Warner pictures has just announced the intention of
releasing a gaggle of horror films straight to DVD. Other studios have had
straight to DVD for years, but not Warner, they just were not that hungry.
Everyone probably has at least heard of, if not seen, "The Blair Witch
Project," a low budget thriller that made a hit at the box office. According to
this report at the LA Times, the director of that film, Daniel
Myrick, along with Fox producer Tony Krantz and John Shiban, a TV
writer involved in the production of WB series "Supernatural" and "The
X-Files," will each direct a film for under 5 million apiece. They will
collaborate together on the projects by sharing crews and equipment.
The projects will go straight to optical and bypass
the theaters completely. A bold move and one that will surely upset theater
owners. However, if we read the statistics below, we can see that maybe DVD and
home viewing is where the money is at.
year, consumers spent $22.8 billion buying and renting DVDs, up about 8% from the prior year, according to Digital Entertainment Group, a trade association. Of that, purchased DVDs accounted for 71% of the money spent '” or $16.3 billion. By comparison, domestic ticket sales in movie theaters in 2005 totaled $8.99 billion. "You can really launch a new product on DVD without having the benefit of a theatrical release," said Jeff Baker, a Warner Home Video vice president. Raw Feed's combination of a big studio and proven talent is unusual in the direct-to-DVD market. To date, such fare has mostly been animated family films and sequels or remakes made with B-list actors and unknown writers and directors. A recent example is last year's prequel "Carlito's Way: Rise to Power," a Universal Home Entertainment release that featured little-known Jay Hernandez as the young Carlito Brigante, the role Al Pacino made famous in the original 1993 film. |
A family of five that decides to visit a neighborhood
theater, could easily spend 100 dollars US only to discover that the film was a
big disappointment! It is a much easier pill to swallow, if we simply rent a DVD
for 2 or 3 dollars, we can laugh that off, or say what the heck, it was only 3
bucks. Which seems to be the case more and more these days at my house, with
moronic Saturday Night Live skits becoming full length feature "films" such as
Deuce Bigelow, or cheesy remakes like Basic Instinct 2 and even Stealth was
a real snore fest. Just because a film is studded with stars, it is by no means
a guarantee of a decent night of entertainment. Many aren't even suited for
the big screen, they are an embarrassment and you hate even to be seen walking
out of some of these turkeys.
If the paradigm of DVD sales and rental growth continues at these percentage
points, we can only expect to see the discrepancy between theater tickets and
DVD sales increase dramatically! Home theaters with surround sound and high
quality monitors are so much an improvement over what we had just a few years
ago. It's also nice to watch something at home after a hard days work, rather
that schlep to the theater with an entire family in tow, only
to become upset with standing in lines, praying for a decent seat where
everyone can set together, high prices and self-serve concessions. You can buy a
very nice DVD player for the cost of visiting the theater one time! Even a child
can hook it up in minutes.
If the project mentioned here today is a success, then the theaters should
become very concerned. Who would have thought that the movie theater would go
the same route as the old fashioned drive-in? Light pollution and urban
growth got the drive-in, making it impossible to see the screens, now it looks
like optical storage technology could do in the
theater.
Source: LA Times
