The cost of movies today are actually going down because of technology. The thing that kills movies is the cost of marketing them. A movie may make 120 million at the box office but cost 50 million to promote. That leaves 70 million of which the box office takes half. The 35 million left is put towards the 80 million in production costs. Now the studio is 45 million in the hole. The video sales will cost 25 million to promote (the box office already created awareness) and will bring in 75 million over the couse of a year. This leaves a profit of 5 million for an average "good" film.
You can't sell as many DVDs if you don't have a big movie opening (in general).
If the business model doesn't work then they can just do what every other money making entity would do. take on a long stupid court battle. Or even better. Trash the current system and encode everything in some lame DVD type thing that is illegal to even think about and then charge customers for it AND keep the commercials . . . or get the "to skip stuff while recording to anything" patent and shut the whole thing down.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow something that is in line with slashdot thinking is posted here! I better get right on it.
The cost of movies today are actually going down because of technology. The thing that kills movies is the cost of marketing them. A movie may make 120 million at the box office but cost 50 million to promote. That leaves 70 million of which the box office takes half. The 35 million left is put towards the 80 million in production costs. Now the studio is 45 million in the hole. The video sales will cost 25 million to promote (the box office already created awareness) and will bring in 75 million over the couse of a year. This leaves a profit of 5 million for an average "good" film.
You can't sell as many DVDs if you don't have a big movie opening (in general).
If the business model doesn't work then they can just do what every other money making entity would do. take on a long stupid court battle. Or even better. Trash the current system and encode everything in some lame DVD type thing that is illegal to even think about and then charge customers for it AND keep the commercials . . . or get the "to skip stuff while recording to anything" patent and shut the whole thing down.