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Businesses Television The Almighty Buck

Studios Flirt With Offering Movies Early in Home for $30 (variety.com) 128

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
It looks like Hollywood studios are not kidding around the concept of making the movies available in the home mere weeks after their theatrical debuts. Variety has a new report this week that claims that six out of seven Hollywood studios are in discussions. From the report: However, the companies, particularly Fox and Warner Bros., are showing greater flexibility about timing. Initially, Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara had kicked off negotiations with exhibitors by offering to cut them in on a percentage of digital revenues if they agreed to let them debut films on-demand for $50 a rental some 17 days after they opened. Currently, most major movies are only made available to rent some 90 days after their release. Some studios offer films for sale electronically roughly 70 days after their bow in theaters. Other studios, particularly Fox and Universal, felt that $50 was too steep a price to ask consumers to pay. They are now trying to get exhibitors to agree to a plan that would involve a lower priced premium on-demand option that was made available at a slightly later date, according to three studio insiders and two exhibition insiders. Fox and Warner Bros., for instance, are considering making films available between 30 to 45 days after their opening, but at $30 a rental, a price they believe won't give customers sticker shock. Universal, which is seen as being the most aggressive negotiator in these talks, would like the home entertainment debut to remain in the 20-day range.
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Studios Flirt With Offering Movies Early in Home for $30 More

Studios Flirt With Offering Movies Early in Home for $30

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  • Netflix - $10/month (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Meanwhile, Netflix is producing originals from Scorcese, Will Smith and Brad Pitt all for $10/month. I'll wait until these $30 movies hit Redbox for a buck.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'll wait until these $30 movies hit Redbox for a buck.

      It's amazing the studios just don't see the beauty in a $1/view world. I mean Redbox does this with physical media, and get people to actually leave their homes to get the movie. Image the profit if they did what Netflix used to do, which is offer box office movies "people want to see". That last part being the reason pirating exists for the most part.

      Let Netflix, HBO, Amazon, etc keep their original content stuff, and someone (maybe Redbox) build a streaming service that pulls from Zettabytes of stored bo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rhazz ( 2853871 )
      -1? Someone hates Netflix a lot.
  • I guess they figured that at $50, it would be a total flop and they'd just look stupid. At $30, they actually have something there, now that ticket prices are so f@cking high that I go only once every couple of years. I likely won't use it, but there are probably those that will.

  • Why Not On Release Day And For A Regular Price? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dryriver ( 1010635 ) on Thursday March 23, 2017 @12:47PM (#54096307)
    So film enthusiasts are supposed to spend themselves silly on 4K TV sets, upconverting BluRay players, broadband internet or streaming setups, and then you can't view a film the day it is released because you need to be at the cinema for that? What is the difference between me "not going to the cinema and waiting 90 days for the rental" and "not going to the cinema and waiting 0 days for the rental"? People who WANT to go to cinema WILL go to the cinema. What's the point of keeping people who like to see films @home waiting for 20 - 90 days anyway?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cyn1c77 ( 928549 )

      What's the point of keeping people who like to see films @home waiting for 20 - 90 days anyway?

      Obviously, it is to pressure you to go to the cinema and spend more money.

      And I think it works. I know a lot of people who feel that they have to be the first to see a movie when it comes out. They will go to the cinema to do it.

  • Direct to video (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ugen ( 93902 ) on Thursday March 23, 2017 @12:50PM (#54096325)

    This will finally erase any remaining vestiges of differentiation between "true movies" and "direct to video"/TV shows etc. Which, in turn, in due time will eat into their profits. At the same time, they don't have much choice, do they?

    • Why are you so sure it would do that? Tiers of movies haven't had much to do with release method in a while. Studios will still be able to promote blockbusters just as much as they do now and ignore direct to video types just as well.

      It's not like they show a trailer for some big movie and the voiceover proudly announces "This one is NOT going straight to video! That means it's good probably!"

  • One more time? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Thursday March 23, 2017 @12:53PM (#54096357)

    Didn't we discuss this 2 or so weeks ago? Here's a summary of my conclusions (to save everybody time).

    Your local theater chain is going to hate this idea, few people will pay this much to see the movie at home instead of the theater, somebody will figure out how to pirate the film from their living room with much better quality and have a full resolution torrent up within 3 hours of the film's release... I think distributers are fooling themselves thinking this will rake in more revenue...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      Didn't we discuss this 2 or so weeks ago?

      This time with feeling!

    • -I don't care what my local chain thinks
      -I know a lot of people with families that would FAR rather pay $30 for their family to watch a movie at home (with pause and rewind) than pay $60+ to go to the movies
      -These same people already pay for their home theater to be the way THEY want, which includes no sticky floors and annoying assholes that disrupt movies.
      -There are many films, like comedies, that some of us REFUSE to see in the theater. The jokes that come second, and you can't hear because people are al

    • I assume someone last time pointed out that itunes music managed to make something of a profit [asymco.com] despite music piracy being really really really easy.

      Most consumers don't pirate. A lot of those of us who do tend to do it less when paying is an option. [lifehacker.com.au] When I pirate, it's entirely because of extra hoops I have to jump through like having to sign up for cable to watch HBO to watch game of thrones, or "no you have to go to the movie theater to watch that movie you want to watch or wait a few months."

      Some p

    • somebody will figure out how to pirate the film from their living room with much better quality and have a full resolution torrent up within 3 hours of the film's release.

      Even if that happens, pirating weirdly hasn't seemed to cut into the movie studio's profits. So, they probably don't care about that (exception being of course when they're asking for tougher copyright laws).

  • way too low (Score:5, Funny)

    by dprimary ( 215604 ) on Thursday March 23, 2017 @12:57PM (#54096393)

    I would want at least $100 from the studio to waste my time watching their movies. $800 to suffer through anything with Tom Cruse in it.

    • "$800 to suffer through anything with Tom Cruse in it."
      br>To be fair, his Sci-Fi based movies, of which there are several, have been pretty good. I almost missed seeing Edge of Tomorrow because the only thing my wife knew was "Tom Cruise". I make a Cruise exception for Sci-Fi.

      More on topic, if I could pay $30 and see a movie within a couple of weeks of release, I'd be all over it. This fits that gray area between "movies I will definitely see in theater" and "movies I'll wait for because the theat
  • The industry's mea culpa will be for the major studios to buy out all of these cinema chains and close a significant portion of them down. That's the only way the theaters will agree to this. Regular movie theaters will go the way of the drive in with a few kept around for nostalgia. This is a good thing.

  • There was some earlier Slashdot story that said something like $50 or $70.. glad realism is entering the picture here. Very happy to see some movies on release at home for $30, that actually may get traction.

    A side effect may be further upgrades to people's home theater setups as more people take advantage of the tranquility of a movie at home without a bunch of randos.

    • The funny part about this is that, before the release of Top Gun and the Pepsi ad which played at the beginning and "sponsored" the videoptape, new releases on VHS and Beta were pushing $90 in 1985 money. And that was so you could watch it on a 25-32" CRT. Amazing how things change...

  • We are trying to do to movies what we did to software with open source. Reduce its value so much that the people working in the industry struggle to survive. In a capitalist society if you dont pay cash for something you dont value it. We devalued software development by going from license fee based software to open source. Now we want to devalue entertainment by going from Studio funded blockbusters to all Indy movies made on shoestring budgets where the actors have to hold day jobs (Just like those contri

    • We are trying to do to movies what we did to software with open source. Reduce its value so much that the people working in the industry struggle to survive. In a capitalist society if you dont pay cash for something you dont value it. We devalued software development by going from license fee based software to open source. Now we want to devalue entertainment by going from Studio funded blockbusters to all Indy movies made on shoestring budgets where the actors have to hold day jobs (Just like those contributing to open source have to hold day jobs)

      Are you kidding? There are no shortage of people who will do things in front of a camera FOR FREE in the hopes that people will see them. Some are attention whores. Some are hobbyists. There are probably other categories.

    • We are trying to do to movies what we did to software with open source. Reduce its value so much that the people working in the industry struggle to survive

      Huh? That's not what open source did at all. It shifted the value from copying software to creating software. People are still paid to write open source software, it's just that now most of them are paid by companies who want the features added (or the bugs fixed) directly, rather than by some middlemen that want to charge per copy.

    • >> We devalued software development by going from license fee based software to open source.
      I don't see Red Hat out begging at corners; what's happened is that money isn't paid upfront for some sort of license fee, it's paid out for *support* of the code. If you decide the code is crap, you find an alternative & support *them*. This actually simplifies things by not sinking money into licensing at the beginning, and frankly how most enterprises operate anyway, with the removal of the upfront

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )

        You can still get jobs. You just dont earn the same. 20 years back a good software engineer could make 100-200 dollars an hour and have a lifestyle similar to a doctor. That doesnt happen anymore. The salesmen you hate for charging for copies are the one who were protecting the ecosystem with a high barrier to entry. The extra margin left room for innovation. Right now everyone is just running to stay in the same place and new stuff only gets created in college labs or in a few heavily funded unicorns.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )

      We are trying to do to movies what we did to software with open source. Reduce its value so much that the people working in the industry struggle to survive. In a capitalist society if you dont pay cash for something you dont value it. We devalued software development by going from license fee based software to open source.

      The fact that you think open source software is always free (as in beer) and doesn't create jobs shows how little you understand it.

      Now we want to devalue entertainment by going from Studio funded blockbusters to all Indy movies made on shoestring budgets where the actors have to hold day jobs

      That's how capitalism works. People pay for what they believe has value. Judging by the latest round of comic book hero movies racking in hundreds of million dollars you can save your crocodile tears.

      (Just like those contributing to open source have to hold day jobs)

      And what about those thousands of jobs created around open source software? Hosting providers, software developers who use open source tools, massive companies built on open sou

  • I would love this. I have two young babies and a nice home theater system. I'd save money on a sitter, and be able to pause when I want to take a mid-movie pee break.
    • I don't get it. Given the choice between paying $30 now, or $1-3 in a few months once it's out on rental / streaming services, you'd pick the former? I can't think of a single film in the last decade that I've wanted to see so much that I'd pay an order of magnitude more to see it now. Plus there's a reasonable sized backlog of things that I want to watch, so even if I watch them in release order they're all available to rent cheaply by the time I get around to them.
      • You must not have a lot of social interaction. There's something about a shared experience. It's why the Superbowl draws such huge crowds, even when very few care for the outcome or the sport. While coworkers and I don't watch all the same movies or shows, the conversations we have about new episodes or films are a critical part of the bonding process that makes us an effective team. The same can be said of friendships. As a parent of several children, my opportunities to interact with other adults are limi

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          This right here is why multiculturalism tends to fail. It's much harder to have a shared bonding experience when you have absolutely nothing in common (religion, culture, ethics/values) with your coworkers.

        • So you're saying you don't even want to watch the film, you just want to be able to talk about it later (but only in the next few days)? The problem with that idea is that it only works if you surround yourself with other keep-up-with-the-Joneses types who insist on watching the latest blockbuster as soon as it comes out and have limited other conversational topics.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        There's a whole world of people for whom the bargain side of everything matters more than the thing they got a bargain on.

        My dad is like this -- he will always put up with inferior quality or drastically reduced choice if it saves him a buck and it really has nothing to do with his financial status. In fact, he often has broken or otherwise unusable things cluttering his life that he can't use but can't get rid of because he "spent good money on them"

        Meanwhile, he spends so much time shopping for a low pri

  • I'm obviously not the market for this. We still pay $1.50 to get our movies at Redbox. We maybe watch three movies a month, so about $5 a month on movies (sometimes less when we get a Redbox coupon). Paying even $30 a month would be extreme sticker shock for us. Heck, every Tuesday around here all the theaters have $5 movie day when all movies all day long are $5, even new releases. So it is just $10 for my wife and I to go watch a new release in the theater. $30? Not going to happen.

    • It only means you're not even a potential user, that's all. Myself, I find that renting even for only $1.50 is just too much with the hassle of having to go rent the disc and then bring it back, compared to what Netflix offers for $10 per month while staying at home.

  • If you are upper middle class family with 2 children and own a media room with a large (60 inch +) TV with fancy seats and a seperate speaker system, then it makes sense to get this product.

    Your media room is close enough to theater environment, and it is cheaper to pay $30 for one movie than to buy 4 movie tickets.

    And you can also invite friends over and have a party.

    Think of it like a superbowl party, but instead it is a DeadPool 2 party.

  • Are we in a negotiations stage? If so I would watch any good new release at home on the same day for $10 Give me old movies for $2 each and I'll buy 100's of them if they are cross platform watchable to replace my 800+ dvd collection. Hell even if I lost some of them in say HD crashed I wouldn't care cause @ $2 I'd buy them all again.

    But the stud's want to be a get more blood out of a stone boutique business and charge $50 that only some people would buy vs selling for $2 that tens of millions would buy and

  • Studios: Make all the material available all the time, everywhere, at reasonable prices. Insist in your pig-headedness to stick to a dying business model, and watch how lots of potential income disappears in front of your eyes. Learn once and for all that most people download movies from so-called pirate sites not to stick it to the man, but because it is convenient and easy. Most of us would pay you a reasonable amount per movie (stick your silly packages you know where) event if we could get them free. T
  • Way too much. I'm fine waiting for the blu ray or UHD, which is far better quality than streaming anyways. For absolutely critical movies (e.g. Star Wars) I'll see it in a theater anyways.

    Side rant: These fucking ads at the top of Slashdot is the worst fucking thing ever. It keeps flickering as I scroll and covering up the content. Get fucking rid of these, you asshats.
  • This is the part where the movie theater associations of each state get together and protest the movie studios being allowed to sell directly to customers, right?

    Oh wait, that's car dealers! Sorry, my mistake.

  • Getting it early just translates to not getting it artificially delayed.

  • I thought they were offering you a whole set of movies for that kind of cash!! Don't they realize that you like more than one movie?? Or is this for the upper $250.000/yr class? ..The soda and popcorn prices alone, will kill you at a movie with your kids. Someone is raking in to much money in Hollywood.

  • Yes! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That will make them go on torrent sites even quicker!

  • It's the whole thing that I pay higher prices for.

    I go to a theater to lose myself in cobbled up surroundings I'm not responsible for and simply order goodies off the shelf instead of having to cook them so I can nibble as I watch whatever it is on a huge screen with bombastic sound when required.

    I'm going to pay twice the amount to forgo all the things I like about movie going why?

    If I'm forgoing the theater, I certainly don't care enough about the viewing delay to shell out twice what I didn't the first t

  • How are the studios in discussions about release dates and pricing and not in jail? This is blatant price fixing and supply limiting. I didn't see which third world country are these discussions taking place but it can't be any Western country.

  • Final offer.

  • ...rip 'em off in the home.

    A few stories down in my browser is a story about how 18-24 year-olds aren't going to the theater. Why, oh, why would anybody balking at spending $10+/seat in a theater be happy to cough up $30 to watch the same movie in their home?

    If that's the best that Hollywood executives can come up with as an answer to a problem of declining box office receipts, then there needs to be a mass housecleaning of the people running the studios. Apparently those currently residing in the boardr

  • I'm OK with it (Score:3)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Thursday March 23, 2017 @06:51PM (#54099089)

    I guess that means we get better quality torrents on the first day instead of waiting weeks for the bluray.

  • How about actually asking consumers what they want?

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