Amazon Plans To Release 12 Movies a Year In Theaters and On Prime 92
An anonymous reader writes "Amazon has announced that it will begin to produce and acquire original movies for theatrical release and early window distribution on Amazon Prime Instant Video. From the article: "This is a big move from Amazon, as it seeks to narrow the theatrical release window to between four and eight weeks. It can often take up to a year for films to land on subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video, however they do typically land on DVD/Blu-ray within around four months. Production for the aptly titled 'Amazon Original Movies' program will kick off in 2015, and plans are afoot to create around a dozen original titles for release in cinemas each year."
Wow! Cool! (Score:1)
Thanks for the Amazon ad!
You're getting paid? I hope.
Re:Wow! Cool! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks for the Amazon ad!
How is it an ad if they aren't selling anything yet?
Anyway, I wish Amazon the best of luck. The incumbent film studios don't release many films for home streaming because they think people will have to go to the theater or buy the DVD. Instead, they are getting some competition that is willing to give customers what they what.
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Well, Amazon is purely releasing these to have something to sell on their streaming store ... so it's all about revenue for them.
So, while it might give some new content to people, there's no guarantee it will be any good.
If a company starts making films because of a dearth of things which can be streamed, and to cut down on the turnaround time between theatrical and streaming release ... well, that's pretty much just cynical marketing.
If they produce garbage, other than padding their own pockets, then this
Re:Wow! Cool! (Score:5, Informative)
Does Amazon have any history of producing good content? Or is this just out of the blue?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Studios [wikipedia.org]
They've been at it since 2013.
One of their original shows just won Best TV and Best Actor at the Golden Globes.
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Cool, never heard of it ... but I'm happy that they're apparently actually making good programming.
Lots of people can make programming, but so few of them know how to make anything which isn't complete crap.
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Hollywood has set the bar so low you'd need trenching equipment not to clear it. Every big-budget movie in 2015 will be a sequel or reboot. Pretty much the only Hollywood fare that I expect to be a little original are the superhero movies, which while they'll be a predictable sack of tropes, we've seen new stories within the established comic book worlds, so at least some original writing within that constraint (plus utter shit like the Spiderman stuff).
Re:Wow! Cool! (Score:5, Interesting)
Just speaking for 2014... Birdman, Unbroken, American Sniper, Selma, Wild, Grand Budapest Hotel, Whiplash. All sequels and reboots? This was an amazing year for movies and it's really not that exceptional. There's a lot of crap too but 90% of everything is crap.
The big budget movies are usually franchises because franchises are the only way you can get half a billion dollars in box office. A lot of great movies are made every year. Judging Hollywood by Captain America sequels would be like saying Boeing only makes bombers.
I mean, these Amazon movies won't be "big" budget by any standard, either, probably no more than $50 million.
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Birdman, Grand Budapest Hotel, and Wild - are distributed in the US by Fox Searchlight, which is the "indie films" distribution unit of Fox. How indie these films really were I'm not hipster enough to have any opinion on, but Birdman and Wild premiered at film festivals, and GBH was a British-German co-production. Whiplash premiered at Sundance and was only picked up by Sony some time after that. Why would you call these Hollywood films?
American Sniper? Maybe. Also premiered at a film festival, and C
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It seems like you've got this term, "Hollywood System." Like "True Scotsman," it can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Well, let's see. Birdman was directing by a famously weird Mexican filmmaker, but it was produced by New Regency pictures, which is Arnon Milchan's company. They also produced Noah and In Time, that's relatively Hollywood enough.
Grand Budapest was produced by Scott Rudin, of Captain Phillips, Moneyball, and most of Wes Anderson's other films. Rubin produced movies like Ransom and Sister
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Mistake on my part: Plan B isn't Jeremy Keliner's company, he's just an executive there. Plan B is Brad Pitt's company
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Ahh, you work in the industry. Well, it's all your fault then.
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Exactly. And you're living in a Just World Fallacy where if streaming and piracy hand the film industry to Netflix and Amazon on a silver platter, we'll all be better off because everyone will get what they deserved. Hollywood sucks a priori, no knowledge or thought required.
That you believe this isn't too remarkable, a lot of people have unwarranted faith in systems, particularly when that system is the Internet. That you manage to believe this without actually knowing anything about the entertainment i
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Hollywood has set the bar so low you'd need trenching equipment not to clear it.
the bar as always been low.
old farts (like me) do this thing where they remember only the good movies from their childhood. across a lifetime there are many memorable movies. movies were better when i was young! what they don't remember are the thousands of duds, of course, because they weren't memorable movies.
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They are making some good TV shows. Though I suppose it's more accurate to say that they are hiring good people to make good TV shows for them.
They started in 2013 with two series for adults, Alpha House and Betas. (Amazon has also made some shows for children that I have not watched.) They were merely OK. (Alpha House did well enough to get renewed for a second season. Betas, which I liked more than Alpha House, sadly did not.) But the two new ones in 2014, Transparent and Mozart In The Jungle, were both a
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How is it an ad if they aren't selling anything yet?
The difference between sales and marketing advertising is that sales advertising is designed to sell an existing product while marketing advertising is designed to get the product in the mind of people who might eventually purchase it. In marketing the product need on yet exist. This is a marketing ad. It is the same as all the ads for movies that are yet to be released.
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So ... sales lies to you once the product exists, and marketing starts lying to you before the product is done?
Thanks for clearing that up. :-P
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How is it an ad if they aren't selling anything yet?
Sorry, then it's hype, even worse. And I believe their competition is Netflix, not the major studios.
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Thanks for the Amazon ad!
How is it an ad if they aren't selling anything yet?
Are they not selling Amazon Prime service, with a one-year commitment requirement -- while this article talks about a feature coming sometime in 2015?
Re:Wow! Cool! (Score:5, Insightful)
The filmmakers would generally prefer theatrical, since it has the best reach, tends to present the work in the highest quality, and contractual royalties and residuals are most favorable to theatrical release.
The studios (the "producers" and production companies) are indifferent, they like making money off the movie wherever. They prefer theatrical because theatrical usually produces the most revenue but this isn't always true for all films.
The distribution companies would love to launch everything day-in-date, and they love streaming since they usually get a fatter cut of the revenue.
The theaters (the "theatrical exhibitors") are hell bent against day-in-date streaming because they believe they'll lose attendance to it. When a studio attempts to release a movie day-in-date on streaming or DVD, like Universal tried to do with Tower Heist, the theaters band together and refuse to release the movie. Theater chains generally won't agree to screen a film without a contractual blackout period.
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The filmmakers would generally prefer theatrical, since it has the best reach, tends to present the work in the highest quality, and contractual royalties and residuals are most favorable to theatrical release.
The studios (the "producers" and production companies) are indifferent, they like making money off the movie wherever. They prefer theatrical because theatrical usually produces the most revenue but this isn't always true for all films.
The distribution companies would love to launch everything day-in-date, and they love streaming since they usually get a fatter cut of the revenue.
The theaters (the "theatrical exhibitors") are hell bent against day-in-date streaming because they believe they'll lose attendance to it. When a studio attempts to release a movie day-in-date on streaming or DVD, like Universal tried to do with Tower Heist, the theaters band together and refuse to release the movie. Theater chains generally won't agree to screen a film without a contractual blackout period.
The Customers presumably don't count.
What an amazing future we live in (Score:1)
Blah blah blah on the internet!
Our grandchildren will envy us for the heady times we live in.
Sell your Amazon stock now! (Score:1)
They have run out of ideas and have officially gone insane. The best way to lose tons of money is to get into the entertainment industry. Remember how it worked out for the WB and UPN, and they were already experienced players in the industry.
Re:Sell your Amazon stock now! (Score:4, Insightful)
WB and UPN, and they were already experienced players in the industry.
In times of rapid technological change, being an "experienced player" is often an impediment, not a benefit. Just ask Borders and Barnes&Noble.
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In times of rapid technological change, being an "experienced player" is often an impediment, not a benefit. Just ask Borders and Barnes&Noble.
But look at Disney.
Founded 1923.
Significant presence and impact in all media from the beginning. Jump-started the modern family oriented theme park and the ABC television network with "Disneyland."
No less a driving force in color television sales with "The Wonderful World of Color." You can't say anything meaningful about the evolution of cable TV without mentioning HBO, the Disney Channel and ESPN.
The musical adaptaion of The Lion King had a ten year run in London.
The geek obsesses over porn, but, my god,
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Not just that - you'd be hard pressed to find more than a couple popular musicals on Broadway right now that isn't one of three things: (1) revival; (2) jukebox musical [i.e., one that is a thinly-written story wrapped around a Greatest Hits album]; or (3) big Disney production.
Re:Sell your Amazon stock now! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Where did you see that?
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https://www.yahoo.com/movies/s... [yahoo.com]
And here's the money shot quote:
"Currently, approximately $1B in production spending can be expected to deliver $500M-$600M in profits,” the letter says. “Through his continued focus on financial discipline, Doug hopes to improve that ratio to a point where $800-$900M in production spending delivers $500-$600M in profits.”
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If this is true, how would it compare with the movie studios' usual "Hollywood Accounting" claims that films don't make back the money invested in them? We all know that this isn't true, but it would be interesting if leaked movie studio documents showed that they knew this was false also.
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The difference between GAAP profit-and-loss and Hollywood Accounting has to do with contractual terminology. I you ever see a residuals statement you'll see that they never are structured in terms of revenue, profit and costs, they always use terms like "proceeds" and "expenses" [boingboing.net]. A movie can profit on a GAAP basis but still never pay residuals (never "make
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There were already product distribution players in the industry when Amazon came along, am I right?
They have not run out of ideas, as evidenced by this idea to stream stuff.
The entertainment industry is not the best way to lose tons of money [onecentatatime.com]
80 Ways to lose money foolishly
.
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Everyone with your attitude sold their stock a year ago when the Fire Phone came out.
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Theater owners want exclusivity in releases. They don't want to show a movie that can be seen elsewhere in the same local market.
Well, good for them! I'm glad they want to hold on to a dying archaic model of overpriced sodas and popcorn in a big room.
This is how the businesses work.
Ah, no. This is how failed businesses work. By not adopting to the times.
In case the incumbants haven't noticed by now, the millenial generation of moviegoers is perfectly willing to watch a new-release movie on a damn 3" cell phone screen with earbuds. And content providers don't need a theater to make revenue. Sony likely paved the way with the rather forced online release of Th
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This sounds like market failure to me, particularly when the price differential between buying a new release on your phone and watching it in a theater is only a few bucks, as it is now. Like why would you want to pay $13 for a movie on your cellphone when going to the Arclight matinee is $16?
I guess it's more convenient but it'
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Dude, are you insane?
For $25 I can buy the Bluray, and watch it in my own home theater in a reclining leather seat, eat my own snacks, drink beer, and pause it if I want to take
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The GP said "phone." Besides, your screen at home isn't as good and I guarantee you that unless you have $10,000 in acoustic treatment you don't have a theatrical sound experience -- I'm a sound designer so I'm a little partial to that, I admit.
You don't see any value in getting out of the house, getting dinner, meeting people, dressing up a little? I'm not being prescriptive, here, I'm not saying you people should pay more for a theater, I'm saying, flatly, that they do, that theaters are still a really
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LOL ... allow me to clarify this for you, in case there is any chance nobody has told you this ... for the vast majority of the people in the world, people who talk about such drivel are complete, unmitigated wankers. Most of us really only hear "good enough", and simply roll our eyes
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I know, this is the challenge to anyone that would dare strive for excellence, the rest of the world is constantly trying to drag you back to mediocrity. Thus Netflix basically does the equivalent of delivering McDonalds to your house, and it's so convenient and cheap, people start telling themselves that only purists or dorks can tell the difference between McDonalds and Morton's prime rib.
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Besides, your screen at home isn't as good
Not remotely true. Most digital theater projectors are 2k, which at this point I'm willing to call crap. I watched a movie with some subtitles at the beginning the other day, seeing the white text split into a grid of pixels was very off-putting. Plus it takes effort to find optimal seating.
As to audio,
Headphones do it better, if you really care, and
The total lack of control of other people makes that a pretty moot point.
I generally agree with you in terms of the market, but trying to argue
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They really don't. I mean, you might prefer them but they're a substandard experience, even if you're using "surround" headphones that apply HRTFs and phase de-correlation, they just don't render space very well and even really nice ones are fatiguing. They also remove the sound's spatial relationship with the center channel and the screen which is usually important. Most people also have their headphones set too damn loud and are giving themselves
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You're assuming people are buying these movies on their phones. I think what the original poster was instead talking about is people watching Netflix or Amazon Prime video on their phones. Or streaming/downloading fr
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> In case the incumbants haven't noticed by now, the millenial generation of moviegoers is perfectly willing to watch a new-release movie on a damn 3" cell phone screen with earbuds
No, they DON'T watch movies on their cell phones. That's why movies are enjoying record revenue numbers over the last few years.
Only the nerdiest of nerds watch movies on their phones, and they aren't a market that matters.
You don't cater your business model around these dorks.
Let me gently remind you (as Thomas Friedman has) that from a communication standpoint, our world is flatter today than back when we thought it was actually flat.
There are also more people on this flattened planet than ever before. And that number will likely never decline.
Taking all of that into consideration, I happily throw almost every historical statistic related to multi-year analysis out the damn window. Every single minute your potential market grows, and can be taken viral within seconds. That w
I'll take one for max $10 (Score:2)
for "buy to own" download and if it sells for $2 a year later just in case I delete it or lose a hd. at $2-5 "to own" I'd probably buy 100's of movies per year, yah eventually I'd have them all but if they're so cheap I wouldn't care if I lost them.
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Sure the total of all available services will be high, but you will still have the choice of only subscribing to the ones that you want. If someone only wants Netflix, it's still only 8$ per month.
Anyway most of these services are only available to the U.S.A. so right now it's not really a problem for the rest of the world. It's Netflix or nothing.
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Furthermore, there's currently no contracts keeping you on a service. Say you wanted to watch Season 1 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Netflix. You sign up, watch it in a month, and then decide that nothing else in the inventory matches your tastes. You could cancel your subscription until Season 2 is released. T
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It is the same as cable if you think of Hulu & Netflix as the *new* networks. The difference is instead of paying your cable provider you're paying the networks directly.
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>$5-$6 for a movie rental way too high a price to be asking. It should be much close to $2 for a movie rental, or 25 to 50 cents for a tv show.
I actually agree with you (but actually think it should be even less than that per TV show -- literally nickeling and diming.. for a VERY few shows I'd pay more)..
But $5-6 isn't really all that much, comparatively. Using the inflation calculator at http://data.bls.gov/ [bls.gov] $4 in 1998 is $5.81 in 2014. Originally Netflix (DVDs, of course) was $16/month, for 4 movies
Movies from the book seller? (Score:2)
Re: Movies from the book seller? (Score:1)
I don't know. I think Son of Sharknado could be a hit!
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I tried to watch a few movies made by Asylum and they were really just terrible. The new TV series Z Nation seems to be backed by Netflix however, so maybe Asylum only needs a better budget to produce something decent. Z Nation may not be on the same quality level as The Walking Dead or as serious, but it's fun to watch nonetheless. The random references to other movies or TV shows (so far, Sharknado and The Walking Dead) made me laugh.
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Netflix famously had their corpus of user preferences and tracking data, so they have really good metrics on exactly what they think people would like to see. Amazon does something different, they do pilots and then they solicit public votes and comment.
I think either have their strengths and weaknesses, Netflix's stuff is generally guaranteed to hit but their biggest product is effectively a reboot of an existing media property.
Both processes seems sorta artist-hostile.
Marketecture Strategery (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Amazon's doing this to blunt attempts by content providers, whether HBO, ESPN, etc. (or even the production companies themselves) to bypass middlemen like cable companies, Netflix, Amazon, etc. by bringing their own paid streaming content to market.
Re:Marketecture Strategery (Score:5, Interesting)
Alternatively you could look at it as vertical integration. The premium cable group is really the only segment trying to 'bypass the middle man' the Studio's etc are doing just about anything they can to protect their old distribution model:
1) Sell it to the theaters (period of exclusivity)
2) Sell it to the second run theaters (shorter period of exclusivity)
3) Home video release
4) Streaming (new and constantly tinkered with)
Netflix and Amazon have both discovered the existing content industry merely tolerates them, if anything as way to scape a little more revenue in from folks who otherwise would have just gone the piratebay.{whatever it is this week}. They are not really interesting in offering licensing terms that given the streaming guys much of a "piece of the action" on any valuable properties. So rather than wait around for Studios to 'cut out the middle man' Netflix and Amazon are getting into the content business, makes sense.
The next logical step is for Amazon (who has more capital than Netflix) to go after the other distribution channels, why leave money on the table. Maybe you can get $20 worth of theater ticket sales once in a while outa somebody that otherwise won't subscribe to prime.
Re:Marketecture Strategery (Score:5, Interesting)
Streaming will become a commodity as there are multiple reliable/convenient methods to access content. Content will be the differentiator, and Amazon isn't going to want to rely on a third party relationship to provide that.
Cue the count down until Disney is bought by Apple for similar reasons.
My opinion (Score:3)
My rentaDVD/Blueray stores closed a few months ago (Score:1)
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Oh come on, Netflix has several hundred mediocre titles available for streaming, give some credit :)
Also just FYI, Netflix does have a service where they mail you DVDs with a much larger library than streaming, you might not have heard of it it's only been around since 1997
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Try your local library. Obviously, local selection will vary, but my library has a decent selection of movie titles and gets new ones in as they are released. They also have a website where I can request titles from the regional library system so that a DVD will be sent to my local library for me to pick it up. I can also renew online so I don't need to drag it back to the library just to get another couple of days with the DVD before paying late fees.
And the best feature of all? It's free. Well, effec
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What the heck are you talking about?
Netflix has FAR FAR more DVDs than any local store can have.
(BTW, I haven't been a subscriber for a while now, but was for well over a decade...)
How well have they done with series? (Score:3)
Transparent won a couple of Golden Globes, but "Bosch" hasn't started streaming yet and Chris Carter's "The After" mysteriously got cancelled almost a year after it was a winner in the same pilot voting "election" as Bosch.
I think someone trying to reinvent the "system" of creating filmed content is laudable and worthwhile, I'm just curious if Amazon really has put more thought into this than "vertical integration" and assuming that whatever insight they have into package delivery logistics and cloud computing is somehow universally applicable to something like film/tv production. They wouldn't be the first "geniuses" to take hubris to a new level only to discover that doing A well means nothing when it comes to doing B well. We see plenty of that when A and B aren't all that different.
I think faster (and more complete) turnaround of announced content would definitely help, I also wonder if it would make sense to rethink some of the streaming assumptions -- like, why straightjacket yourself into the one hour episode format? Why not two hour episodes, but fewer of them? Does the entire series have to available all at once, or could faster release cycles from pilots to episodes be accomplished by releasing a group of episodes every 60-90 days to allow for simultaneous shooting and releases?
Should they dilute their resources producing a bunch of one-hour pilots, or should they be a little more discriminating and look at a pilot instead as a more complete story arc and make 3 episodes? That way even failures that didn't become series could at least be watchable, self-contained miniseries adding value to the catalog instead of just becoming trivial ephemera? Maybe the desire to make more typical "movies" is part of this.
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I think the biggest factor is the insistence on releasing entire seasons at once, it's hard to produce a season of TV in under a year. I've worked on a few HBO miniseries and those only went around six episodes, but they we
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I'm not sure anything's a fair comparison with an HBO series, mini or otherwise. HBO programming has a staggering production quality whose peers really are only big-budget Hollywood movies.
Most TV series (other than HBO) have simpler production values all around, from costumes to sets to location shooting and generally even to cast sizes and extras. This makes them cheaper but I would also guess makes them faster to shoot, since as the AD is fond of yelling, "Time is money people!"
I suppose Amazon and Ne
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Yeah that's because you are used to watching cheap ass American TV. On the other hand living in the U.K. I expect and get that sort of production quality in all/most drama series produced primarily for the U.K. market.
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Maybe the earnings call will go something like this:
ANALYST: How much loss do you attribute to the totally failing Fire Phone?
AMAZON: WOW! We're going to produce a dozen movies! It'll be awesome!
"The After" = fake reviews (Score:2)
"The After" was absolutely terrible. I am pretty sure it was a ballot box stuffing / fake user rating bonanza. IT had 15,000 reviews which is 5-10x as many as most classic shows (like X-files, Firefly, Star Trek), and as much as Transparent which won 2 major awards (not my cup of tea but clearly more popular than The After).
It had 2x the reviews as many popular movies such a Hunger Games 2, World War Z, the new Star Treks, etc etc. The whole thing was like the start of a bad joke. "A clown, lawyer, ho
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"The After" was absolutely terrible.
I keep hearing this said, but that wasn't my impression nor does it seem especially fair after ONE episode.
The genre it seems to belong to has a pretty low bar for entry -- Fringe was like 5 seasons, and having begun watching it recently I'm already kind of tired of it. It follows such a set formula I feel like *I* could write episodes for it -- new fringey event, nutty professor solves puzzle with application of physics, medicine and biology with a little help from moody Fed Boss and ActionGirl, last 3 mi
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I really liked Fringe but Revolution and Falling Skies were pretty bad, agreed.
I mean to each his/her own, but I was truly shocked at how bad The After was after watching just the one pilot.
Movie financing is a weird game. (Score:2)
Firefly movie (Score:2)