a drive-in is today.
I already covered all this in the previous story on this subject.
1980s to 1990s - transition period, with the first blockbuster console games without a corresponding arcade release (Super Mario Bros).
2000s and 2010s - all games are now released directly to console or PC. Ask a kid if they want to go to the arcade, and they'll reply "What's an arcade?"
Times change. Except for live events like concerts or sports, where being part of the crowd is part of the experience, people prefer viewing their entertainment at home. Movie theaters are not a necessity, they were just a way to amortize the high cost of the projection and sound system across all viewers. As the cost of big screen TVs, projectors, and home theater sound systems continues to go down, movie theaters are going to become a relic of the past, just like arcades. The benefits I've seen from watching movies on my projector and HTS are:
Think about it,
Theater has limited seating and certain play times. This new service has unlimited seating and play at any time of the day. As you noted above, if the distributor gets nearly 100% of the receipts on limited seating, having unlimited seating means more income on day one even if they take less per "seat". It's more economy-of-scale than anything else.
Imagine the new Star Wars coming out on this service. Theaters have the value-add for those who don't own home-theaters and want the experience. This service has the value-ad for those who do. Friends of these people get the value-add of having a choice.
Now imagine a movie that debuts in Cannes, but doesn't have enough traction to be put in 1,500+ theaters across the country. They'll make more money on this service then they will through other VOD services (Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, etc...).
They're not forcing you to watch camrips, they're just not offering their product at a price (and in a venue) that you're happy with. They're under no obligation to do so either. My advice: get a Netflix subscription and just use that. It's cheaper than a single ticket, and has lots of older stuff, which is better than all the new crap that's coming out.
Why doesn't Hollywood focus on putting out a better product then worrying about it's distribution methods. While big movies still make a large amount of money the quality of most films is just not there. I will happily spend money on entertainment I find enjoyable, whether it be music, movies or TV. I would go to the theater or rent a movie for $50 that sucks anyway.
Sent from my TARDIS
When they say "only in theaters" in the trailer, they only mean for a few months. Netflix will send you the disc by mail if you're patient.
As comments before have stated - you don't have to watch first run movies. Since you say you can't go to a theater and ALSO can't afford the price for first run at home then you'll have the compliant option of waiting for it to go to DVD/Blu-Ray.
I have a difficult time finding sympathy for you because you're not able to enjoy a luxury.
Because they don't see this as a premium. They see this as a net loss. There's the overhead of the system, the chance you'll invite 10 people over to watch, the chance you'll capture it and torrent it, the chance you'd have spent more at the theater.
The entire business model is designed around theater viewing until it's not profitable, then abusing limited runs on disk. From trailer making to aspect ratios to video and sound files, I'm guessing everything is built to do this. To think about doing something else is mind-blowing, because that means potentially changing the system, or having two systems, or a branching system. They know how this one works. A new one would be scary and hard to understand and abuse properly.
Not that I care what they do. I'm so far past caring. Just about anything non-AAA title and more than a few years old is available online. The last many movies we've watched were highly rated indie and/or low profile films. Some old cult classics. I've got a mini comp running ubuntu pushing HDMI to the big screen, wireless keyboard and mouse, great beer, good food, VLC, and google. Maybe I can't always find the exact movie I want, but with millions out there, I'll find something interesting. For the cost and convenience, it works for me. It's like Netflix with a thousand times more movies for the one-time hardware cost.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
I'd rather be able to rent a small theatre to view older movies with some friends.
The theoretical gain for the studios and distributors is that more people would actually watch the movie during the opening weeks. Right now, it's likely many people just aren't even bothering, because the cinema experience is so miserable, so they're just skipping it and doing something else, like watching something older on Netflix, and maybe they'll eventually get around to watching today's new hot movie after it's a few months old or more and has gotten to Netflix or Redbox or Amazon or whatever. By offering it simultaneous with cinema release at a high price, they might get more viewers.
But I doubt the studios/distributors will see it that way. They seem to have zero capacity to understand why people aren't interested in going out to the movies any more.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What about the cost of maintaining servers that are going to get bombarded on every single major release date? That can't be cheap. Customer satisfaction is going to be terrible when that server crashes too. You can bet that the motion picture companies are not going to be thrilled about giving out refunds to irate customers. They'd probably have to hire call centers full of staff just to handle the complaints and refunds. At least that's good for the economy, right?
You may have missed the point: the tickets are not there for the customer, they're there for the theater chain. This company is trying to do something that the entire film industry hates, so in order to make that happen it needs to get all of the members of the industry on board. That means cutting in the movie theaters, even though they're contributing nothing to this.
The tickets are there so that everyone can pretend that the theaters are a relevant part of this deal, and possibly for legal reasons. It wouldn't surprise me if there were laws against that sort of thing.
I for one support grammer/speling pedant trolling AC's. Well done GP.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
what about not taking 99% of the movie theaters gate? so they can have good food prices and fix BS like them needing to pay for an music licensing to cover music in the movies.
For arcades we had / have
the mail ones (In the past some ticket no or ticket games) maybe 1-2 of the big driving games / pinball level varys (Now days more ticket stuff)
Chuck E. Cheese (mainly kids party's) and lot's of ticket stuff. Maybe some pinball.
bowling places very some have small game rooms / some have good sized Billiards area / some have a big ticket game area.
Gameworks like places still kids geared but also has an sports bar vibe and big games / big banks of linked driving games some places are 21 only after 9-11PM very maybe 50 / 50 ticket non ticket does not give dam about pinball if they have them they are not getting fixed much lots of other non ticket games as well.
main event Gameworks like but they have big bowling set ups / Laser Tag (basic) / Gravity Ropes / Mini Golf and ticket games.
family fun centers mostly local businesses / small chains that are mix all of the above
laser tag places have small game rooms some have ticket games. The local non chains places have lot's of fun laser tag games.
Dave and busters like places more adult themed game works and more sticker on letting kids in little to no pinball.
Bars with a few pinball / darts / golf games / pool tables. Some have good pinball. It can very from kids ok it's your local small bar where it's not for kids.
Barcade places just about no ticket stuff lots of older classic games and new pinball's most are mainly 21 and up (mainly do to big city laws)