Tag Archives: Warner Bros

Universal and Disney Close To VPF Deal With DCIP

September 8, 2008

And then there were four. Four studios that is. Or so says the Wall Street Journal which broke a story today reporting that Universal Pictures and Walt Disney Company have reached a virtual print fee deal with Digital Cinema Implementation Partners, the joint venture formed by North American exhibitors Regal Entertainment, Cinemark and AMC Entertainment to finance, install and maintain digital cinema equipment in their theatres. The three chains, which represent a combined screen count of around 15,000, would like to start rolling out digital cinema as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, in time for the flood of 3D movies studios have slated for release next year.

Previously, DCIP had reached a VPF deal with Twentieth Century Fox, though the studio has never confirmed the news. The signing of four studios is a crucial milestone which DCIP must cross in order to secure the USD $1 billion in financing the company has lined up from J.P. Morgan Chase to pay for all the expensive digital cinema equipment required to outfit theatres. The Wall Street Journal had reported that Paramount Pictures had also signed a VPF agreement with DCIP, which had been rumored in the press but never officially announced. Indeed, by the end of the day Variety had taken the air out of the Wall Street Journal’s big scoop by confirming that Paramount Pictures had not yet signed with DCIP. Read More »

Popularity: 77% [?]

Posted in Digital Cinema, Integrators

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How digital cinema can make a difference (unleash your archive!)

By Patrick von Sychowski

August 27, 2008

UKFC logo The always readable Andreas Fuchs has an excelent piece in the latest issue of Film Journal International on the difference that the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network has made. It was never intended to help the Hollywood blockbusters, though arguably it got the ball rolling in UK for digital cinema, but the benefits have been tangible where they were intended. From the article:

Last year, “The Summer of British Film” used the Digital Screen Network to bring back classic British films. Seven films from Goldfinger to Withnail & I were shown digitally in 136 cinemas each Tuesday over a period of as many weeks. “We tied in with the BBC’s ‘British Film Forever’ series of documentaries, which looked at seven different film genres the preceding Saturday,” Stolz explains. “Each program genre under discussion was then illustrated [with] a classic British film in cinemas.” This initiative was “a great success and demonstrated the possibilities of digital programming, attracting cinema audiences of over 62,000. We received extremely enthusiastic responses from members of the public who were delighted to see these classic films back on the big screen. This summer we are supporting two distributors in releasing classics from the legendary British filmmaker David Lean.”

Although any one of Sir David’s films certainly more than matters, it was Warner Bros. which had already opened its vaults on that particular note. From mid-May onwards, the first “Movies That Matter” festival brought 15 marvelous titles for one-week engagements into 30 Vue Cinemas across the U.K. (www.warnermtm.co.uk). Starting in Casablanca and bloody well ending for Bonnie and Clyde, with highlights like The Wizard of Oz in between and East of Eden and North by Northwest further pointing in the right directions, the press notes promised them all to be “remastered to flawless, crystal-clear 2K-resolution digital cinema, the highest quality standard in cinemas today.”

Sadly the UKFC’s example has not been adopted very widely. With the exception of the anyways exceptional Norway, only Canada and Australia has adopted something similar, though these went arguably wrong by going for lower end e-cinema networks.

Popularity: 59% [?]

Posted in Analysis, Digital Cinema

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Warner Bros. Looking To Shed Titles

By J. Sperling Reich

August 14, 2008

If you’re looking for a screaming deal on a finished film you should probably give Warner Bros. a call. In his Los Angeles Times column today Patrick Goldstein details an interview he conducted with Alan Horn, the studio’s top dog. Goldstein contacted Horn after he learned producer Joel Silver was pitching Lions Gate Films to pick up “RocknRolla”, the British gangster film from director Guy Ritchie which Warner Bros. was due to release in early October.

Apparently, with the recent shuttering of subsidiaries Warner Independent Pictures and New Line Cinema Warner Bros. finds itself with too many films to release over the next six to twelve months. Besides “RocknRolla” Goldstein reports that Warner would be happy to unload two additional films; Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire”, originally a WIP release, and the New Line cop drama “Pride and Glory” starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell. Silver became proactive in a finding a new home for his film when he realized Warner Bros. wasn’t about to spend the money to market the movie. Horn confirmed this in his conversation with Goldstein, saying: Read More »

Popularity: 52% [?]

Posted in Distributors

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Warner Bros. Promotes Aylsworth

By J. Sperling Reich

August 5, 2008

Crediting their “aggressive commitment to explore and implement the latest technological advances in production and industry standards” Warner Bros. promoted Wendy Aylsworth to Senior Vice President, Warner Bros. Technical Operations. Aylsworth, who has been with the studio since 1994, previously served as Vice President, Technology, Warner Bros. Technical Operations.

Many in the industry are familiar with Aylsworth through her work as Engineering Vice President of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Over the past year she was instrumental in reorganizing the Technology Committees to better service emerging technologies such as digital cinema. In fact, before she took over as Engineer Vice President she was Chair of SMPTE’s D-Cinema Technology Committee, a group that created the first 24 standards for D-Cinema. Like many executives who work in standards bodies, Aylsworth participates in other standards activity, including those run by ATSC and CableLabs. Most recently she announced the creation of the 3-D Home Display Formats Task Force within SMPTE, a group that will help set standards for mastering stereoscopic content for home viewing.

Aylsworth’s new position within Warner Bros. is not unlike her old one in that she will be overseeing a group that is responsible for pushing the studio’s (as well as the industry’s) agenda in both national and international standards organizations. In addition, she will continue to head up the group within Warner Bros. responsible for reviewing and implementing emerging technologies in the content production and distribution space. In the press release announcing the promotion Chuck Dages, Executive Vice President, Emerging Technologies, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group was quoted reiterating Aylsworth’s background and rising stature within the industry:

“Wendy has taken a lead position not only for our studio but in the external organizations dedicated to creating new standards for such exciting innovations as digital cinema and 3-D viewing for the home. This promotion recognizes not only her achievements to date but the increasing importance of her efforts to our studio and our industry.”

While Aylsworth has built a strong reputation for herself in the entertainment industry, she began her professional career in technology working in the aerospace industry at companies such as Lockheed. She earned her MS/MBA in Managerial Sciences and Strategic Planning fro the University of Southern California and holds a BS in computer Sciences from the University of Michigan.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Posted in People

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NATO and Warner Bros. Duke It Out

By J. Sperling Reich

July 15, 2008

Even before the ink was dry on last Thursday’s Los Angeles Times article about the struggle Hollywood studios face in finding enough digitally equipped screens to distribute 3-D movies, The Hollywood Reporter published a story that had key industry executives debating who is to blame for the slow rollout of digital cinema. Representing distributors was Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.’ president of domestic distribution, while exhibitors were repped by John Fithian, the president of the National Association of Theatre Owner. The article has the two exchanging verbal barbs, each blaming the other side for the lack of digital cinema installations.

The Reporter makes it seem as if Fithian was responding to statements Fellman made at a public forum, however they don’t say whether Fellman’s quotes come from any specific event or speech or simply an interview they conducted. It was the pending release of Warner Bros.’ 3-D flick “Journey to the Center of the Earth” that brought the issue to a head, which is why the distribution exec opened with:

“3-D is the future, so why is exhibition dragging its feet? I’m pleased ‘Journey’ will be the biggest digital 3-D release to date. But it is disconcerting that since November, the 3-D screen count has only gone up. . .”

Fellman’s quote is abruptly cut off by The Reporter - presumably a typo. Fithian was quick to answer however, in saying:

“It is particularly ironic and frustrating that a senior executive from Warner Bros. would accuse exhibition of ‘dragging its feet’ on 3-D when Warners has been the absolutely slowest of all major studios to come to the table with support for the d-cinema rollout. If Warners believes there are an insufficient number of 3-D screens in the marketplace today, they have no one to blame but themselves and they know it.”

What Fithian is referring to is Warner Bros. reluctance to enter into virtual print fee (VPF) agreements that provide an exhibitor a subsidy for the installation of digital cinema equipment. In essence, the studio will pay a fee for every screen one of their movies play on and that fee will go toward the purchase of D-cinema equipment. System integrators such as Digital Cinema Integration Partners and Access Integrated Technologies have been trying for some time to negotiate a VPF deal with studios and Warner has proven one of the few holdouts. The studio has only signed one agreement with XDC for rollouts in Europe. Because that deal pegs the VPF at USD $850, many in the industry have argued that Warners was simply trying to remove doubt they were serious about digital cinema by signing the cheapest contract they could find.

Whatever Warner Bros. reasoning for shying away from VPF deals, Fellman believes the studio has firmly supported D-cinema:

“Warner Bros. has released more films digitally than any other studio, without question. Our discussion is with exhibition, circuit by circuit, and John has never attended one business session at which any Warner exec was present. . . We are continuing to serve every digital theater that request a (digital) print. We stand by our record.”

Despite Warners’ track record, Fithian definitely faults the major studios with holding hope the world-wide digital cinema roll out:

“Exhibition stands ready to provide our patrons in the U.S. and around the world with wider access to exciting 3-D technologies as soon as all of our partners in distribution come to agreement on the level of support they will provide for the underlying digital cinema infrastructure. You cannot have 3-D without D-cinema. And we cannot have digital cinema by ‘negotiating’ through the media.”

Negotiating?! Seems more like they are arguing to me. Though that could well pass for negotiating in Hollywood.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Posted in Digital Cinema

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“Dark Knight” Pulls An All Nighter

By J. Sperling Reich

July 10, 2008

North American exhibitors plan on putting the old theory about the early bird catching the worm to the test when Warner Bros. “The Dark Knight” opens on June 19th. Truthfully though they are less after invertebrates and more after the additional box office generated by a few early morning screenings of the big budget sequel to “Batman Begins”.

How early, you may be asking yourself. Well, the New York Times is reporting that tickets to midnight screenings of the highly anticipated tent pole movie sold out so quickly that theatre owners in large metropolitan markets (and even a few small ones) began selling tickets to showings at 3 and 6 a.m. Fandango.com, the online ticketing web site, has counted over 1,500 such showings. What’s even more remarkable is those early morning screenings were also quickly sold out.

Midnight screenings of blockbuster movies are nothing new. Theatre owners have been holding them for years, especially for sequels to successful franchise films. “Batman Begins” pulled in USD $200 million at the North American box office when it was originally released in 2005 with an opening weekend of USD $49 million. Presumably, with director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale both returning for the second film, that amount will be shattered by “Dark Knight’s” opening.

Popularity: 44% [?]

Posted in Miscellaneous

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XDC Nabs Those Elusive VPF Deals - Including WB

By Patrick von Sychowski

May 23, 2008

XDC in Cannes 2008

There will be champagne rather than rose wine or Belgian beer being poured, toasted and drunk tonight in Cannes as XDC announces that they have secured VPF deals with four of the Hollywood studio, including the one that has eluded others, namely with Warner Bros. From Forbes.com:

Broadcast equipment manufacturer EVS said its unit XDC has signed agreements with Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Paramount Pictures Corp., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and The Walt Disney Studios to invest up to 600 million euros in the deployment of up to 8,000 digital cinema installations in Europe.

The roll-out period under the agreement - which will see more than 65 percent of the value of projectors, servers, applications and services being co-financed — will last for a maximum of 5 years, with each digitised screen co-financed over a period of maximum 10 years.

The group also said agreements with two other studios, Universal Pictures and Sony Pictures are in a very advanced stage and are expected to close shortly.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Posted in Digital Cinema

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Regal’s 1,500 screen deal with RealD for 3D comes with BIG caveat

By Patrick von Sychowski

May 21, 2008

Audience 3D horror Regal likes 3D and is showing it in a big way by promising to install no less than 1,500 of its screens with RealD’s technology, meaning that more than one in ten of all its auditoria would be stereoscopically enabled. But this big hangs on a bigger IF that most of the press seem to skip over. Here is how a fairly long article on the Financial Times starts of:

Regal Entertainment, one of the largest US cinema chains, has struck a deal to install new technology that will sharply lift the number of screens capable of showing 3-D films and give Hollywood studios a more profitable outlet for their new releases.

Regal has signed an agreement with RealD, which makes 3-D projection technology, to install more than 1,500 3-D screens. The deal will lift the number of 3-D screens operated by RealD to more than 3,500.

With cinemas able to charge higher ticket prices for 3-D titles, Hollywood studios are clamouring to release their films in the new technology. DreamWorks Animation will release all of its films in 3-D starting next year with Monsters vs Aliens . Walt Disney will also release 3-D films in 2009, as will Universal Pictures with James Cameron’s Avatar .

But what the FT confines to the fine print at the bottom of the article, Carolyn Giardina has the nous to highlight in the first paragraph of THR.com’s article about the deal:

Regal Entertainment Group and RealD have inked a deal to install 1,500 RealD 3-D systems in Regal theaters in the domestic market. Consummation, however, is contingent upon digital cinema deployment arrangements.

In order to have digital 3-D, a theater first requires a digital cinema installation. Digital cinema deployment deals generally rely on a virtual print fee model through which studios contribute an agreed fee per screen, per movie to offset exhibitors’ installation costs. However, many of these deals remain at an impasse.

So if DCIP does not get the VPF deal in place there will be no 1,500 RealD screens. And that is still a very big ‘if’. The $1bn+ deal that was supposed to have concluded by late 2007 now looks likely to miss the Q2 2008 deadline. As Pamela McClintock notes in Variety:

At one point, the consortium — Digital Cinema Implementation Partners — wanted all the major studios to agree. Now, it appears that the consortium is prepared to move ahead with only three of the studios aboard: Walt Disney, Paramount (which distributes DreamWorks Animation titles) and Fox. Insiders said they expect Sony and Universal to follow suit eventually, while Warner Bros. and DCIP are said to be far apart on terms.

Disney has been the pioneer in digital 3-D, although it is Katzenberg who has become the public ambassador of the fight to convert more.

This would be one studio less than even AccessIT’s second VPF deal. Once again it seems that Warner Bros is sitting this one out, have so far signed no VPF deal with either AccessIT, DCIP or Arts Alliance.

Moreover, no one is asking the question about how the 1,500 3D screens will get rolled out, particularly if it is to happen in time for the Monster/Avatar 3D movies of 2009. The preferred way to convert cinemas is a whole multiplex at a time, which is how Christie/AIX tackled Carmike, with swarms of engineers and installers settling on multiplexes in one town like locusts, finishing the job and moving on to the next one.

But 3D installs will be sprinkled a handful of screens (two or three per Regal multiplex by my estimate) in each site. So if the digital cinema and 3D install it s to go hand-in-hand then installers will have to return to convert all the non-3D digitla screens at a later point, which is neither cost effective or efficient, much like Arts Alliance is has converted CGR in France to-date. Remember that the upgrade of the entire DCIP circuit (Regal, AMC and Cineark is going to take at least three years if not longer.

Digital 3D will be a long time coming yet, it would seem.

UPDATE: Some of the best analysis comes once again from Screen Digest courtesy of analyst Charlotte Jones:

Once the DCIP model is finalised, Regal could start conversion at (previously announced) rate of about 200 screens per month. There are now just 10 months before the release of Dreamworks Animation’s first 3D effort, Monsters vs Aliens in March 2009 and assuming roll-out began next month, this would give Regal, around 2,000 basic d-cinema screens of which an unspecified proportion would be 3D-enabled by this calendar benchmark. This scenario would be on top of the 134 3D screens Regal had deployed at end first quarter 2008.
While we do not believe that 3D’s incremental production costs, are a substantial issue for the US Studios, a slower take up then the 4,170 digital 3D screens we are predicting in the US market by end 2009, could result in a reduction of the premium revenues attainable from 3D screens or a further rescheduling of titles. The deal has been reported on a revenue-sharing basis with RealD, whereby initial capital costs are lowered or removed, in return for a share of premium revenues. In this respect, maintaining higher ticket pricing for 3D screenings will be essential to this arrangement.

It looks that, as with the fate of HD DVD vs. Blu Ray, the fate of DCIP, digital cinema and digital 3D currently rests with Warner Bros.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Posted in Digital 3D

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Arts Alliance To Get Disney’s Digital Titles

By Patrick von Sychowski

February 11, 2008

Disney has lent some support to Arts Alliance Media’s European virtual print fee proposal to convert 7,000 screens across Europe, though the press release reads like there some reservations and that the deal is not as clear cut in terms of support as previous deals. Take the last sentence of the first paragraph:

Under the terms of the agreement, Disney will supply European exhibitors with its feature films in digital format and will make provisional contributions towards the digital cinema hardware costs of AAM-deployed DCI-compliant screens. [italics added]

So AAM’s digital screens will get Disney Digital titles (including the all-important Disney Digital 3D ones), but the payments for screening these are ‘provisional contributions’. That must means that no final agreement on payment has been concluded. Similar working arrangements were signed in the US by AccessIT as well as Technicolor with a number of studios, so it is not unheard of, but it is not good for market certainty in the longer term. What guarantees are there in place that Disney will not halt the payments in 12 months time? Only the AAM and Disney lawyers have an inkling.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Posted in Digital Cinema, Integrators

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Rumour mill: Technicolor loses a studio while Arts Alliance gains one

By Patrick von Sychowski

October 17, 2007

Two items from the unsubstantiated-but-strong-rumour department.

Technicolor is said to have lost one of their two large Hollywood studio clients for prints and lab work. That would mean that either Warner Bros or Disney have opted to go with Deluxe - and another nail in the coffin for Technicolor. A contract like this would be worth tens of millions, or even hundreds. While digital cinema is set to sweep the Us in the next five years, there’s still a lot of print work to be done in that time and with a clearer end date for 35mm, there is more scope for a single player to dominate without fears of anti-monopoly lawsuits. Plus where print goes, digital tends to follow. It really does not look good for Technicolor at the moment, but it is too soon to write them off yet.

Secondly, Arts Alliance Media is said to be close to announcing a fourth Hollywood studio for its VPF deal, with fingers pointing at Sony Pictures. This would mean that AAM has nabbed four of the Big Six: Universal, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and SPI, with Warner Bros and Disney holding out. Impressive feat and it means that AAM has something that could conceivably entice European exhibitors. At least that aren’t looking to do a VPF deal directly with the studios themselves and cut out the third party middleman.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Posted in Business

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