Good
Windows
Make Good Neighbors
by G. Kendrick Macdowell
NATO General Counsel &
Director of Government Affairs
I love to talk about the issues affecting
this industry — but this column is devoted to what
others are saying.
It’s no surprise to anyone that cinema
owners are True Believers in the current system of tiered
release,
which carries a substantial theatrical window that gives
movies that extra prestige and marketing edge. But it seems,
as of this writing, that most top-level industry players
outside of exhibition also believe in tiered release. And
that matters.
In fact, if I were trying to conceive vivid
language to make the case for preserving the theatrical
window, I could
not have done better than several studio executives.
Sony execs are unanimous in their persuasive
insistence on preserving the theatrical window. Sony Corp.
chairman
Howard Stringer perhaps put it best at a Sept. 29 news
conference: “If you collapse a window or go day and
date ... if you eliminate the movie theater, you’re
doing movie of the week. And the sizzle ... of the movie
industry will be gone. You have to guard the value of the
content.” And that, as succinctly as I’ve heard
it put, addresses both the art and the money question.
“Any exhibitor playing pictures under those
circumstances would be committing suicide,” said
Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone. “It’s
not going to happen.” |
Confirming the studio’s salutary position,
Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman Michael Lynton was
quoted in the
Oct. 28 edition of the Los Angeles
Times: “We at
Sony believe very strongly in the theatrical window. It
is our lifeblood as well as that of theater owners. Busting
it up is dangerous.” He confirmed that view in unambiguous
financial terms in a Jan. 23 Fortune magazine
article: “We’re
confident that the existing window structure is the best
economic model.”
Meanwhile, Sony Pictures Classics president
Tom Bernard told Multichannel
News on Nov. 7 that “collapsed
windows are the worst thing that ever happened to specialized
films. Polluting the theatrical window is doom.” And
Sony Pictures vice chairman Jeff Blake pointedly takes
the question straight back to revenue: “I don’t
think anyone has shown how you can keep up the level of
revenue we have now, much less make more money.”
Universal Studios president and COO Ron
Meyer expressly
disagreed with Disney chief Robert Iger
in a Sept. 5 interview
with Time magazine. Meyer cautions taking care “not
to cannibalize our own product. The window of time between
theatrical-release dates and DVD-release dates has a purpose
in delivering financial results to us and different experiences
to the audience. There’s a place for each of those
windows.”
Ah, but there’s that piracy problem, which collapsing
windows is somehow supposed to blunt. Not so, said James
Gianopulos, co-chairman of 20th Century Fox Filmed Entertainment,
at a Dec. 2 Reuters Media and Advertising Summit in New
York. “When people say ‘Re-invent your business
model because of the ubiquitous availability of pirated
product,’ there’s a huge flaw with that,” said
Gianopulos. “You can never compete with free.” Accelerating
DVD release beyond the current four-month average would,
Gianopulos insists, “crimp growth.” More recently,
for an article in the Jan. 22 edition of the Los
Angeles Times, he
said tiered release “is not random. It’s
not accidental. There’s logic to it.” What
advocates of simultaneous release are proposing, he said, “makes
no sense.”
Tomas Jegeus, executive vice president of
20th Century Fox International, reinforces the Fox position
with a nod
to getting out of the house, as
reported in the Dec. 9
edition of Screen Daily. “You can’t take away
the ‘out of home’ experience. We have to protect
windows.”
And let’s talk dollars and sense for a moment. In
an excellent
column posted Aug. 19 on the Movie City News
website, Bill Mechanic – the former Fox Filmed Entertainment
CEO who currently oversees Pandemonium Films – wrote
that simultaneous release turns everything we know about
successful income streams in this business on its head. “When
you read industry discussions about collapsing the theatrical
and home entertainment windows, there is a fundamental
lack of understanding about how the movie business works
as a business. For the past 25 years, it has become a better
and better business in terms of income only because of
sequential distribution. Take it down to a single market
and the economics collapse. ... Eliminate the theatrical
window and the same pictures that don’t create a
head of steam theatrically now will most likely fail to
create a head of steam in video. And there will be no subsequent
market to pick up the losses.”
Doubling back to the twin pillars of art
and commerce, Revolution Studios partner Tom Sherak told
the Kansas City
Star on
Nov. 27, “there’s a reason for windows – it’s
good for the art, and it’s good for the overall business.
I think the idea of movies being made for and seen on the
big screen is an important part of the experience. ...
I don’t think movie theaters can exist if everything
goes day-and-date. The idea of trying to rush everything
at the same time is leading to the ruination of the theatre
as we know it.”
And we’d be remiss not to salute the most frankly
and unabashedly artistic of all, the director with the
vision and fortitude to declare his preference in personal
and compelling terms, M. Night Shyamalan. “If I can’t
make movies for theaters,” Shyamalan
told the Los
Angeles Times on Oct. 28, “I don’t want to
make movies. I hope [simultaneous release] is a very bad
idea that goes away.
“Art is the ability to convey that
we are not alone,” Shyamalan
said to a ballroom full of enthusiastic ShowEast delegates. “When
I sit down next to you in a movie theater, we get to share
each other’s point of view. We become part of a collective
soul. That’s the magic in the movies. If [simultaneous
release] happens, you know the majority of your theaters
are closing. It’s going to crush you guys.”
Other directors have since weighed in. In
Claudia Eller’s
splendidly researched January Los
Angeles Times piece,
Jonathan Demme’s rhetorical question packs a punch. “Doesn’t
it seem like the movie business is devouring itself because
it can’t wait to get to home video?”
Does Tim Burton think simultaneous release
is unwise? Not quite. It’s “absurd,” he told the Times.
Cinema is a business, he said, “but everything should
be done to treat it as an art form — it’s a
visceral medium.” Ron Howard equivocates a bit in
the same piece, but ultimately agrees that “viewing
in a theater is the optimum experience.”
Said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros. president
of domestic distribution, as
reported in The
Hollywood Reporter on Oct. 28, “box
office is historically content-driven, and as an industry
we fell short this year as a result.” Simultaneous
theatrical/ DVD release dates “are not going to happen
at Warner Bros.” His language may not be vivid. But
his message is music.
Underscoring the conclusion so many exhibitors
have reached on their own, Viacom and CBS Corp. chairman
Sumner Redstone
put the matter bluntly at a Beverly Hills Museum of Television
and Radio event on Jan. 12: “Any exhibitor playing
pictures under those circumstances would be committing
suicide.” And more to the point: “It’s
not going to happen.”
It’s not going to happen, more and more executives
say, because, quite simply, the system ain’t broke. “We’ve
got to protect the windows,” Jon Feltheimer told the Financial Times on Aug. 11, “because the system
still works.”
Well said, everyone. 
