Universal, Warner Bros. Talking to Theater Owners About Offering Films in Homes Early

[kemcha]

It could be. My knowledge of the business of drive-in movie theaters and in-door movie cinemas is rather limited. Thing is, its the movie theaters that need to adapt to future technologies when it comes to the movie industry and the fact that Hollywood is even slower to adapt than the movie theater business is also another major problem.

I've read thousands of articles about how the movie and music industry is slow to adapt to new technologies that bring movies, television, music and books to consumers and while they are just now starting to come around is a sad state of affairs for the entertainment industry. Thing is, they should have adapted their business models and bringing their content to the consumers some twenty years and they simply waited too long, after the horse had already been let out of the stable and they're trying to play catch-up.

Movie theater owners know that they have the movie industry on the edge of the cliff and that the movie industry cannot afford to upset the apple cart because it would upset the delicate balance that currently exists. If the movie industry decided to just say "screw it" and provide their movies with earlier home streaming options then they would be shooting themselves in the foot because you would see more theater owners threatening not to show their movies.

Something similar to this happened years ago and as theater owners refused to screen a certain movie, it forced the movie industry to back off. I'm not saying that theater owners wouldn't show big big budget films but that they would target those movies that are vulnerable to box office failure.

For instance, low budget films that cost under $100 million to produce. If enough of those films were refused by theater owners, it would literally shake up these movie studios and force them to rethink their strategy once again, like what happened before.

Matter of fact, many movie theater owners refused to screen Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension because Paramount set the movie up for failure because they wanted an early VOD release for that film. The same thing happened when movie theaters refused to screen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny. Years before that, I don't recall what movie it was, but that many theater owners threatened not to screen a low budget movie because the movie studio wanted an earlier home video release date for the film. The studio back then, relented and backed off.

This just goes to show how much power the theater owners retain. The movie industry cannot afford to upset theater owners because there is a lot of revenue riding on their relationship with theater owners and with studios spending upwards of $100-$300 million dollars on bid budget movies like The Avengers, Spiderman, Justice League and more ... they simply cannot afford to have movie theater owners retaliate against them.