Cinema owners looking to pry couch potatoes away from their cable- and satellite-television hookups will soon have a new tool: satellite dishes of their own.
Last week, a coalition of the three biggest theater chains (AMC, Regal, and Cinemark) and five Hollywood studios (Universal, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, and Lionsgate) announced that satellite delivery of movies to theaters nationwide– long a dream of the industry– will finally commence this summer, with a full rollout by year’s end. (Sony and 20th Century Fox are in talks to join the group.)
Satellite service won’t save any money for ticketbuyers, though it will for the studios, which had already slashed the costs of distribution by getting most of North America’s theaters to convert from 35mm to digital projection. Instead of shipping expensive, bulky reels of film to your multiplex, they can now send movies encoded on hard drives— at less than a tenth the cost. Satellite, which will allow theaters to download movies from a private network onto dedicated servers, should reduce distribution costs to a minimum.
The results may not please everyone. Small theater chains, independently owned movie houses, and indie-film distributors aren’t included in the coalition (at least, not yet). And a lot of theater owners may balk at buying one more piece of costly hardware after having barely weathered the conversion to digital projection. Over the past few years, that transition cost seventy thousand to a hundred thousand dollars per screen and, though the studios absorbed some of those expenses, many theaters either couldn’t afford to convert, or went bankrupt trying. The National Organization of Theater Owners estimated that the cost of digital conversion could ultimately darken as many as ten thousand screens, shuttering one in every four venues in North America. Of course, some cinemas (art and repertory houses, for instance) are keeping 35mm projectors, but celluloid exhibition – the way we saw movies for a century – will likely become a specialty business catering to a niche audience.
Still, film purists who prefer the grain of celluloid to the icy look of digital or the murk of 3D may find consolation in the prospect that satellite transmission will also allow theaters to show more diverse fare, beyond just movies. A popular series like AMC’s The Met Live, which simulcasts performances from New York City’s Metropolitan Opera to a few dozen cinemas nationwide, might expand to hundreds of screens. Or you could watch major sporting events on a screen as tall as your house. That beats the living room couch, doesn’t it?
Rico says he'll go see it, whatever it looks like; there's nothing quite like the theatre experience...
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