NATO president John Fithian sent a letter to exhibitors today encouraging donations to the Community First Foundation to aid victims of the shootings in Aurora, Colorado and their families.

As we watch the aftermath unfold and try to make sense of this terrible crime, you should be encouraged by the leadership and dedication of the community of Aurora as they comfort and assist their families and neighbors. The courage of the victims, their families and loved ones, the theater employees involved, the responders and hospital staff members has steeled the resolve of the community and its leaders to recover from this tragedy and to emerge even stronger than before.

Our industry, as it has countless times before, stands ready to help those in need. Many of you have expressed your concern and asked our guidance on how best to respond to help the victims and their families. We have been working within the industry and with the community leaders in order to give you some direction.

If you would like to generously donate, please write a check to: Community First Foundation
*Dedicate your contribution to assist the victims in Aurora:
 
Mail to:
Community First Foundation,
6870 W 52nd Avenue, Suite 103
Arvada, CO 80002
 
If you would like to make an online donation, please go to:
www.GivingFirst.org  .You can donate with all major credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express) or information from a bank account (personal checking).
 
If the amount you wish to give is $100,000 or more and you would like to do a wire transfer, you can contact Community First Foundation at 720-898-5900.

NATO president and CEO John Fithian lays out the case:

Despite NATO's repeated suggestions that our distribution partners discuss their potential VOD models with individual exhibitors prior to executing them, several leading studio executives appear determined to roll out early release VOD without proper consultation with exhibitors, without the input of the creative community and without market testing their proposed models to determine whether or not they work. In response to this ill-conceived attempted stampede, NATO and our members have (1) emphasized various possible responses of exhibitors; (2) reached out to the creative community to discuss shared objectives; (3) traveled to Wall Street to challenge the viability of these unworkable models; and (4) begun to educate leading reporters on the dangers of the proposals.

Read the whole thing.

You don't have to make a Federal case out of it.

Oops..wait:

In regulatory filing today, the Motion Picture Assn. of America, the chief lobbying group for the major studios, restated its support for a waiver of current Federal Communications Commission rules that would clear the way for a technology that would allow consumers to watch movies at home close to or during their theatrical release. The so-called selectable output control technology would prevent the illegal copying of movies, which has been a major stumbling block to delivering first-run movies directly to consumers.

"Many of us love movies, but we just can't make to the theater as often as we'd like. That is especially true for parents of young children, rural Americans who live far from the multiplex and people with disabilities that keep them close to the home,'' MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said in a statement. "Having the option to enjoy movies in a more timely fashion at home would be a liberating new choice."

This is actually not new. The initial MPAA request for the SOC waiver was made last summer. NATO filed comments with the FCC opposing the plan. The MPAA recently stepped up its campaign for the waiver and made a very public case for it today in a press release explaining its reasoning.

Variety notes NATO's response.

National Assn. of Theater Owners prexy John Fithian said his org is opposed to the MPAA's request because of the windows issue and not because of the antipiracy technology. He said it is disconcerting that the MPAA hasn't said exactly when a movie would be made available.

"We do oppose an undefined model of early release to the home. We want to know how early these movies are going to be released," said Fithian, who is meeting with the FCC this week on the issue.

Over at Deadline Hollywood, Nikki Finke looks at the story with typical restraint.

The L.A. Times is reporting that Sony has agreed with theater owners to hold off on releasing the DVD for the Michael Jackson concert documentary, This Is It, until after Christmas.

 Sony Pictures desperately wanted to release the DVD of the Michael Jackson concert movie "This Is It" for the holiday shopping season, but backed down after movie theater owners balked that it was too soon following the film's theatrical premiere.

"This Is It" opened in 99 countries yesterday and is scheduled for a limited two-week run, though the studio may extend that depending on ticket sales.

Sony had hoped to capitalize on audiences' heightened interest in what turned out to be Jackson's final performance by releasing the DVD in mid-December, about a month after the movie ends its short time in theaters. The disc is now expected to come out in late January or early February.

As noted in recent posts here, the theatrical release window is a question of considerable concern for theater owners. Negotiations between studios and theater owners can become quite intense.

"We felt we made a pretty good case as to why this movie was different," said Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, who oversees worldwide marketing and distribution.

However, the movie theater owners refused to budge.

"We had several conversations with Sony and so did our members," said John Fithian, president of the National Assn. of Theatre Owners, an industry trade group. "Anytime we see the window go under three months, we alert our members and raise concerns with the studios."

After hearing complaints from executives at several of his member companies, Fithian said, "I raised a general concern with Sony about the extraordinarily short window."

After talking with theater owners, Sony, whose DVD releases on average come out four months and four days after a movie's theatrical run, reluctantly decided to back off from its request in order to preserve good relations with them.

"We didn't want it to be an issue," said Blake. "At the end of the day, we wanted a big theatrical run and they certainly stepped up and supported that with 6,000 screens in 3,481 theaters."

However, the Sony executive acknowledged that he was sorry the studio didn't get what it it wanted. "It would have made a big financial difference to us," he noted.

This Is It grossed $2.2 million in late Tuesday night debuts. Wednesday grosses have been estimated anywhere from $8-10 million. Offical numbers are expected from Sony later today.

CBS Evening News has the story. John Fithian, Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt weigh in:

Before getting outside the box office, they get right into it:

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Will summer 2008 set another new boxoffice record?

CAMPBELL: We have a strong slate of films this summer, but what you’re missing is what I’d call the three money-in-the bank films you saw last year in May. There’s a lot of diversity in product this summer, but will it be a record summer? I can’t say that.

FITHIAN: This year we have a few more unknowns. Some of those will surprise on the upside and some on the downside.

THR: And the year?

CAMPBELL: What I would say about the fourth quarter is that last year that was our weakest quarter, so on a comparable basis I think there’s more powerful product in that quarter of this year.

FITHIAN: I don’t disagree at all. I think it’s also important to remember we are coming off two up years in a row.

 On ratings:

THR: Exhibitors tend to like less restrictive ratings, yet there continues to be a regular flow of R-rated movies. Are you OK with that?

CAMPBELL: From a selfish, economic point of view as an exhibitor, we do better with PG and PG-13 films, and on any given year you generally see 17 or 18 of the top 20 films as PG or PG-13. There is still a place for R-rated films, but we do better at the boxoffice and at the concessions with PG and PG-13 films.

FITHIAN: I am mystified why everybody in Hollywood wants to be Quentin Tarantino instead of trying to sell movie tickets.

 
THR: Any other specific advice for Hollywood on the kind of pictures they should make?

FITHIAN: More family titles of any genre. When you take an action film and decided to make it PG-13 instead of R, it does better. And in most cases, if you have a comedy and decide to make it PG-13 it does better, although there certainly is a role for the harder-edge comedies as well. But as the father of a 5-year-old, there are times I am looking to go to the movies with my child and can’t.

Year-round movie-going: 

THR: You like to encourage “ 12-month releasing.” Isn’t there a limit to how many tentpoles can open while school is in session?

FITHIAN: Yes, but we’re still doing it wrong. Virtually every school in the country is still in session the first weekend in May, and the biggest movies in 2007 were released over the first weekend in May. Yet we leave April almost entirely off the table, and the circumstances of school are very similar in April and May.

There are only so many blockbusters you can tolerate in the year, but in summer when they are so close together we are losing money. With those huge titles last May, we lost— in my estimation —$50 million$100 million because we had them all in one month. If one of those had been in April, I think we would have made a lot more money.

CAMPBELL: We could increase the boxoffice several percentage points by having a release schedule that was spread a little more evenly.

Read the rest here. 

 Publisher Nick Dager starts it off with a bang:

The answer lies in the fact that the studios, either by happenstance or by design, are taking a very passive-aggressive approach in their negotiations with DCIP. Several studios are demanding higher virtual print fees, which exhibitors insist they can’t afford. Other studios are demanding that exhibitors convert to digital now in order to justify the costs of the 3D features due out next summer.

In some cases that passive-aggressive attitude exists in the same studio. In interview after interview Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks Animation has led the charge all but demanding that exhibitors waste no time in converting to digital, this of course so that his 3D movies can make more money. Yet his long-time partner Steven Spielberg tried to block the digital release of Indian Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In a recent story on the topic reported in the Chicago Tribune Spielberg is quoted as saying, “Making a film on celluloid, as I like to do with all of my pictures, but then transferring it and releasing it and projecting it digitally is a very inferior image.”

Where does that leave the transition to digital cinema, and by necessity, 3D? 

 
Scylla, meet Charybdis:

John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, says the situation has placed exhibitors squarely between a rock and a hard place. "Several studio leaders currently hope to reduce substantially the virtual print fee support they are willing to provide for the digital cinema transition, at the same time that several other studio leaders demand that exhibition install many systems rapidly for the 3D slate in 2009,” he says.  “And at the same time one of the industry's filmmaking icons refuses to release a big summer picture on digital cinema screens except for locations where that is the only option. So, should we or should we not move faster with the digital roll out? How do they possibly believe that exhibitors will do anything less than push back? Maybe they should get their act together first before they try to tell us what to do."

So when do we put the "budge" in budget? Insiders differ. Some suggest the deals are dependent on a successful resolution to SAG/AMPTP negotiations, others ascribe the hold-up to the credit crunch fueled by the home mortgage meltdown.

What seems crystal clear (and you don't need special glasses to see it) is that the delay is all about the Benjamins. The 2009-2010 3D slate has only upped the urgency of resolving the basic calculation with a concrete and near-term demonstration of how much (and whose) money is at stake.