The theatrical leg of filmmaking had long been its most profitable asset. The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 “first sale doctrine” allowed retailers to purchase copies of films legally and rent them to customers for 100% profit. Major distributors like MGM and Paramount fought tooth-and-nail to repeal the act, arguing that their intellectual property deserved to be profitable from them all the way down to the consumer. They were unsuccessful, and by 1986 home video revenues had surpassed profits made in movie houses.
Fortunately, these scrappy mom-and-pop outfits found a way, and now studios like 20th Century Fox and Universal collect a high majority of the $25 billion+ (25,000,000,000 plus!) annual home video industry. Hurray for the little guys!
In 1976 Big Film didn’t have much to contend with other than $885 VHS players and $2,295 Betamax players, with tapes being sold for $50-$100. In 2010 the film-entertainment game is vastly different.
Consumers currently have a multitude of mediums to catch new and old films. Beyond traditional movie screens, of which there are around 29,000 in the United States alone, movie watchers can choose between DVD via online or in-store renters, Video On Demand, IPTV(Internet Protocol TV-i.e. Hulu, etc), Xbox, iTunes, cable television and more. And lest we run out of movie theaters willing to take our $14, we have a couple other conduits for our viewing pleasure: TV’s, computer screens, portable DVD players, iPods, PSPs, and Christ, I can even watch films with crystal clarity on my Blackberry (gentlemen, there is no better way to pick up girls than sitting in a coffee shop watching Family Guy on your cell phone)!
And all of these have to compete with that omnipresent evil aura surrounding the whole of the entertainment world, piracy. The advent of Blu-ray, the hilarious return of 3-D, IMAX, etc, are all part of the entertainment industry’s desperate attempt to combat the rape and pillaging of film pirates.
The winner of the battle will be determined, as is normally the case in any capitalist endeavor, by you and me, the consumers. Should we choose to attend movies that seem to be more expensive by the minute, but create an increasingly amusing and pampered movie-going experience, the studios will come out ahead. Likewise if we purchase instead of rent Blu-ray/DVD’s, which has its perks (extra features, sometimes product tie-ins, the ability to watch a movie whenever you feel lonely). Companies like Netflix and Blockbuster obviously profit when you rent or subscribe with them, both of which are becoming increasingly affordable options, though you gamble on the fact that sometime in the future you may want to watch the film again, such as if you rent “Weird” Al Yankovic’s 1989 opus “UHF”.
Finally, you can go to that creepy guy that stands out front of 7-11 whom you’d be sure was homeless except he’s the proprietor of a seemingly profitable business of selling DVD’s off of a blanket. This is a good idea, except that its pretty unethical, and often the movies are in Taiwanese, and if the film was recorded on CAM instead of Telesync you will inevitably be tapping on your big screen tv to unsuccessfully get the guy who sat two rows in front of the cameraman to take his goddamn feet down, thank you very much, I’m trying to watch Shrek 2 and your Taiwanese Doc Marten’s are distracting me from fart jokes! I’ve never purchased or watched a pirated movie, but I imagine the experience would be similar to what I just described.
Which film outlet will you support?
Established in 2010, my blog was created to show people of the future what people found mildly amusing in our day.
