UPSTREAMING RIP DVD Netflix Amazon dominate UK TV by 2020

The outlook for cinemas is uncertain as home cinema continues to grow in the quality offer, all-you-can-eat ticket offers on the rise, the likes of NBC-Universal's Prima service offering home screening of cinema releases, and the falling appetite for 3D - the extortionate ticket prices of which have been boosting cinema revenues for years, a golden goose that is now shedding its feathers...

The music industry has had to accept the sharp decline of physical sales, but the film industry hasn't yet reached that point of acceptance - but DVD and Blu-Ray alike are heading for the same cliff-edge of sales that CDs reached some years ago, another huge revenue stream under threat.

The big six also need to consider the digital upstarts Amazon and Netflix (and surely Apple sooner or later, the music industry slayer!) as key rivals ... and partners, an uneasy relationship.

A UK study has concluded that in just 3 years (by 2020) UK pay-TV revenue will be below that of streaming sites - but cinema might be more resilient (given my points above I'm highly sceptical!)

Paying for TV content from on-demand digital video services will grow by more than 30% to £1.42bn at the turn of the decade, claims consultancy firm PwC. This rise in popularity will see revenue from video services edge ahead of an estimated £1.41bn from cinemagoers. 

While Apple and Sky have also made inroads with their download services, the rise of streaming has been the biggest competitive challenge to cinemas in recent years. 

“Demand for internet video shows no signs of slowing down,” said Phil Stokes, UK head of entertainment and media at PwC. However, he warned against forecasting the death of blockbusters or the big screens where they are shown. “The figures do not signal the death of film. Look at the box office performance of films such as Star Wars: Rogue One or Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to see the significant amount of enthusiasm for blockbuster movies out there.” 

Stokes said the UK film industry will remain in a “pretty healthy” position despite the boom in home entertainment. 

The report predicts movie attendance will grow from 172m admissions last year to 179m in 2021, and the number of screens across the UK will rise from 4,143 to 4,542. 

PwC predicts a “terminal decline” for DVD and Blu-ray sales from £1.22bn in 2016 to just £533m by 2021. The report predicts that internet video will overtake DVD sales this year, but some analysts claim this has already happened. 

Netflix and Amazon 'will overtake UK cinema box office spending by 2020'.

Streaming has already surpassed physical sales of film:

Total revenues from digital video – which includes services such as Apple’s iTunes as well as Sky’s store and Now TV – surged almost 23% to £1.3bn last year.The digital boost came as high street sales of DVDs and Blu-ray discs fell 17% to £894m – the first time it has fallen below the £1bn mark. The once mighty physical rental market fell 21% to just £49m.

(2017 Guardian article)

Bridget Jones Baby marketing

I'll add to this - your own photos etc would be very welcome

This post builds on an earlier post, which itself is long and detailed, looking at the international nature of the campaign and the trailers especially, but also looking back at the scale of this franchise - so lets start there.

The latest movie is at $180m worldwide - a good return, but well down on past entries. There should be a 4th based on those numbers. See my post on the Gant Rule (with BJB as an exception) for more details - such as this, the only territories with 8-figure returns:

• Australia $13m
• France $14m
• US $24m
• UK $60m

The basic: Premieres
This generates TV news and wider media stories (eg Mirror):

VR virtual reality cinema coming

IN THIS POST: short overview of some major technogical changes from digitization, then a focus (TBC and rolling updates) on VR


The film industry, at times reluctantly, has embraced a series of new technologies over recent decades, and the disruptive forces of digitization always seem poised to transform what at heart is quite a conservative industry, locked into franchises, the star system (changing?) and dominated by a mere 'big six' companies despite all the changes.

As with cassette tapes, you may have been born after the VHS tape disappeared from the high street

DVD meant they could:

1. re-monetize back catalogue [long tail...]; just as the music industry got millions to replace their tapes/vinyl with (sonically inferior!) CDs so too did the movie industry make billions from VHS tapes being replaced
2. the monetizing went further with editionalising: usually starting with a vanilla (movie only, perhaps a trailer added) edition, and leading over time to any combination of special, collector's, ultimate (etc) edition, not to mention director's cut, with commentaries and other extras to push sales, plus footage cut for cinema release

Geek.com headline, 2014.

INDIE Hooligan film scene flourishing on DVD sales

Andrew Pulver: Gangsters, geezers and guns: the men behind Britain’s booming low-budget crime-flick industry (Guardian)

FILM COMPANIES ALWAYS START WITH A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE IN MIND...

Note the (highlighted quotes) point that the distribution company always have a figure in mind when approaching the distribution and marketing of a film; right along the chain of the film cycle (production, deistribution, exhibition/consumption), having a clear, specific concept of the target audience(s) is crucial. Boiling this down to a singular image of a person who embodies the characteristics/demographics of your audience - as I recommend you do within a treatment - is also industry practice:

Darren, sales manager at a plastics firm in Milton Keynes, is a force to be reckoned with in the British film industry. In part, he’s the reason why British crime cinema – low-budget, morally dubious and about as disreputable as it’s ever been – is the genre that refuses to die. At least, Darren would if he actually existed. Darren, it turns out, is a theoretical construct; an audience archetype identified by Jezz Vernon, managing director of distribution outfit Metrodome, the people who released recent examples of the form such as The Guvnors, St George’s Day and The Fall of the Essex Boys.

“We always talk about the buyer of a film,” says Vernon. “For someone like Darren, there’s a certain boredom about his existence, and the attraction to gangsters or football hooligans has a certain aspirational element to it. It might sound worrying, but we liken it to music: the mainstream in UK music has always liked poetic thugs, from Byron to Liam Gallagher. People like the paradox; both the masculinity of it, and the denial of it.”

MAKING FILMS FOR/REFLECTING THE NEGLECTED WORKING-CLASS

DISTRIBUTION: Disney's Alice in Wonderland and release window row

Alice in Wonderland sparked off a huge row between distributors and exhibitors over an attempt to change the traditional release window between cinema and DVD release.
I'll be taking points from the following:
theguardian.com/film/movie/131099/alice-in-wonderland
cineworld-alice-in-wonderland-boycott
disney-alice-in-wonderland-burton
european-cinemas-boycott-alice-in-wonderland
...

Digitisation and the piracy debate

TBC
Is the piracy debate overplayed by the film industry?
Are the ads starting every DVD which link film piracy with organised crime likely to impact on youth - or perhaps the alarmist message is aimed at politicians, not consumers? Then there is the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness £5m campaign, Moments Worth Paying For (backed up with a UKFC/National Lottery funded website, "findanyfilm.com", which locates legal DVD/download links for any film. [source]
Its also arguable that the legal moves against the likes of Kickass Torrents are tokenistic.
Look more closely at what is being pirated - its the Hollywood productions; only highly marketed British productions are likely to appear on the likes of Torrent sites (the likes of a Loach movie is unlikely to attract many 'seeds'!). [source]
Some users feel justified in pursuing piracy given the distribution strategies of the majors: only sending cinema prints to the UK after the US run has finished (the rare exceptions are films like Avatar which are given an incredibly expensive worldwide release). Plus, many British films simply won't make it to cinema screens. Then there's the pricing of cinema tickets, and the increasingly poor cinema experience, blighted by smartphone wielding youth. Cineworld's targetting of 35-44+ through
luxury food etc suggests an alternative strategy to lawsuits, as do the wave of streaming and download options becoming available.

Cinema in 2013 will be...

Lengthy feature, broken down into shorter themed sections, from the Gdn Film Blog (if you don't already follow it you should!) here on what 2013 will bring for the cinema industry: read the article here or (partially reproduced) below.  

Care to add your own predictions as a comment? Will the 3D boom continue or tail off? Will home cinema 3D once again undermine cinema? Will streaming overtake DVD sales as a source of revenue? Will the window between exclusive theatrical exhibition and DVD/TV/streaming continue to shrink? Will the US audience continue to shrink as a % of Hollywood revenues for its own films - and if so, will this lead to greater multi-ethnicity in the casting of leads, or a shift away from depicting American power (surely a key tool of US political hegemony)? Will digitisation open up greater opportunities for Indie producers ... or will the tentpole strategy (closely tied to franchising sequels, prequels and remakes/reimaginings) continue to maintain big 6 global dominance? Will YOU go to see any film in the cinema in 2013 - or turn increasingly to viewing film on tablets, laptops etc?

Brits in Spandex and girl power: movie trends that will keep us talking in 2013

Last year, Hollywood was flush with international cash and films starring Matthew McConaughey. What will this year hold?

Tom Shone, 3.1.13, http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2013/jan/03/brits-spandex-movie-trends-2013 

Angelina Jolie as Maleficent represents the latest trend for Actresses of a Certain Age Who Aren't Really That Old: playing the bitch. Photograph: Disney

Time travel was popular. Prequels were hot. As were guns-for-hire, vampires and movies set on boats. Which of the year's cinematic trends, people, cultural avatars and epiphenomenon are most likely to set the agenda for 2013?

Jennifer Lawrence

In X-Men First-Class, Jennifer Lawrence wore the lightly stunned look of someone suffering from an acute case of Newcomer Bends. But then she narrowed her eyes, strung her bow and fired The Hunger Games towards $686m: Lawrence's imperturbability was revealed as the genuine article. The scene in Silver Linings Playbook where she walks into de Niro's lair and has him eating out of her hand in under five minutes may just win her an Oscar at the tender age of 22. If that weren't reason enough for New York magazine to put her at the top her their "Celebrity Brunch League" – the lost of famous people they'd most like to have pancakes with – the editors listed a few more:

She complains about her fussy premiere clothes; she crashes into cars while looking for Honey Boo Boo. There was that time that her entire family went to Sleep No More in search of orgies … Jennifer Lawrence cannot be contained by your Movie Star Rules of Decorum; Jennifer Lawrence has too much to share.

We concur. She's like Liz Taylor without the alimony.

Girls

Jennifer Lawrence wasn't the only ballsy princess of 2012. We also had the flame-haired, cinch-waisted Princess Merida in Pixar's Brave, the studio's first female protagonist; plus Kristin Stewart riding, fighting, and shooting her way through Snow White and the Huntsman, not to mention her swan song for beloved Bella, now a momma grizzly protecting her vampire cub in the last Twilight movie. They all added up to "an interesting new breed of warrior princesses," said the New York Times' AO Scott, "whose ascendance reflects the convergence of commercial calculations and cultural longings."
Much of the credit must go to Lionsgate, who released both Breaking Dawn Part 2 and The Hunger Games, thus proving conclusively that young female actresses can 'open' and power a movie move way past the $100 million mark. "Girls actually need superheroes much more than boys," said Gloria Steinem, approvingly. Boys aren't the only ones to play Han Solo.
Princess Merida – and her bow and arrow – were big hits in 2012. Photograph: Pixar