Technology is taking over Hollywood, and in more ways than digital films and 3D movies.
By the end of this year, many of your favorite movies will no longer exist in physical form.
Movies, of course, started as reels of film and remained like that for the better part of a century. About six years ago, digital distribution began and those movies were distributed as discs or on hard drives. Now, the three biggest theater chains in the country – Regal, AMC and Cinemark – have all but assured satellite distribution will begin to take hold.
The theaters have partnered with a company called the Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition to begin to receive films, promotional materials and more via satellite. The DCDC is currently composed of five major studios, Lionsgate, Disney, Paramount, Warners and Universal, with Sony and Fox are in negotiations to join.
This technological push will deliver positive cash benefits to Hollywood. With over 4,000 theaters in the U.S., celluloid-based movies have lost ground to digital films because it costs $1,500 to print a film on 35 mm but a tenth of that to make a digital version on hard drives. Yet those hard drives still have to be physically delivered to each theater, something which seems increasingly wasteful, inflexible, and unwieldy. A satellite-based system allows studios to upload movies whenever they are ready and even to adjust availability of movies and dynamic scheduling to their liking. Because of equipment costs, estimates are that the new system will cut the price of distribution in half.
Unfortunately, you probably won’t see lower ticket prices resulting from this new distribution method.