Disney screws with UK cinema market yet again, Odeon caves
The BBC reports that Odeon’s reversed its decision to boycott the upcoming Alice in Wonderland film “following talks with Disney”. If you’ve not followed this story, Odeon got narked after Disney announced it was to ignore the standard ’17 weeks to DVD’, dropping the gap by four weeks. This, argued Odeon, would screw over UK cinema chains by setting a new benchmark that would reduce their potential revenue.
Disney’s stance is that by getting the DVD out sooner, it’ll reduce bootlegging. I have two helpful hints to Disney in this regard:
- A brilliant way to stop bootlegging is to stop screwing over the international market. If you release all of your films at the same time everywhere, rather than many of them in the US first and six months later everywhere else, people will be more likely to rush out to see them, rather than reading about them in some mag, twiddling thumbs for a few days, reading more online reviews from the US, getting impatient and then torrenting the films. Note: happily, this will also deal with the ‘disappointing international box office returns’ you keep whining about regarding Pixar films that are out on Region 1 DVD by the time they finally arrive in cinemas in the UK and elsewhere.
- You cannot bootleg a cinema experience. It’s pretty clear that many films—including a lot of those by Disney—are as much about the environment and the big screen these days as the story. To that end, reducing the potential amount of time films stay in cinemas by at least four weeks is stupid.
>You cannot bootleg a cinema experience.
That’s garbage to think that! If you had been around in the mid-80’s you would know that cinema was barely making a profit and keeping their heads above water. You would also realize that people don’t care that much about the whole cinema experience when they can enjoy it at home, in the peace of their own surroundings. Think about it.
And I forgot to mention that that was in the days of crappy full screen vhs pan and scan. Never mind that most people have the equiveilent of mini cinemas in their homes these days.
I was around in the mid-1980s, but I hardly see how that’s relevant. In looking at the situation _today_, cinema is doing extremely well, and one cannot replicate the experience at home, unless you have a wall-sized projection screen, a huge room, and a load of friends over for every film—in which case you just built yourself a cinema anyway.