BUSINESS AS USUAL

Carl DiOrio -- Video Business, 7/15/2005

JULY 15 | To read stories by mainstream feature writers--who tomorrow will file stories on women's hemlines or downtown nightspots--studios are this close to sending major new movie releases simultaneously to theaters and video.

Don't hold your breathe.

Sure, there's that recently announced plan by Mark Cuban and Todd Warner to distribute a half-dozen Steven Soderbergh artfilms with day-and-date debuts on movie screens, cable TV and DVD. The move has been a publicity boon for their 2929 Prods., though that should come as no surprise as Cuban--the colorful and controversial owner of pro basketball's Dallas Mavericks--is a savvy manipulator of media promo.

But let's consider how much substance there is to the initiative.

Notably, the 2929 duo own the nationwide Landmark Theatres arthouse chain. In that exhibition niche, any proprietary programming provides a promotional leg up over local theatrical rivals, even though none of those rivals will touch any of the Soderbergh releases with a high-jump pole because of the strategy's obvious drawbacks.

As for the pictures' supposed simultaneous bow on cable TV--well, yeah, on the Cuban-owned HDNet. It's one of those little-seen digital channels that may or may not be lurking somewhere on my programming guide, though it's highly doubtful I will get around to finding out where anytime soon.

So much for the much-ballyhooed theatrical and cable debuts, making the upcoming Soderbergh titles little more than DVD premieres.

There's no doubt that the slate will form a nice batch of new titles for retailers to exploit at sell-through or rental. But it hardly represents the harbinger of a bold new dawn in which ever increasing numbers of moviegoers morph into DVD denizens with Hollywood's blessing.

Of course, there has been good reason to suspect that--quite independently from anything Mssrs. Cuban or Wagner have let loose--some number of would-be moviegoers are more inclined to "wait for the DVD" these days.

Those same mainstream feature writers have suggested rather glibly that the recent problems at the box office have been caused by a poor quality of spring and summer movies this year. That has caused a spreading concern that these underperforming theatrical releases will lead to a poor fourth quarter for home video retailers, but I'd suggest store owners hold off growing any new ulcers just yet.

For one thing, some of the underperforming movies were terrific--I can't remember many bad reviews for Cinderella Man, can you?--but problems of scheduling or marketing kept them from performing theatrically. And historically, there would seem ample reason to believe that yesterday's multiplex misfire is often tomorrow's rentailing overachiever.

Meanwhile, one of our readers recently pointed out that some of his most profitable rental titles have been home video's sleeper hits. Initially ordered in relatively modest numbers, their per-unit revenue tends to outpace many of the more highly anticipated DVD releases, he noted, and that ultimately yields greater profitability.

Surely between now and the holidays any number of developments lurking on the economic and retail horizons could decide whether the year ends with a bang or a whimper. But, hey, is that a half-full fourth-quarter cup, I see?

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