By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Three Studios Set 28 Day DVD Window… Three Left
March 23 – What WB is signaling – and other studios will follow – is that after 28 days in post-theatrical, everything is the long tail… negligible revenues (aside from the wholesale DVD sales needed to fill the pipeline). But the heat of demand is over. That is the point at which they are fine with everyone buying discs at wholesale prices and distributing them as widely as they like with no additional revenue for the studio.
Until titles hit that that 28 day window, buy it or pay the studio a per-rental price.
So now Fox and Sony have followed. The three majors holding out are Disney – which is Apple-committed – Universal – which is still in play and probably getting a lot of guidance on this from Kabletown – and Paramount, which is Sumner Redstone’s Paramount, facing yet another moment of industry transition that it could have led instead of weakly following… eventually.
The only one of the studios holding out that concerns me is Disney, which is showing an interest in being the leading window-breaker. But they are not dumb people. They have to understand that there is middle ground. What I would expect to see next is a move by them to make Apple’s iTunes the only rental outlet in the new 28-day window.
All that said, there is a new twist. “These studios will provide new enhanced payment terms to Blockbuster in exchange for a first lien on Blockbuster Canada Co.’s assets.” It’s a little murky, but it smells to me like these four studios are looking at a backdoor acquisition of this established Home Ent brand to use as their group outlet – which, of course, they couldn’t possibly be colluding to do – for the Home Entertainment First Window
Dave
The Blockbuster announcement has more to do with reduced MGs. Sony has a deal with both Redbox and Netflix that has no 28 window.