Technicolor To Equip 15,000 U.S. Screens; Christie AIX To Equip 4,000
5 of 6 Major Studios Sign
Up For Big-D Distribution
Two separate companies – Technicolor Digital Cinema and Christie AIX – announced in autumn a slew of deals designed to convert thousands of U.S. movie auditoria into digital cinemas in the coming months and years.

Technicolor – whose plan would equip 5,000 North American auditoria with studio-compliant (or “big-d”) digital projection systems over the next five years (and a total of 15,000 over the next decade) – announced Nov. 9 that it had signed long-term agreements with four distributors: DreamWorks, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. 20th Century Fox signed a similar agreement with Technicolor in December. Technicolor also revealed that it was in late-stage negotiations to sign similar deals with New Line and The Weinstein Co. Disney is also negotiating with Technicolor, according to unnamed sources of The Hollywood Reporter, but is still “working through the finer financial points of the deal.”

Christie AIX – which plans to equip between 2,500 and 4,000 U.S. auditoria with big-d projection systems over the next two years – announced this autumn that Fox, Universal, Sony and DreamWorks would join Disney as its studio clients.

At press time, the only major distributor that had not struck a deal with either digital-distribution concern was Paramount.

The plan at both companies is to equip existing U.S. and Canadian cinemas with big-d projection equipment at little or no cost to the owners of the cinemas. The cost of the equipment would be compensated by movie distributors willing to pay for the use of the big-d projectors.

“The studios will continue to book films directly with exhibitors, and if a booked screen is equipped with a Technicolor Digital Cinema system, the studio will pay Thomson [TDC’s parent company] a virtual print fee for usage of the digital equipment,” explained a Thomson press release.

Distributors stand to save billions by switching from celluloid film prints to digital “virtual prints,” which are far less expensive to strike and ship.

Though major studios have utilized digital distribution of their features since the 1999 release of “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace,” fewer than 200 of the more than 37,000 public U.S. auditoria are currently equipped with big-d equipment.

Insiders expect that Technicolor will launch a 3- to 6-month test of the system before spring.

Technicolor says its plan will be “technology agnostic, allowing both exhibitors and studios to benefit from the best available technology, including both 2K and 4K projection.”