Less than 24-hours after we posted a story on the lawsuit filed against Muvico by a 22-year-old for being arrested for filming inside a movie theatre an email arrived from Patrick Corcoran, the National Association of Theatre Owners’ Director of Media & Research.
Corcoran not only provided a statement about Samantha Tumpach’s suit, but along with Brigette Buehlman also filled in a few details about the organization’s Take Action reward program.
Tumpach was arrested in November for filming portions of “Twilight: New Moon” during her sister’s birthday party inside a Chicago movie theatre. Her suit alleges that she was given no warning to stop filming and that even after the MPAA suggested releasing her, the theatre’s management had her arrested to collect a reward for stopping a camcorder pirate.
In our previous post Corcoran pointed out that Tumpach’s assertions were printed as fact, rather than allegations. Fair enough. That the history being presented was being drawn from Tumpach’s allegations and news reports could have been made clearer.
Corcoran also wrote:
“Any upset or unpleasantness Miss Tumpach believes she has suffered was a consequence of her own actions. Muvico was well within its rights to act as they did. Recording any part of a movie in a theater is illegal.
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It’s hard to believe it’s been more than two years since the National Association Of Theatre Owners (NATO) announced they would be taking control of their annual trade show in 2011 when their contract expired with Nielsen Film Group. At ShoWest in March NATO made public the name of their new confab, Cinemacon. Now NATO has solidified the dates of the revamped convention, which will be held at March 28th to March 31st, 2011 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
ShoWest ran for 36 years and grew into one of the largest and most important annual events for motion picture exhibitors and distributors. NATO is planning for CinemaCon to take up the mantle of largest annual gathering of worldwide theatre owners and as such are moving the event across the Vegas strip from Bally’s and Paris Hotels to Caesars Palace.
The new venue will offer more modern facilities and is meant to accommodate the size of the trade show, especially when it comes to screening product reels and upcoming releases from big Hollywood studios. Such presentations will be held in The Colosseum, a 4,200 seat theatre usually reserved for the likes of Celine Dion and Elton John. NATO is expecting 5,000 attendees at the first CinemaCon.
Like ShoWest, NATO plans for CinemaCon to set the tone for the upcoming summer movie season and will fill the schedule with “sponsored events, seminars, trade show, screenings, product presentations and a gala award show”.
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Dan Glickman and John Fithian at ShoWest
The National Association of Theatre Owners president, John Fithian, and the outgoing chairman of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, Dan Glickman, trumpeted 2009’s record breaking box office grosses as well as advances in piracy protection during their annual “State of the Industry” address at ShoWest on Tuesday. What seemed more important to everyone in attendance however was that the speech marked the last appearance by Glickman as the head of the MPAA.
Not that Glickman plans on disappearing entirely. As he put it moments before walking onstage to deliver his remarks, “It may not be my last time at ShoWest, hopefully it is not. John has promised to invite me every year, but it’s my last time in this job.” Glickman is leaving his post April 1st to take over as head of the non-profit organization Refugees International.
Of course, technically this will be the last time Glickman attends ShoWest since NATO will be taking the show over next year and changing its name to CinemaCon. Glickman may not have to worry about getting an invite though, for Fithian had nothing but kind words to say about him. “He really has contributed an amazing amount of leadership and support to this industry over the last six years, from intellectual property to the ratings system to opening up new markets oversees,” Fithian said of Glickman. He’s been just a terrific partner. . . he will be sorely missed by those of us in the movie business.”
Speaking of the movie business, it’s apparently doing quite well, at least theatrically. Fithian highlighted the USD $30 billion international box office gross earned in 2009 with USD $10.6 billion coming from North American, an increase of more than 10%. The NATO exec credits the ongoing theatrical success to advances in technology which have allowed for better presentations at modern luxury cinemas and the ease of purchasing tickets on mobile devices or online. Studios were also major contributors by spreading out their releases according to Fithian:
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On the first day of this year’s ShoWest, the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) has made it known that when they take back the event next year it will undergo a name change to CinemaCon. The logo being used for the annual convention of theatre owners and movie distributors can be seen above.
ShoWest (which is taking place in Las Vegas now through March 19th) was originally NATO’s annual trade show. The group still co-produces the event, however ten years ago they contracted with the Sunshine Group to actually organize and run it. Since then, the Sunshine Group was purchased by Nielsen Business Media who ran the conference as a for-profit endeavor. In 2008, NATO announced it would launch it’s own convention in 2011, once the contract for ShoWest expired. Since the ShoWest name is now owned by Nielsen, NATO had to come up with a different moniker.
In talking with NATO spokesman Patrick Corcoran about the new show he stated, “By running a new non-profit convention, NATO can provide greater value at lower costs to theater industry. Having a show run by and for the industry allows us to celebrate and promote moviegoing in a way that benefits the industry and our customers.”
NATO’s president, John Fithian, echoed Corcoran’s comments during a press conference held early Tuesday morning, just before his annual State of the Industry address:
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John Fithian of NATO
Not even a record setting rain storm could keep cinema professionals away from the Universal Hilton in Universal City yesterday where the International Cinema Technology Association was holding it’s annual tech conference. After a Monday evening cocktail reception, the program began in earnest with a keynote address from John Fithian, President of the National Association of Theatre Owners.
In a speech billed as a “State of the Industry” in the conference schedule, Fithian covered a wide range of hot button topics not all of which were geared strictly to many of the motion picture engineers in the room. He began by recapping the box office records that were shattered in 2009, a year which saw North American combined grosses surpass the USD $10 billion mark. Fithian was quick to point out that such earnings were not due to just the rise in ticket prices, but rather an increase in the number of patrons visiting cinemas nationwide. In fact, decade-over-decade, the average number of moviegoers rose from 995 million in the 1970’s to 1.13 billion in 1980’s upwards to 1.28 billion in the 1990’s settling at 1.44 billion for the decade which just ended.
A good portion of Fithian’s talk was focused on many of the reasons 2009 was such a spectacular year for the cinema business and how the industry might continue to grow even more. He detailed three key drivers he believed were responsible, not the least of which was the major studios getting better at understanding there are 12 months in the calender. Fithian stated:
For years we put out everything in the summer, we put out everything in the holidays and you couldn’t find an person in the cinema in February or September. That is no longer the case…. we’re getting good pictures that appeal to different demographics with different genres spread throughout the 12 months and that’s fantastic. That’s what we have to have.
Affordability of movies as a form of entertainment was the second reason Fithian gave for 2009’s growth. Despite the increase in ticket prices over the years, and even with the premium for 3D films, the price of a movie ticket has not outpaced inflation. In 1969 the price of a movie ticket in the U.S. was USD $1.42. In 2009 that price had risen to a nationwide average of roughly USD $7.56. If ticket prices had kept up with the rate of inflation, then starting with USD $1.42 in 1969, we should presently have an average ticket price of USD $8.37.
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Last Thursday when the Motion Picture Association of America made public an ex parte communication they sent to the FCC in defense of a waiver request it caused a flurry of headlines about studios going to war with exhibitors over release windows. To be sure, the letter sent by the MPAA’s lawyers, as well as the press release they sent out the same day directly refer to release windows. The headline of the press release boldly reads “MPAA Seeks FCC Okay For Transmission of First Run Movies Directly To Consumers”. However the MPAA may simply be hiding behind the concept of protecting content during shortened release windows as camouflage for their true motive; securing high definition digital content as it is distributed into the electronic ether of the home by controlling which devices can playback and display the content.
The MPAA’s letter was sent as a rebuttal to a communication sent to the FCC in October by Public Knowledge arguing the waiver not be granted. PK (as they are often referred to) is based in Washington D.C. and considers and is a public interest group that focuses its efforts on digital technology. The second paragraph of the MPAA’s letter and third paragraph of the press release reads in part:
As MPAA has detailed throughout this proceeding, grant of the waiver would for the first time allow millions of consumers to view high-value, high-definition theatrical films during an early release window that is not available today. MPAA has explained that release of this high-value content as part of an earlier window, especially with respect to movies released for home viewing close to or even during their initial theatrical run, necessarily requires the highest level of protection possible through use of SOC.
Ignoring the reference to SOC for the time being (I’ll get to it in a bit), one can see how the phrase “close to or even during their initial theatrical run” might make motion picture exhibitors angry enough to storm MPAA headquarters. It didn’t help that outgoing MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman is quoted in the press release saying:
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Let’s face it, while mainstream media might be screaming about an economic recovery, times are still tough for many businesses all over the world. That is especially true for trade shows. No matter the industry focus, attendance at global conventions has dropped in 2009 by more than 25% in most cases. Just look at attendance at some of the annual confabs the motion picture industry holds; the Sundance Film Festival down 11%, ShoWest down 15%, NAB down 20%, the Cannes Film Festival down 30% and IBC in Amsterdam down at least 7%. That may be why at ShowEast, which was held in Orlando, Florida from October 26th to October 29th, the talk amongst delegates was as much about the trade show’s attendance as it was about 3-D, digital cinema and the upcoming blockbuster release “Avatar”.
While such conversation tends to feed on itself ultimately making mountains out of mole hills, Robert Sunshine, the Vice President of Nielsen Film Group which organizes the event, readily admits attendance at this year’s ShowEast, like most conventions around the world, was down roughly 20%. “It’s numbers that we don’t like to see,” said Sunshine. “We attribute it to the economy and we also attribute it to the fact that there are lots of [industry] conventions, there’s the major convention, ShoWest, and certain people don’t have the money to attend all of these shows so they are picking and choosing where they go.”
Another factor Sunshine might not be considering is that digital cinema is maturing, growing out of its infancy and into adolescence. The technology is responsible for one of the greatest, if not most disruptive, transitions the motion picture exhibition industry has ever seen. By now, there has been some shakeout in the number of companies who entered the digital cinema space, and those that remain are naturally looking to augment their marketing plans. This is a common trend in emerging markets and industries, though unfortunately this phenomena is taking place in digital cinema during a record setting recession.
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Ever since March of 2008 when the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) announced that they would be holding their own trade show in 2011 just before NAB the question has been, who will the organization get to put the event together. Speculation was that Bob and Andrew Sunshine who have been producing NATO’s official trade show, ShoWest, since 2001. After all, the Sunshine’s, who originally started out as the Sunshine Group Worldwide before being sold to Nielsen, have tons of experience organizing annual exhibitor conferences such as ShowEast, Cinema Expo and CineAsia.
Such a guess would not have been far off given that earlier today NATO announced they had hired Mitch Neuhauser to be the Show Manager of their official trade show, the first of which will be held in March of 2011. Presently, Neuhauser works with the Sunshines as Vice President of Nielsen Film Group. He is also already involved with NATO in some capacity as the assistant executive director of NATO of New York.
If you’ve ever been to any of the four trade shows Nielsen holds for exhibitors and distributors each year than you definitely know who Neuhauser is. Read More »
After the positive response the National Association of Theatre Owners received from their meeting last June with manufacturers and service providers to review their Digital Cinema System Requirements, they decided to hold another meeting last Friday in Burbank, CA to go over version 2.1. Brigitte Buehlmann , NATO’s Industry Issues Liaison, organized the meeting which was moderated by Michael Karagosian, a NATO consultant who oversaw the drafting of the latest requirements document. [Full Disclosure: I attended this meeting on behalf of my employer, DTS Digital Cinema.]
Version 2.1 of the Digital Cinema System Requirements was published in December of 2008, just ten months after version 2.0 was published and two years after version 1.0. This is a much speedier turnaround then the nearly three years it took the studios to update their phonebook size DCI Specification from version 1.0 to version 1.2, the latter of which was released in March of 2008. No doubt, the dialogue NATO and its members began with manufacturers and service providers back in June expedited their ability to put a little meat on the bones of the first version of their requirements.
Indeed, version 2.1 of NATO’s Digital Cinema Systems Requirements is 21 pages in length, up from 14 in the previous draft. And while there are definitely remnants of version 1.0 in the document, it’s remarkable how different this latest draft is in certain areas from the one that preceded it. Read More »
On the eve of the National Association of Theatre Owners’ meeting with equipment vendors to review digital cinema requirements on Friday, Paramount Pictures has thrown the exhibition industry a curve ball in the hopes of resuscitating the stalled rollout of the technology. Rather than work solely through integrators such as Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP) and Cinedigm (formerly AccessIT), Paramount has become the first Hollywood studio to offer North American exhibitors financial assistance for digital cinema installations.
What’s significant about Paramount’s announcement is that previously studios have refused to cut deals to reimburse exhibitors for digital cinema installations directly with exhibitors for fear of future anti-trust litigation. Instead, they relied on digital cinema systems integrators to provide a buffer between themselves and theatre owners. But, with the digital cinema rollout at a near stand still, Paramount seems to be throwing caution to the winds.
Paramount has a vested interest in seeing digital cinema take off, specifically to increase the number of 3-D capable projection systems. This March the studio will be releasing Dreamworks Animations’ “Monsters vs. Aliens” in 3-D and presently the United States and Canada only have about 1,200 screens properly equipped with 3-D systems. Paramount has been promoting the film heavily for nearly a year at industry trade shows and will be airing a 3-D commercial for the movie during the upcoming Super Bowl telecast.
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