By Kevin Lally
The Toronto Film Festival staged a panel discussion Wednesday morning of particular interest to our readers in exhibition. The topic was theatrical release windows and video-on-demand, and National Association of Theatre Owners president and CEO John Fithian stood his ground and passionately argued his case against the shortening of the window between theatrical debuts and VOD showings not just for major studio movies but for much smaller indie films too. At the other side of the spectrum was Todd Wagner, CEO of 2929 Entertainment,parent company of Landmark Theatres andMagnolia Pictures, whichpioneered themodel of a simultaneous theatrical and VOD release for independent pictures.
Fithianemphasized theimpact ofcompressed windows on the indie community. "If the majors shorten their windows," he argued, "and say that we in the theatres have less amount of time to run their movies and makeour profit, we're going to dedicate the vast majority of our screens to the big movies...and milk all we can possibly can out of the biggest titles as fast as we can. Which means that the screen space available for independent film will diminish."
Fithian asserted, "Independent film needs time to grow in the cinema to make it,"and surmised that somerecent Oscar nomineesmight not havegotten so muchawards attention without healthy runs in cinemas.
Cinedigm CEO Chris McGurk (also the co-founder of Overture Films), while agreeing with Fithian on the need to preserve windows for big event movies, argued that the Magnolia theatrical/VOD model has been "great for independent films," claiming that many of Magnolia's releases otherwise "would not see the light of day in theatres."
Wagner, whose businesses include Magnolia, warned that "you cannot stop technology," likening it to a freight train. "It tends to disrupt industries." He added, "Ultra VOD is where we are today...butthis isall transitional,this isnotanend game." For Wagner, the great value of VOD is that "for the first time, it gives customers impulse-buy opportunities," with the potential to reach a much larger base of tens of millions.
While asserting that he's "bullish on exhibition," Wagner still declared, "we are in the business of trying to make money" and sounded the death knell of the four-month window in the coming years. "The point is not where it lands but how it lands... We can make all the boats rise, and make sure that exhibition isn't hurt when that happens. There are ways to potentially look at this that don't have to be us versus them."
But Fithian cautioned that the cinema business is "really marginal... If you collapse the windows, you damage that model." Catering to that minority of moviegoers who want to see a film whenever or wherever they can (via new technologies) is enough to bankrupt many theatres, he warned. "There won't be cinemas in small towns anymore."
Fithian also argued that eliminating windows for indie films "self-limits" their potential. "You're saying at the very beginning: I don't have a big movie, I'm releasing it on VOD because I don't have confidence in this movie... You're boxing it into one category where it can never grow." With digital cinema eliminating print distribution costs, he added, indie films have a better shot in cinemas.
"You're dreaming," retorted McGurk, whose digital-cinema company recently launched a distribution and marketing initiative for independent filmmakers. "Digital is not the answer alone... Following the traditional indie release pattern,with the decline in the ancillary markets and the increased escalation of marketing costs, is not going to work... You can't resuscitate the old indie film model."
Geoff Gilmore, chief creative officer of Tribeca Enterprises and former Sundance programming head, noted that 80% of indie releases don't even make $100,000 andthat a very large chunk of indie productionsare never able to findspace in theatres. The challenge, he says, is making these films visible and finding new ways of marketing them.
Neil Campbell, COO of Landmark Cinemas Canada (not to be confused with Wagner's Landmark Theatres), contributed a multi-million-dollar question: In today's rush-to-VOD climate, would a small, independent movie like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which very gradually built on great word of mouth to a $240 million gross, have the opportunity to generate that same sort of success? Is short-term thinking, as Fithian argues, hurting the long-range potential of movies? Oris embracingnew technologies creating new opportunities and exposure for independents? The answer, we suspect, lies somewhere in between, amidst more dialogue and compromise between exhibitors and new-style distributors.
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