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NYT's writer Laura M. Holson elucidates on Hollywood's dependence on foreign box office, and its effect on a movie's creative and marketing appraoch. While the piece does not mention digital cinema blogger Pilgrim from Digital Cinema Matters makes an astute point: "Digital cinema will only accelerate the trend of global day-and-date and put more pressure on overseas distributors to better understand the global audiences the better to adapt the marketing campaigns for local markets."
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More Than Ever, Hollywood Studios Are Relying on the Foreign Box Office - New York Times
News Corp. sculpting bold plan for growth
Excerpts:
News Corp. in the past 12 months has been forging media's future by buying and riding the likes of social networking leader MySpace.com and video gamer IGN to meteoric heights while also enjoying record performance levels at its core broadcast and cable television, film and print operations, even as they struggle to reinvent their business models.
FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - News Corp to sell films online
Excerpts:
News Corp’s internet properties, including MySpace.com, are to start selling Fox films and television content on a download-to-own basis in an effort to create a foothold in this potentially huge new digital market.
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Beginning on Tuesday, March 21 in Las Vegas, the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) will host a technology booth at TelecomNEXT, featuring several companies who will display some of the latest online distribution platforms and filtering tools which could assist the telecommunications industry and play an important role in the emerging legitimate digital content distribution markets. This is the first time that the MPAA has had a presence at this event which is important in bringing business and technology of communications and entertainment together.
Representatives from Audible Magic, BitTorrent Inc., CacheLogic, Peer Impact, Red Swoosh and Thomson Content Security will be on hand to demonstrate methods their companies have developed to facilitate legal online movie distribution and to protect copyrights in a digital environment.
According to Sharon Waxman's piece, "Movie Slump Stirs tensions in Hollywood" in the New York Times:
The decline at the box office has been the subject of debate all summer. Attendance has been down even more than revenue, a dip of 12 percent from last summer, according to Exhibitor Relations, which tracks box- office data.
John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, accused chairman of the Walt Disney Company, Robert A. Iger, of leveling a "death threat" against his industry. He was responding to a statement by Mr. Iger to Wall Street analysts this month that movie studios need to accommodate changing consumer demand by releasing films simultaneously in theaters and on DVD.
Why?
It would substantially weaken the marketing potential of the theatrical release for the ancillary markets," [Fithian] added, "and it would devalue Hollywood movies.
Fithian attributed box-office drop to poor product, not a growing consumer preference for at home viewing.
