any thoughts?

[mutinyco]

THIS WAS IN THE BBC WEBSITE...

Cinemas set for 'digital revolution'
                                   
A recent David Bowie show was beamed to 50,000 fans in cinemas

Music, sport and musicals will all be regularly beamed into cinemas by the year 2008, a report has predicted.  

Digital projectors that can show live events on big screens are expected to become common over the next five years, research journal Screen Digest said.

Screenings of things other than normal films will account for one third of cinemas' profits by 2008, it said.

Rock concerts, Broadway musicals, football and wrestling are among the events that have already been screened.

Content rights owners are only just starting to grasp the potential that this represents                    
             
The digital changes would turn cinemas into "entertainment complexes" - not just movie houses - the report said.

Screen Digest analyst Daniel Schmitt said: "It is no longer a question of whether audiences are willing to go, or are prepared to pay for other entertainment than films in cinemas."

Cinemas in the United States and Europe are investing "tens of millions of dollars" in the technology, he said.

"They know they have an audience. Content rights owners are only just starting to grasp the potential that this represents."

There are currently 80 digital screens in the European Union - but the report predicted that this would rise to 4,125 by 2008.

Bowie success:

And "alternative content events" would generate 35% of profits by that time, it said.

The predictions come one month after the most ambitious such event yet, when 50,000 fans in 86 cinemas around the world watched an exclusive David Bowie concert.

Forthcoming events in the US include a show by rock band Rush, which is being beamed live into 26 cinemas across the country.

Also planned is an educational event centred around the new Disney film Holes, where schoolchildren in 41 cinemas will be able to put questions to the director and writer.

[Alexandro]

As usual, this will make thing even harder for small, independent, art house films...let's just hope is not a mortal stab...

On the other hand, I would love to see, let's say, Radiohead or something like that on a movie theatre with the sound and th ebig screen...

[mutinyco]

It'll be interesting. First of all, all those old celluloid prints will be worth a fortune. If you thought paintings by Picasso or Van Gogh were overpriced, imagine what prints of Citizen Kane or 2001 or The Birth of a Nation will go for! It will fundamentally alter the hierarchy of great films because as antiquities the value will be determined by rarity. The archives at MoMa or Scorsese's or whoever else will be worth millions and millions of dollars.

Also, indie filmmakers are probably just going to have to seek out different means of distribution -- from DVDs to the internet. But at the same time, certain chains like Landmark -- which mostly deals with indies -- will have a greater flexibility to show films once they're digital. They won't have to rent prints at such a high price. And anybody with access to digital equipment can easily find a means of having their work showcased without the expense of getting prints made.

[Alexandro]

anybody with access to digital equipment can easily find a means of having their work showcased without the expense of getting prints made.

I hope you're right about that...I wanna believe it...but it's amazin how over the years the bussines and the money have stayed within the same circle...it's like if they always find the way to just convert anything into the same old same profit own it all way of things now...

[mutinyco]

Of course. I'm not suggesting it'll be utopia. Just as they'll find new ways to control and profit, we'll find ways to subvert and express. And vise-versa. Hopefully we'll profit too, of course...

[Alexandro]

with everything going digital, one good thing that would happen is the segmentation of markets...

maybe there will be more theatres by independent owners, not necesarily big chains...and this guys may show really small films, really local stuff...like every town having their own local cinematic movement and a place to show it and it will find an audience...