Dear Hollywood
Piracy is in the news again. Not because of Blackbeard and his cohorts, but movie piracy. Hollywood has been waving they’re poor-pitiful-us flag around hoping we notice what dire straits they are in. Box office returns have been down this summer over last summer 19 out of the last 20 weeks (Willy Wonka makes $55 million over the weekend and I am supposed to cry for you). Now I am not here to offer my opinion on why this is (there is a post over here that sums up my feeling on the matter pretty well), but I do have one teeny suggestion.
It is time to drop this tiered release system you have nurtured for the last several decades. The whole release to theaters, then to Video/DVD, then to TV has worked alright, but I think it’s time to move on. The staus quo is what’s hurting you. The system no longer makes sense in today’s society and yet you cling to it.
Piracy of movies is not what is hurting your revenues (alright, maybe a little, but I still say we are talking about drops from your bucket and not whole cup fulls). Piracy is nothing new. The face of piracy is all that has changed. The reason that internet piracy is so popular has very little to do with how easy it is. It has everything to do with the fact that people are hungry for media. A hunger you are not feeding with your current schema. People want your product. They just don’t like the terms you are trying to enforce. Give people an alternative and they will likely embrace it.
So here’s a suggestion for you. Release the movies on DVD and in the theater simultaneously. Sure box office number would drop, but rental and DVD sales would be up. You could even charge a premium for the DVD. I would gladly pay $8-$10 to rent Batman Begins while it was still available in theaters. I would probably be willing to pay $30 (while some DVDs have that as a suggested retail price, we all know that no one pays these prices so what is the point in artificially high prices. Let’s start pricing these things at what they really go for) to buy it. Really nothing has changed for you. The only difference is that your box office is now at Blockbuster instead of the theater.
Of course this will require some restructuring of the contracts you have worked out with theater and rental companies, but I think you can figure it out. Mark Cuban suggested something similar to this and is in fact going to try this very thing with his own production company. I wish him luck, but I think it will require a major Hollywood production to gage how well this works.