By Earlier this month, Sony, Fox, Warner Brothers, and Universal all announced that they were dealing with DirecTV to create a premium on-demand service, offering major releases for rent eight weeks after theatrical release for $30. Naturally, theater chains are piiiiiissed. As a result, Regal Cinema has announced that, if the deal with DirecTV goes through, they will drastically reduce the amount of trailer play time and poster space for the four studios participating in the deal. This effectively removes a very large chunk of marketing opportunities for all of the summer blockbuster-hopefuls from those studios, while giving Paramount and Disney, who are not participating in this arrangement, a huge lead in the advertising race.
This sort of digital distribution is the future of movies, for the average person. TVs are getting cheaper and larger for nicer and nicer quality. With the price of movie tickets and concessions ever increasing, and the average movie-going audience getting more and more intolerable, at least for me, staying in is a nicer solution. If a family of four only spends thirty bucks on a movie, they’re saving a lot, and they don’t have to drag screaming children out of the house. There’s always going to be the “event” kind of movies that everyone’s going to want to see in the theater, especially before 3D televisions become more affordable, if 3D doesn’t die off entirely.
[Via Deadline]