Movie Industry’s Alice Is Lost In Wonderland

The movie industry is fast disappearing down a rabbit hole and may never re-emerge.

The latest tiff between areas of the movie industry shows once again, how many major businesses still don’t get the fact the world – especially their world – has changed and it’s not the cosy comfort zone it used to be.

They have to fight for a slice of the pie, that pie is getting smaller and the only way everyone will pay their bills and survive in these difficult times is to accept the consumer wants to get things when they want and have a range of choices.

On the latter, the British cinema chains and the movie industry giants both fail.

Their industry is not in a good state so it’s extraordinary that want to use the consumer as the meat in the sandwich to make their Excel spreadsheets rosier.

DVD sales in the recession have slumped by 10 per cent.

Movie chains are struggling but live in hope that if they install expensive new 3D equipment, moviegoers will flock and all will be saved. Unfortunately not every 3D movie is going to be as spectacular and interesting as Avatar, although the new Tim Burton 3D Alice in Wonderland is about such a much-loved tale, it could appeal as well. But Disney decided that it needed to get the DVD of Alice out within 12 weeks of its theatre release in the hope it could sell.

Two of UK’s three big chains baulked at this and decided not to run the movie at all. One has now negotiated a deal but the other, the giant Odeon chain, won’t budge. Right on D-Day, Disney is still trying to save the disaster as it faces losing a huge slice of potential earnings in the UK because so many cinemas won’t be showing it.

What none of these businesses consider is that the consumer is the big loser whatever way it goes.What the consumer wants is choice. The day a movie come out in the cinemas, they want to choose to see it there, buy the DVD or download it and watch it on my computer.

DVD releases seem to be getting pushed further and further back to the point I have lost interest in getting say 2012 whenever it comes out because the movie is now such a distant memory.

Even more ridiculous, I think that DVD is already out in some countries but not others.  If I’m still interested, I’ll wait until I rent it one day from a DVD hire store.

Continuing with their arrogance, Warner Bros decided to restrict sales of its DVDs to US Netflix and Redbox’s $1 kiosks until 28 days after they are released and other companies plan to do the same.

3D movies are hard to illegally download so with that in mind, and with tougher laws pending around the world to stop Bit Torrents, we’re entering a new smugness era from the entertainment industry, who think they are back to dictating the rules.

They forget the consumer – that’s you and I – will end up saying we don’t really need to see Alice In Wonderland in the cinema or on DVD and find ourselves bothering less and less with movies.

I have already got to that point of not buying DVDs – and looking at the slump in DVD sales, the rest of the public seem to have got to that position as well. So it won’t be hard to break the movie habit. It has already started.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/valkyrieh116/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0