Indie sector waiting for digital revolution
FROM VARIETY: Revenue from new media 'not coming very fast'
By Daniel Frankel of Variety -- Video Business, 11/3/2008
NOV. 3 | FROM VARIETY: There's an awful lot of time and money being wasted right now by people looking into the future," notes Myriad Pictures prexy and CEO Kirk D'Amico.Indeed, for those charged with making indie film deals in the here and now, the future remains unclear.
"You've got cable-based platforms, you've got (Internet)-based platforms, you've got mobile platforms -- it's all over the place," D'Amico says. While distribution via emerging digital platforms may prove wildly profitable for indies a few years down the road, for now, as D'Amico notes, "It's created a tremendous uncertainty in the marketplace."
Digital distribution of movies has been billed for several years as a potential boon for the indie sector, with filmmakers and sales agents alike envisioning emerging platforms like VOD via digital cable and satellite systems, Internet downloads, and streaming video over mobile devices -- all providing inexpensive, efficient mechanisms for circumventing cinema screens and DVD shelves crowded with studio product.
But no nonphysical distribution mechanism has yet emerged as a kind of globally dominant medium akin to VHS or DVD.
Read the full story on Variety.com.
