Coming Simultaneously To A Theater and TV Near You

What if new movies were released to theaters, home television sets and DVDs all at once. That scenario might not be far off, based on a New York Times story. The article discusses an initiative by IFC Entertainment to simultaneously release 24 films to theaters and cable pay-per-view TV at the same time. Granted, these releases will be to independent theaters, but I think it signals the beginning of some big changes in the movie industry as a whole.

In a related post here two weeks ago, I cited an AP-AOL poll that revealed 73 percent of adults would prefer to watch movies in their homes. The Internet and entertainment industry has time after time witnessed the fact that digital content wants to lose its dependence on the middleman. The theaters are the middlemen of the movie industry. As I said before, I don’t want theaters to go away, but consumers are demanding, and will likely get access to movies that are now controlled through an outdated oligarchy. Theaters will probably have to compete with the home for first showings, and, ultimately, that should improve and streamline the theater business, not eliminate it. Mark Cuban has a great read on this in a post yesterday.

According to a DVD industry article, the average time between a movie’s theatrical release and its release later on DVD has shrunk from six months a few years ago, to a little over three months now at some studios. Given the trends in this Internet age, and consumer preferences for movies at home, I would say this lag time between theatrical and DVD release will continue to shrink. Eventually, even big studio new-release movies might be seeing their intial debut on your home’s 50-inch HDTV.