In Insight Media’s latest issue of Display Watch - which was digitally delivered to subscribers today - Garry Kayye of Kayye Consulting suggested that Hollywood could improve its decreasing sales by releasing DVDs of its movies for sale and video-on-demand download at the same time the movies are released to theaters.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor
of HDTV Retailer

Kay argues that people still want to watch movies, but they are becoming increasingly disenchanted with movie theaters and both the direct and indirect costs of going to them. At the same time, more and more people have advanced TV sets and sound systems that provide a good approximation of the cinematic experience - but without overpriced popcorn, expensive baby sitters, and raucous teen-agers in the row behind you. With simultaneous release, Kayye says, marketing of the DVD could piggyback on the high-intensity advertising and publicity campaign for the theatrical release. Sales would increase (and come earlier), and the studios would see increased overall income. Kayye also believes consumers would pay a premium to get the DVD early.

But some adventurous souls in the movie industry are already implementing this strategy, or variations on it. Mark Cuban’s 2929 Entertainment will release Steven Soderbergh’s movie “Bubble” this coming January, and they will do it simultaneously in theaters, on cable, and on DVD. (If the people involved with 2929 didn’t own both theaters and a cable channels, they probably wouldn’t have been able to pull this off. But they do and they are.)

There are other spins on the basic idea. Actor Morgan Freeman, together with Intel, started the ClickStar Internet operation this past July. Freeman was at the Dubai International Film Festival last week looking for independent films for simultaneous theatrical release and downloading over ClickStar. Said Freeman, “We want to give people what they want, when they want it. We are following the wave.”

IndieFlix, founded just two months ago, uses a lower-cost delivery platform. The company burns films onto DVDs and fulfills on-line orders. Price? It’s $9.95 a disk. With IndieFlix, the DVD release isn’t simultaneous with a theatrical release; it is the release.

These initial experiments are the thin edge of a big axe that could change to way films are released, if not made. Who’s threatened the most? It has to be the exhibitors - the guys who own movie theaters. What’s their counterattack? Accelerate the installation of high-resolution digital projectors and once again make the movie-going experience what it used to be - something special.