Bursting Hollywood's 'Bubble'

By Monica Mehta, AlterNet. Posted January 27, 2006.

Q: A movie you want to see is releasing today in simultaneous formats. Would you rather:

1. See it in your living room, where it will air on pay-per-view cable TV at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m.?
2. Go to a theater and see it on a big screen?
3. Wait four days, when it comes out on DVD, and buy and see it then?

Today, the movie industry will have America's answer to this question.

It's the first time a high-profile director will be releasing his film in theaters, on DVD and on cable television simultaneously. And it might mean big changes in the way Hollywood does business over the next decade -- much the way downloaded music has changed the way the music industry operates.

The groundbreaking film in question is called "Bubble," and the director is Steven Soderbergh, who helmed such greats as "sex, lies and videotape," "Traffic," "Erin Brockovich" and "Che." Critics have called the movie "too indie" and "the weirdest goddamn movie ever released by a major American filmmaker," but the plotline seems fairly standard: A love triangle develops between workers at a doll factory in a small Midwestern town. A murder occurs. Mayhem ensues. Soderbergh used mostly nonprofessional actors from the West Virginia and Ohio locales where he shot the film and spent a mere $1.7 million making it. He had no script, instead teaching the actors to improvise scenes based on a screenwriter's outline, and the movie is a mere 73 minutes long.

Nothing too out of the ordinary so far. But it's the marketing strategy that has given the movie enormous buzz. It will be shown in theaters across the country and aired on HDNET movies on Friday at 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. EST. The following Tuesday, Magnolia Home Entertainment will release the DVD for sale. Typically, movies have a few months' lag time between theatrical and DVD release. After the theater, studios will release them on pay per view, then DVD, then cable networks, and eventually on broadcast TV, to capitalize on the profits of each phase's sales. Typically, a movie makes about 50 percent of its revenue on home video, and about 25 percent from theaters. The rest comes from selling its TV and other rights.

But Soderbergh and his backers, internet billionaires Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban, say this new simultaneous release strategy, dubbed the "day-and-date model," is a way to get the upper hand on a trend that's already begun.

"Name any big-title movie that's come out in the last four years," Soderbergh said in a recent interview. "It has been available in all formats on the day of release. It's called piracy. Simultaneous release is already here. We're just trying to gain control over it."

It's well-known that theaters have been hit hard by the recent slump in box office sales. Ticket sales in 2005 continued their four-year downward spiral, going down 7 percent from 2004, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. A number of factors have been cited: online piracy, counterfeit DVD sales, thanks to DVD-burning technology, increased theater ticket prices and pre-movie ads, and the plethora of big-screen TVs and home entertainment systems. People aren't as willing to shell out $20 for a ticket and concessions unless the movie is a big-screen blockbuster like "King Kong."

Soderbergh says the independent film industry has been hit particularly hard by this trend. Fewer theaters will show indie films, which typically draw smaller crowds. Through simultaneous release, he says he's allowing his audience to choose for itself how it wants to see the movie. The new strategy would also let studios leverage the millions of dollars they spend marketing new movies. To compensate for lost ticket sales, the initial DVD sale price of "Bubble" will include a $10 premium, and 1 percent of sales will be given to theaters that show the movie.

Monica Mehta is a writer based in San Francisco and a former AlterNet associate editor.

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