Tag Archives: New York Times

More Rumblings About DCIP’s Financing

February 28, 2010

Last week both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported that an announcement from Digital Cinema Implementation Partners about their financing was imminent. The opportunity to play 3D content will certainly be welcomed by AMC Theatres, Regal Cinemas and Cinemark, however from the way the two newspapers covered the story you might get the impression it was the only reason. The financing would allow Hollywood studios to “roll out more 3-D movies in the wake of the success of James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’” wrote the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times said the “money would allow future 3-D film releases”.

Both media outlets seem to have gotten their hands on some internal briefings or at the very least seen an early draft of a press release as they have updated some of the details from previous reports about DCIP’s financing. A more exact figure of USD $660 million was cited by both papers which is down from the original USD $700 million rumor which was first floating around. As well, the number of screens has been upped to 14,000 from 12,000 with the Wall Street Journal putting the number of actual theatre sites being converted at 1,100. The New York Times laid out the details as follows:

According to a draft announcement making the rounds in Hollywood, the new financing, arranged by JPMorgan and Blackstone Advisory Partners, would total about $660 million. Of that, $445 million is expected to come from senior bank debt, $135 million from what is described as “junior capital” and $80 million from equity contributed by the member theater circuits. Nine banks, including Bank of America and Citibank, are part of the lending group. Blackstone raised the $135 million from other investors.

I always find it amusing to see how mainstream media covers the transition to digital cinema in reporting such news. The Wall Street Journal piece states:

In a digital conversion, theaters rip out old celluloid film projectors, and stop receiving weekly shipments of large film canisters. They instead use fiber optic lines to transfer huge digital film files.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted in Digital Cinema, Integrators

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TI’s 4K Announcement Causes Waves - Wither 2K Now?

By Patrick von Sychowski

June 18, 2009

The announcement on Celluloid Junkie that Texas Instruments is developing 4K projector solutions is causing waves throughout the industry. The story was picked up by both THR.com (DLP making the jump to 4K) and Variety (TI leaping into 4K fray), which despite their headline both acknowledge that TI was effectively forced into this situation by the Sony tie up with Regal and AMC.Perhaps the best other coverage came from Eric Taub in the New York Times:

TI has always said that 2K is good enough, with tests showing that consumers can’t see the difference.

TI has been against 4K, until they were for it. On Thursday, the company announced that it would now market 4K technology, which will be incorporated into their next-generation projector technology to be manufactured by a variety of partners.

The company will continue to sell 2K projectors to the majority of its customers, according to Nancy Fares, business manager for TI’s DLP Cinema Products Group.

Ms. Fares said that this is not a case of TI trying to play catchup to Sony, which recently announced a number of large contracts to install its 4K projectors in AMC, Muvico, and Regal Entertainment cinemas. Texas Instruments has been working on 4K technology for two years, she said.

And when TI said that most consumers can’t see the difference between a 2K and 4K image, the company is sticking to its guns.

Their 4K technology will only be installed in about 20 percent of its customers’ theaters, the “brightest and biggest” with screens 70 feet and larger in size.

TI has meanwhile put out a press release providing details:

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Popularity: 22% [?]

Posted in Business, Digital Cinema, Technology

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Oh Dear, New York Times Not Impressed By ShoWest

By Patrick von Sychowski

April 7, 2009

Don’t take our word for it, the New York Times has taken a long hard look at ShoWest and noted that it is not what it used to be. In fairness to both NYT and ShoWest the article’s author Brook Barnes does an admirable job of giving a balanced portrait of a complex relationship between studios, exhibitors, vendors and the organisers of the event. It is worth reading the whole piece to get a proper overview, but a flavour can be had from this bit:

…there are signs everywhere that the event’s once-infamous sizzle has been snuffed out. Gone are the trade show vendors handing out free hot dogs. Gone is the parade of megawatt stars. Gone are some attendees: the number of registered conventiongoers is 2,400, a 15 percent decline from last year.

Booth rentals are down by 5 percent, although Mr. Neuhauser emphasized that a number of first-time renters have made up for others who have left.

Universal issued a statement saying cost cutting was behind its decision. “We looked hard at conventions and felt it was necessary to cut in that area,” the statement read, in part.

While trimming their spending on ShoWest, some studios say they will remain loyal. “We’re not hosting an event that involves much pageantry or really any food,” said Jeff Blake, chairman of Sony Pictures’ worldwide marketing and distribution. “But we still see this as an important opportunity to let exhibitors know what we have coming.”

Nowhere is there any mention of the show being taken back by NATO in two years’ time. Nor are there any implications discussed for the likes of ShowEast (unlikely to survive without its bigger West Coast sibling), Cinema Expo (challenged by a new cinema trade show in Brussels), CineAsia (constantly moving and seemingly too small to last), though chances are that ShowCanada will survive because, well, why shouldn’t Canada have its own cinema show? Read More »

Popularity: 17% [?]

Posted in Events

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AMC Set To Deploy Sony 4K Digital Projectors

By J. Sperling Reich

March 29, 2009

On the eve of ShoWest, the largest trade show for the motion picture exhibition and distribution industry, AMC Entertainment is set to announce that it will install Sony’s 4K digital projectors on all of their screens. According to Variety and the New York Times, the world’s second largest cinema chain will begin installing the equipment in the second quarter of 2009 and complete the rollout by 2012. Presently AMC has 4,628 screens across 309 theatres.

The circuit is no stranger to Sony’s projectors having already installed 150 units to date.

The announcement comes on the heels of last Thursday’s news that AMC chose RealD as the 3D technology provider for 1,500 of its screens. The cinema chain already has 29 screens capable of showing 3D films. Together the two announcements are the culmination of the agreement made public in February that Sony and RealD would team up to merge the two companies’ technologies into a combined 3D product offering.

Besides being the kind of news the industry was hoping to hear at ShoWest, given the stalled digital cinema rollout, this is a huge win for Sony. As the Times points out, there has been little competition for Texas Instruments, which as installed it’s DLP projection technology on nearly 5,500 screens. Read More »

Popularity: 45% [?]

Posted in Miscellaneous

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Booming U.S. Box Office Makes Headlines

By J. Sperling Reich

March 16, 2009

John Fithian of NATO

These days, with the global economic crisis at full force dominating headlines, it seems mainstream media will jump on anything that even smells like positive news. So, it’s no wonder with North American box office earning a billion dollars in January and an additional US $800 million in February that media outlets would break their tradition of only covering box office grosses on Monday mornings in favor of feature stories about how moviegoers have returned to theatres.

A spate of articles in various publications was kicked off on February 25th by Andreas Fuchs’ Film Journal piece in which John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), holds forth in a “state of the industry” interview. A good portion of the lengthy piece is devoted to the current state of the digital cinema transition, which Fithian still believes will heat up in 2009 despite any financial woes. Fithian then goes on to describe the exhibition industry as being “recession-resilient” though stopped short of calling it “recession-proof”:

“The cinema is a relatively inexpensive way to be entertained. If people don’t have money to go on a big vacation, they take a mini-holiday at their local movie theatre. So the environment of challenging times is generally good for us, but that doesn’t mean it always works. You need to have good movies. People are not going to escape the burdens of the day by going to see a bad film.”

While U.S. box office set an all time record in 2008 with US $9.79 billion in grosses, Fithian points out that admissions were actually down 2.5% Read More »

Popularity: 36% [?]

Posted in Business

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Opera Industry Voices Concern Over Movie Theatre Broadcasts

By J. Sperling Reich

February 19, 2009

Many who know me are aware what a big opera buff I am. I’ve held a subscription to the Los Angeles Opera’s annual season for at least the past five years, and when I travel I make a point of trying to see an opera in each city I visit. But when CJ’s co-editor Patrick Von Sychovski forwarded me an article from last Friday’s New York Times about operas being screened in cinemas around the world I was a little ambivalent. Why did we need another article about how wonderful it is operas are reaching the masses through movie theatres? Especially the umpteenth article from the Times about the successful Metropolitan Opera program. We get it; opera is the new black, it’s the greatest thing to happen to movie theatres since the invention of the popcorn kernel. What more could we possibly learn about operas being shown in movie theatres?!

Apparently. . . quite a lot.

In fact, the article by Daniel J. Wakin’s article advanced the story of showing operas in cinemas quite a bit and went deeper than simply rehashing the successful program offered by the Met. Back in June of 2008, at Opera America’s annual conference of opera professionals, several managers and artists actually complained about the Met’s ongoing dalliance with streaming its performances into movie theatres. Wakin’s writes:

The dissenters say that the movement will lead to more conservative programming; that the voice will become subservient to appearance; that listeners will be trained to hear something electronic and lose an appreciation for a live experience.

Some worry that vocal training will change, de-emphasizing the ability to project, and that the Met’s effort is a deal with the Devil, because it will divert audiences from local opera houses to make the easier, cheaper trip to the mall.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Posted in Alternative Content

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NY Times’ Pogue Upset With Movie Trailers

By J. Sperling Reich

January 5, 2008

David Pogue, the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times, is taking Hollywood studios to task for putting content in their movie trailers that doesn’t actually appear in their movies. On Thursday, Pogue wrote a post in his blog on the Times’ website blasting the trailer for ‘National Treasure: Book of Secrets‘ for containing shots and scenes which did not make the film and depicting scenes completely out of context. He gave several examples, including but not limited to:

The trailer showing shots of Egyptian landmarks, though none of the movie takes place in Egypt;
A shot flying over Mount Rushmorein the trailer which does not appear in the film;
Shots of the movie’s star, Nicolas Cage, at the Lincoln Memorial shown in the trailer do not wind up in the film;
The trailer showing a character portraying the President of the United States dramatically telling Cage he is on the N.S.A., C.I.A. and F.B.I.’s most wanted list, but the scene does not exist in the finished movie.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Posted in Trailers

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IMAX Gives AMC 100 Digital 3D Projectors For Free

By Patrick von Sychowski

December 7, 2007

Imax and AMC really, really REALLY like each other in a digital-3D-biggest-deal-EVER kind of way. Yes, it is big. In fact, the news is so big that nobody at Imax has recovered from its impact sufficiently to post a press release on its corporate page yet. But there is plenty of coverage on the trades, regular press and blogs.

The Canadian large format (LF) film specialist is not exaggerating when it calls this deal the most important in the company’s history. This will see 100 new digital screens opening across 33 markets in the US over three years, thus doubling the number of Imax screens in the US. Varity has some of the details:

Pact between Imax and AMC Entertainment was announced late Thursday afternoon. Additional screens will be a major boost for the advancement of modern-day 3-D, since the digital Imax screens will be capable of exhibiting 3-D movies, in addition to 2-D titles.

New Imax digital projection systems will be installed in many of AMC’s top-performing theaters, including the Empire in New York City and 12 locations in the Los Angeles area, including Century City.

And:

Rollout of the first 50 screens will begin in July 2008. An additional 25 will be installed in 2009 and the remaining 25 in 2010.

But it is the more mainstream New York Times that has a better take on the financial specifics that underpin the deal:

In gearing up more theaters, Imax and AMC are chasing different goals. AMC, which is based in Kansas City, Mo., is trying to battle an industrywide slump in attendance while squeezing out more revenue from existing auditoriums. Because Imax tickets cost an extra $2 to $4, the conversion should increase revenue in the converted auditoriums by one third, according to Peter C. Brown, the chief executive of AMC.

For Imax, the joint venture carries extra weight. The company, with headquarters in New York and Toronto, has struggled to expand into mainstream movie theaters from its roots in science and history museums. Although it has persuaded some movie studios to release Imax versions of their regular films, Imax has recently suffered loses associated with regulatory inquiries into its accounting methods.

The Newspaper of Record also reveals that this is not a cheap or profitable deal for Imax:

Imax will shoulder the expense of the projectors, which cost about $500,000 each. AMC, one of the world’s largest movie theater chains, will pay to retrofit auditoriums in top-performing movie complexes in 33 cities, reconfiguring the seats and enlarging the screens.

Free projectors!! So AMC is effectively getting massively subsidized as Imax’s first digital 3D customer. What with AMC’s previous deal with Sony for 54 4K digital cinema projectors (free too?), it seems that one of the three NCM and DCIP partners believes in financial salvation through technology. The recent release of ‘Beowulf’ proved, if anything, that the greatest profits are to be made from Imax 3D, rather than the RealD’s digital 3D (read ‘Why Beowulf spells bad news for digital 3D business‘), despite the RealD screens vastly outnumbering the Imax 3D ones.

Will this deal be enough for Imax to find financial salvation? The Motley Fool isn’t convinced (’Why Can’t IMAX Fade to Black?‘):

If you think that the screens are big at IMAX (Nasdaq: IMAX), just wait until you see the deficits.

OK, so that’s not much of a selling point. Then again, when your third-quarter loss from continuing operations widens to $0.19 a share from $0.12 a share, you may as well dig into that popcorn tub as you take in the grandiose.

Like your sums in smaller steps? Feel free to bemoan the 4% drop in revenue to $29.8 million.

The website acknowledges that a steadier stream of Hollywood titles makes things sweeter - and this deal should be plenty of cake underneath the icing - but thinks that the best future for Imax would still be a buyout.

What nobody is questioning is whether Imax’s LF digital 3D technology actually works. I’m sure that AMC did not buy into this technology ’sight unseen’, but pulling off a demo is not the same as making the technology work four shows/365 days a year. Particularly if it is based on LCoS/SXRD rather than the more stable DLP technology. Particularly for digital 3D, which is more complicated than even many industry people realize.

Some bloggers just hate the whole idea behind this. ‘Hollywood Needs Gimmicks to Get You into Theaters - Is IMAX or 3-D the future of cinema? How about better movies instead?’ But ultimately the ticket buying public will decide whether this move will pay off. The indication from “Beowulf” suggests that it might. Perhaps even in a big way. Just don’t expect Imax to keep giving away projectors for free to all exhibitors.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Posted in Digital 3D, Large Format

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