One of the anachronisms that has annoyed movie lovers over the last few years is the stubborn insistence by movie studios and movie theater chains that there must be a 90 day period between the first theatrical performance of a movie and its release on DVD, Blu-ray or digital downloads. This waiting period has been put in place primarily for the benefit of the theater chains, and finding a solution that is agreeable to them has been a long time in coming. Paramount has decided to share some of the profits with theater chains in a pilot program that will release two movies only two weeks after their theatrical debut.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that two upcoming Paramount films, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension and Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, will be used in the pilot program. American AMC and Canadian Cineplex are the two theater chains that have made the agreement with Paramount, and they will receive a portion of the revenue derived from digital downloads.
An inadvertent early release of the movie Hot Tub Time Machine 2 resulted in "digital revenue more than twice as high as the studios normally expect", according to the Wall Street Journal report. So the movie studios have been aware for some time that the 90 day window is a huge disadvantage for them, especially since pirated copies of movies appear on the net far more quickly. Movie release dates in Australia have already been reduced from 120 days to 90, but this move has not been particularly effective in reducing piracy in that country.
I, for one, applaud this effort from Paramount and wish them success in their experiment. Balancing the economic interests of the studios and the theaters is going to be difficult, to say the least. And we may see that the blockbuster hits will still be delayed more than the run of the mill movies. But this is a step in the right direction.
