{"id":294684,"date":"2010-02-08T13:31:53","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T18:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.35559"},"modified":"2010-02-08T13:37:40","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T18:37:40","slug":"the-economics-of-film-distribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/294684","title":{"rendered":"The Economics of Film Distribution"},"content":{"rendered":"
Interesting comment from one of our readers on digital film distribution:<\/p>\n
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I distribute films and did so for \na major studio for some years. Not an exhaustive answer but here are a \nfew things at work in no particular order. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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The delay for video rental after the theatrical release is because \nthe exhibitors (movie chains like Regal) insist on not having their \nbusiness encroached by the home video market.<\/p>\n
Studios are somewhat ambivalent about embracing online rentals for a \nnumber of reasons. With each new format VHS, DVD, Blue Ray etc. they \nhave been getting to resell the same product to the same customer which \nmay end with online sales.<\/p>\n
Studios have been slow to do it but want to do their own digital \ndistribution. On the other hand Netflix and Amazon are some of their \nlargest customers and so are shy about going into competition with them.<\/p>\n
Part of poor availlability in older titles has to do with the fact \nthat ownership of the digital rights can be varied and hard to track \ndown or establish. The studios may not own them. Some heir to some \nproducer or star from back in the day may own them and no one is \nactively working to generate revenue with them. There may be fights for \ncontrol of those rights that are keeping them from coming to market. \nDigital rights were not spelled out in contracts for films long ago.<\/p>\n
The companies that specialize in monetizing the “brand” of a star \nlike Marilyn Monroe typically only want to invest in a star that has \nlots of different revenue streams like merchandizing stuff ets. A great \nmovie star who is not actually iconic, like a Walther Matthau for \nexample, cannot generate enough revenue to pay for a company to work at \nkeeping his films availlable in all formats, His films will only be \nmoved into a new format when someone buys a whole library of content \nthat has some of his work in it.<\/p>\n
It isn’t cost effective to spend the money establishing legal ownership of a film that won’t sell many copies.<\/p>\n
This is a little of what is happening and why. There is a real \ndearth of good economic history written about Hollywood. Some of this \nis also because so many decisions in this industry aren’t made for \neconomic reasons in a straightforward way – and a lot of the data and \nreasons people do make economic decisions are pretty propietary about \ntheir data.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I distribute films and did so for
\na major studio for some years. Not an exhaustive answer but here are a
\nfew things at work in no particular order. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n