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NATO, studios plot
d-cinema strategy
May 09, 2002
By Nicole Sperling and Sheigh
Crabtree
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In
the still-brave new world of digital cinema, it'll be the
equivalent of a Jedi war council.
On Friday, studio executives from Fox, Universal,
Warner Bros. Pictures, MGM and Paramount -- a delegation
representing NewCo, the seven-studio coalition charged with
moving digital distribution forward -- will meet in Washington
during the National Association of Theatre Owners' spring
board meeting.
The gathering
marks the first time exhibition and distribution executives
will meet face to face to discuss the deployment of digital
cinema.
"We'll be giving NATO a
status report on the digital cinema project," one NewCo source
said. "We want to form a comfortable, cooperative
relationship. We're trying to express our leadership and
inform NATO how we plan to proceed from here. A major point of
discussion is sure to be the business model and what this
system of distribution will look like."
Sources also expect NewCo to discuss its progress
in hiring two executives, a CEO and a chief technology
officer, to head up the company.
"We can now begin the process of working together
on the development of digital standards," NATO president John
Fithian said.
The meeting comes
as such technology companies as Technicolor Digital Cinema and
Boeing Digital Cinema are using the May 16 arrival of "Star
Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" to promote their
vision of digital cinema.
According to the most recent numbers, there will be
about 60 screens enabled for "Clones" to be viewed in digital,
with Technicolor hoping to deploy 16 new systems, bringing the
total it has installed to 37, and Boeing expected to install
23 new systems.
Last year, George
Lucas expressed his hope that when "Clones," which was shot,
edited and produced digitally, reached theaters, there would
be a couple hundred digital projectors in place and, by the
time the third film is released in 2005, a couple thousand.
But then NewCo entered the
picture. NewCo's overt efforts to work with exhibition to make
digital deployment a reality has caused exhibitors to be even
more reluctant to put in expensive systems until standards
issues and other important business questions are resolved.
"We don't want to see a lot of
different formats out there," said Terrell Falk, vp marketing
and communications at Cinemark USA, the fifth-largest U.S.
exhibitor. "We are waiting for standards to be formalized. In
the foreseeable future, I don't see us installing digital
projectors in all of our circuits without a lot of different
issues being resolved first. Whatever happens, we want to be
on the cutting edge of technology."
But that hasn't stopped Boeing and Technicolor from
working with exhibition to get the technology out in the
marketplace. Technicolor Digital has offered up its systems on
a promotional basis with no financial requirements for the
theater operators.
"These
theaters are part of TDC's original business plans that offer
promotional digital cinema systems to help seed the market and
create a compelling footprint," Technicolor Digital Cinema
spokeswoman Dana Banks said.
In
contrast, Boeing said that theater operators installing
Boeing's systems have paid for the installations through a
range of funding plans, including leases, outright purchase
and some revenue-sharing deals from ticket sales.
Loews Cineplex president Travis Reid
has installed nine digital projectors in his theaters, six
from Boeing and three from Technicolor. "We are not buying any
of them," he said. "All have been installed for us to learn
more about digital. The deals now available were very
attractive to us, and we thought we'd go forward and install a
few. All the deals are relatively short term and very
flexible."
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