Shrinking of The Theatrical Window
While originally conceived for a six months duration, the theatrical window has today been reduced to little more than four months. Movie studios have reportedly been pushing to shrink the duration of the theatrical window in an attempt to make up for the substantial losses in the DVD market they've been suffering from since the 2004 sales peak.
These attempts have encountered the firm opposition of theater owners, whose profits depend solely upon attendance and who, thus, benefit from keeping the movie available on the silver screen.
In early 2010, Disney announced it would be putting out the DVD and Blu-ray versions of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland 14 weeks after the movie's release date (instead of the usual 17) in order to avoid competition from the 2010 World Cup. In response to such statements, theater owners made threats not to show the movie on their screens, but later reconsidered their position before the movie was released.
Other strategies are also being deployed in order to make up for slow DVD sales. Most major studios have considered making movies available to VOD services shortly after their theatrical release for a premium price. In July 2010 Netflix secured a deal with Relativity Media in which the latter agreed to distribute a number of major movies to the aforementioned VOD service before Pay TV.
Makers of smaller-budget movies are also putting to the test new release strategies. In 2009, the movie The House of the Devil premiered on VOD systems on October 1, and received a limited theatrical release one month later. In August 2010, it was announced that the movie Freakonomics would be released on VOD services on September 3, one month prior to its theatrical release. British sci-fi movie Monsters will also undergo the same release drill.
Read more about this topic: Film Distribution
Famous quotes containing the words shrinking, theatrical and/or window:
““There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet,
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“A Carpaccio in Venice, la Berma in Phèdre, masterpieces of visual or theatrical art that the prestige surrounding them made so alive, that is so invisible, that, if I were to see a Carpaccio in a gallery of the Louvre or la Berma in some play of which I had never heard, I would not have felt the same delicious surprise at finally setting eyes on the unique and inconceivable object of so many thousands of my dreams.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)