DVDs, Hollywood’s Profit Source, Are Sagging

[Anthony V]

Recession, Netflix, Rapidshare, torrents, sucky films....
The silver lining, for us anyways, lies in the last paragraph. C'mon, Megaforce !
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/bu...1&ref=business

Conventional wisdom holds that Hollywood’s fortunes go up when the economy goes down. People still crave entertainment, particularly of the escapist variety, and movies remain within the budgets of most people.

That may prove true this time around, too — ticket sales have been particularly robust in recent weeks — but studio prosperity stopped depending on box-office results a long time ago. DVDs propel profits these days, and there is a creeping dread in the movie capital that buyer interest is plummeting as the global economic crisis worsens.

“Every studio is claiming, ‘We’re O.K. so far, but we’ve looked at the overall competitive sales data and we have some concerns,’ ” said Amir Malin, a partner at Qualia Capital, an investment firm whose assets include several large film libraries.

So far, total DVD sales are down by about 4 percent for the year, with most of that weakness coming in October, according to data compiled by Warner Brothers, the largest distributor of DVDs. The independent tracking service Nielsen VideoScan paints a bleaker picture, reporting a 9 percent drop in overall DVD sales during the third quarter alone and a 22 percent decline in sales of higher-priced new titles, although its data does not include results at Wal-Mart.

Most troubling, industrywide sales of next-generation Blu-ray discs — promoted as a high-definition technology that will restore growth to the medium — are growing but will miss sales projections for the year by 25 percent or more, according to Warner.

Media companies, desperate for revenue, are dumping more obscure titles on the market, leading to downward pricing pressure, according to Distribution Video and Audio, a home entertainment overstock company in Burbank, Calif. Consumers are being more selective. There are signs that digital downloads are cutting into sales

[Barry M.]

Media companies, desperate for revenue, are dumping re-releases of the same old chestnuts, in tin boxes and shiny new packages, sometimes containing the exact same previous release, or cheapass grabbag packages of long-available titles, while more obscure titles remain unreleased. Consumers are being more selective because we already have all that stuff. FEED US!

[paul h.]

Yup repackaged mainstream crap is part of the problem. Also the novelty of the format wore off after a few years, Blu-Ray is being pushed, the economy is tanking, digital pay per view is being phased in, piracy is commonplace, and Netflix increases in popularity. I hardly ever buy discs any more, and when I do, I am almost always disappointed.

[Barry M.]

Blu-ray is betamax. Instead of replacing, it diffused & confused the demand for DVDs. I blame greed.

Now give me more new old movies on dvd.

[Gary Banks]

Originally Posted by paul h.

Yup repackaged mainstream crap is part of the problem. Also the novelty of the format wore off after a few years, Blu-Ray is being pushed, the economy is tanking, digital pay per view is being phased in, piracy is commonplace, and Netflix increases in popularity. I hardly ever buy discs any more, and when I do, I am almost always disappointed.

Feel the same way. With the 25% off sale I only picked up 5 dvds (3 in a box set) and nothing was over $10.

I am going to buy Dark Knight asap though.

[DanielN]

Originally Posted by Barry M.

Now give me more new old movies on dvd.

Amen, dammit.

[J.L. Carrozza]

Great! Now Hollywood can start making good movies again now that the fact that all the crap they make just for profit is bankrupting them!

[Marshall Crist]

Until Johnny Sokko is out on DVD instead of Netflix "view it now," Hollywood can drown in its own tears for all I care.

[Marshall Crist]

Originally Posted by J.L. Carrozza

Great! Now Hollywood can start making good movies again now that the fact that all the crap they make just for profit is bankrupting them!

So true. I work retail and noticed that DVD sales started tanking right around the time that everything coming out on DVD was crap.

[Albert P]

This kind of reminds me of a not-so-new interview with John Milius that I recently came across. In it he talks about the more complacent corporate element in Hollywood:

"IGNFF: What kind of shakeup could possibly hit the industry that could change that?
MILIUS: I think the Internet. I think there's wonderful things in the Internet – life has a wonderful way of paying these people back, you know. One of the things that's fascinating is this Napster thing, where people can take music right off the Internet, and they don't have to pay for it. The record business is outraged, and the reaction from the people on the Internet is, "We're tired of all you overpaid rock & roll jerks, and how much dope you can snort, or shoot, and how you live in your big houses and drive your fancy cars and screw all your girlfriends. We're tired of all that. You're going to have to just do it for the fun of it now."
IGNFF: You have people paying 18, 19, 20 bucks for something where the materials cost less than $1.
MILIUS: Yeah, they can make them off the Internet. They can make them off their computer, and they can have the CD. They can have the new whatever group it is CD – well, that's going to happen with movies or something. There's going to be ways to either make the movies, or steal movies or something like that. Some of these people – I'm hoping that something like that happens. People don't want to go to movie houses anymore. They want to just take things off the Internet, or somehow the Internet will do this and it will destroy all these studios, these dens of evil."

The full interview is here, but that's the only relevant passage I think.
http://movies.ign.com/articles/401/401150p1.html

[Howard Farmer]

Originally Posted by Barry M.

... I blame greed.

Now give me more new old movies on dvd.

I agree.

[Anthony V]

Originally Posted by Marshall Crist

Until Johnny Sokko is out on DVD instead of Netflix "view it now," Hollywood can drown in its own tears for all I care.

I'm with you. That and "D.C. Follies".

[Robert Simon]

Because DVD was priced from day one as sell-through, the studios feel cheated from all the revenue video stores had to pay for VHS tapes. They are trying to make more with Blu-Ray and it ain't working. This week The Digital Bits noted that MGM is releasing a bare bones Blu-Ray of DeNiro's "Ronin" for $34.99. I wouldn't pay that if i were in it. This Black Friday WalMart is offering Blu-Rays of "Transformers", "Kung Fu Panda" The new Indy and "Iron Man" for a "One Time Only" offer of $15. That should be the everyday price.

[AnthonyT]

All this hoopla about Blu-ray players having Black Friday sales as low as 128 bucks are for players that have firmware of 1.0 or 1.1, which are already obsolete, in my understanding. So, if you want to confuse buyers even more, sell them equipment that does not work.

I also agree that re-releasing movies over and over again also hurts sales. Bootlegging is some of the issue, but I think its less of an issue than the constant re-packaging. If one release existed of a movie, there would be no need to continually drop the price. Exploiting a title at the get-go, in a single disc, multi disc, rated, unrated versions, plus exclusives, widescreen and full screen, etc., etc also hurts sales.

The confusion is not about Blu-ray, its about necessity. How many versions of a movie do I need? And can I even afford Blu-ray, let alone "what is it?"

[BobG]

I may be totally wrong about this, but I don't remember hearing a peep about DVD sales slowing down, falling, etc. until somebody decided that every season of EVERY television program had to come out in overpriced sets. Does anybody here (or anywhere) desire complete seasons of (for instance) that Kimora Lee Simmons show or "How Clean Is Your House"?