Reuters reports on Kodak/National CineMedia Digital Cinema Content Management Software

"Look I think we have to pay attention to the extreme drop off in box office. It’s real," says Megan Wolpert, executive VP of Spyglass Television when I interviewed her in January this year: "People can say it's because of the content.  People can say it's because of the options.  People can say it’s because of piracy.  Regardless, it’s real."

Digital cinema according to most industry spokesmen just might save the theatrical box office.  3D is especially promising for the younger demographic who have been raised with the hyperrealism of entertainment software. “I believe we are back," National Association of Theatre Owners president and CEO John Fithian said as he proclaimed the long-awaited arrival of the digital-cinema age at ShoWest this year: "We stand now at the dawn of the biggest technological revolution since the advent of sound. Digital cinema starts right now, in the year 2006, and it couldn't come at a more important time."

Bob Gibbons, Director of Marketing and Communications at Kodak Digital Cinema remarked when I interviewed him in April. "The other thing is that you have got to use digital in a way that lets you enhance the entertainment experience, or changes the entertainment experience, or ad an incremental entertainment experience, or do something that you can't do with film; because some of us are convinced that if you simply put a sign on your door that says, 'I am going to show you this movie digitally, and by the way I want you to pay more for it.'  People in essence won't pay more for it.  If you are just reinventing the wheel and calling it fire, that is a little foolish." Gibbons sums it up: "So the point is that you have got to be able to do more with a digital system than you can do with an analogue system, and in fact you can.  You can do a lot more.  One of the ways you can do that is by having a network, so you can now not only get content, you can in fact manage you business." 

Gibbons continues, “It's being done though over in Europe on a per capita, per person basis.  When you walk into the door the exhibitor makes some money from you, and the money they make from you is partially from ticket price, it's partly from what you spend on concessions, it's a little bit if you play games, and stuff like that.  If you are an exhibitor and you have a slide show, and a lot of them still do, they are probably making seven cents from you when you walk through the door.  Over in Europe, when you walk through the door they are making up to ninety-four cents from you. Why?  Because the have targeted stuff, they have sold it differently, they are showing you stuff you absolutely can't see on television; it's just different and they can sell it for a lot more money.  It's the same thing."

The question is: would advertising ruin the movie experience?  According to John Horn in the Hollywood Reporter: “Los Angeles moviegoer Leonard Kolod recently spent $9.50 for a Beverly Center showing of new Line’s “A History of Violence,” only to be bombarded by nearly a dozen advertisements and previews preceding the film.  Kolod complained to Loews Cineplex, but rather than placate its customers, “Loews admonished Kolod in an email that ads 'have been part of the cinema experience for many years,' and are necessary to offset costs as 'screen actors are now receiving upwards [of] twenty million dollar salaries per movie and the films themselves are costing over one hundred million dollars to produce.'  To which the Leonard Kolod's of the world will say, 'next time, I’ll wait for the DVD'”  (Horn, The Los Angeles Times, “Hollywood should rewrite own script” December 26, 2005).

Then again maybe they won't. Maybe they will wait for the Blu-ray, but in actuality I think developments like the one elucidated below will offer theater owners more flexibility to deal with the challenges.

Kodak developing digital theater software | CNET News.com

Excerpts:

Kodak Digital Cinema and National CineMedia, a partnership of the three top U.S. movie theater chains, on Wednesday said they are developing theater management software to automate digital cinema systems now being installed at movie theaters worldwide.