VB sister publication TWICE dedicates a feature story in its current issue to the holiday outlook for consumer electronics marketers. The consensus among CE distributors seems to be that a stay-at-home mentality among consumers combined with cheaper flat panel TVs and the looming digital-broadcast transition could make for a fairly merry holiday selling season. "Some consumers have made the decision to curtail travel and vacations due to high gas prices and have chosen to spend that money on improving their at-home lifestyle," Mike Hench, president of regional Edge Distributors Group told TWICE.
That could bode well for the marketers of Blu-ray players and movies. In an informal survey of execs, multiple distributors and retailers S...Read More

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Some companies try to keep a low profile before their earnings announcements, but not Netflix. There ought to be lots of questions from analysts when the company releases its second quarter earnings on Friday, given recent news about the Watch Instantly service's availability on Xbox Live, the settlement of a four year-old class-action lawsuit and the shuttering of its Red Envelope indie film acquisition and distribution arm. 

Red Envelope and related earlier initiatives to give distribution to worthy indie films that otherwise would have no outlet to reach consumers have always been fantastic PR vehicles for Netflix, giving the service fabulous cred with cinephiles and a cool factor Blockbuster just can't buy. While it's undoubtedly true that Netflix did much bigger business with, say,  4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days than the aver...Read More

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In home entertainment, halfway through 2008, the world is flat. And that is a very good performance for a non-essential (believe it or not, movies are not necessary to maintain life) product category when the price of essentials like food, housing and gasoline are skyrocketing.

VB’s midyear research report shows consumer spending on sales and rentals of all home entertainment formats holding steady just above $10 billion. That’s a big improvement over the midyear mark in 2007, when home entertainment spending was down 5%.

Sales of standard DVD do look to be off 2% to 4%, according to various studio estimates, but rental is up and Blu-ray, with about
$200 million in sales in the first half is offsetting the small standard...Read More

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Just how much this industry is changing was clear at the Entertainment Merchants Assn.’s Home Media Expo show in Las Vegas last week.

The show is just a fraction as large as it used to be and the new Palms casino venue had its pluses and minuses—smaller (plus), but not easier to navigate due to scattered exhibits and events and long waits for an elevator (minus, minus). People were mostly irritated at having to stay in one hotel and do business in another. Before the show even opened, the EMA board was discussing what to do to revamp the event next year. One suggestion: lose the big production value opening session and awards show. Everything just echoes in a theater filled to less than one-third capacity.

The neither-here-nor-there nature of the show, ...Read More

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Still live from Las Vegas--Jamie Kennedy was quite funny tonight as host of the EMA awards, and his jokes about the limited number of people in the audience came across as all in fun. Kennedy remarked at one point that there were 53 people in the audience, and then when a few more folks entered the Pearl theater here at the Palms, he good naturedly upped his estimated to 56.
In reality, there were more like 200 warm bodies in the audience, including a sizable and vocal contingent from Allumination Filmworks all in matching shirts. (A show of team spirit before they are absorbed into Peace Arch?)
But the 200 might have seemed like 50something from the stage of the cavernous theater that looked to seat about 500.
There were also about 200 people in the morning's opening business session, also held in the Pearl, but there seemed to be about 53 people in each slow eleva...Read More

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So, many of us are arriving in Las Vegas for Home Media Expo. Actually, the show officially starts tomorrow and there's no way to tell yet how many of us are actually attending, but for many attendees it's the 5th, 8th, 10th, 12th, or way-too-manyeth appearance at the annual confab formerly known as VSDA. 
I saw many familiar faces, and some new ones, at Lionsgate's swanky retailer summit yesterday, and most were planning to move from Lionsgate's digs at the Wynn to the Palms, Palms Place or Rio by today.
We're anxious to see how the new Palms/Rio venue works for the show, which appears to be more spread out, but over a smaller total space, than at the Venetian, if that makes sense.
In terms of lodging, the Palms is certainly not the Venetian. Miss those comfy suites...

Kudos to Lionsgate for putting on another fun and informative show for ...Read More

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Notice how "game changer" has become the studio buzz word for the interactive potential of Blu-ray? 
Both Warner's Darcy Antonellis and Disney's Lori MacPherson used the term to describe BD Live in separate keynote speeches last week.
Fair enough. The technology could in fact change how consumers view  use home entertainment if adoption becomes widespread enough.
Antonellis did a good job in her ESCA keynote of portraying the technology as having the potential to slash consumers' YouTube/Facebook/MySpace time and increase the attention they give shiny disc. Blu-ray interactivity has the potential to forge a "sticky kind of relationship [with viewers] that we have never had with the DVD format."
She used t...Read More

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Claudia Eller and Josh Friedman had a great story in the L.A. Times this week about how increasingly difficult it is for studio execs to pick theatrical release dates for their films, given the crazy number of titles released--517 last year, or an average of 10 per weekend. 
"This is one of the biggest issues facing Hollywood today," says Fox's Tom Rothman in the story, noting that it's just as crucial to pick the right release dates for movies as it is to select the right script and hire the right stars and filmmakers. "When you're trying to cram too many movies into a finite number of release dates, it's inevitable some will suffer."
Of course, this is particularly acute at the box-office in the summer, which then causes a subsequen...Read More

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Who says actors are dumb?

The Hollywood union that’s fairest of face is also the one that’s holding out the longest in negotiations with movie and TV producers on the issue of what its members get paid when their work goes to DVD. At roughly $23 billion in U.S. consumer spending and $40 billion-plus worldwide, DVD is, of course, the single largest revenue stream for the studios.

Neither the auteurs over at the Directors Guild, nor the brainy Writers fought very long or hard for a raise in DVD residuals. Instead, they went right for their cut of revenue from digital distribution and other forms of new media, which are likely to total a few months of DVD revenue during the duration of the new three-year c...Read More

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UPDATE: You can’t get a weekend movie ticket today to New Line’s Sex and the City unless you’re up for Sex for brunch or after 10 p.m.—when the gals in New York may be just heading out for the evening, but we middle-aged Angelenos are turning in.

If there’s such a thing as review-proof, this movie has got to be it. Manohla Dargis savaged it in The New York Times, while the L.A. Times’ Carina Chocano composed a Valentine to the femme foursome. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The film is riding a huge wave of publicity (63 pages in Entertainment Weekly?!) and is bound to open bigger than was anticipated even a few weeks ago.

On Monday morning, the numbers crunchers at Warner will surely be busy reforecasting fall DVD sales for the hit, as the forecasters at every studio ...Read More

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It's the start of summer, even though the Seattle day outside my L.A. window suggests otherwise.
Heading into Memorial Day Weekend, our thoughts can't help but turn to the movies. Iron Man, Speed Racer, Prince Caspian, The New Advenures of  Old Indy... What to take the kids to this weekend?
Whether or not you've yet set foot inside the multiplex for a summer blockbuster, there's no escaping the news about what has hit, and what's missing. And you just know that all over town, those video division number crunchers are making and revising estimates about the DVD and Blu-ray sales of these titles weeks ahead of their official announces.
Iron Man? Well, congrats, Paramount. A hit of that size is a surefire home entertainment hit as well (unless you do something dumb like way overship and get buried in...Read More

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The  studios are going to have Wal-Mart and Best Buy to thank for the success of
Blu-ray.

First, the two largest home entertainment retailers ended the format war by throwing their considerable marketing and merchandising support behind the Blu-ray format, essentially denying HD DVD little or any presence on the battlefield.

Now the same two are bringing the lowest-priced BD players yet to market.

Blu-ray has languished a bit since its competitor’s demise, with set-top manufacturers struggling to get enough products into stores and cash-strapped consumers hesitant to replace their DVD ...Read More

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