I wonder how much longer small multiplexes will be showing conventional motion picture prints on film anyway? I would think the next step will be to replace film prints their projectors with high resolution digital projectors. There may not even be any hard copy of the movie actually shipped to the theaters either.
Xinua-English: "Hollywood studios are going to cut more jobs in coming months amid a variety of problems like lingering box office slumps, a slowdown of DVD sales growth and runway production, according to an industry report released Tuesday."
To me, Hollywood has become artless.
That is the plan. The question though, as always, is "Who is going to pay for it?"
A digital theater (I been to a couple over the last few months) requires about 100K worth of equipment for each screen. Print films projectors run about 20K. It will take a bit of accounting magic to replace existing, working equipment that still has many years of working life left.
That said, I don't think that digital projection is as nice as film. On the big screens, you can definitely see the pixelization of images, and fine detail is lost. Its more like a big television screen - even at the 4000 lines of resolution that is shown (compared to 2000 line for HDTV). Even more jarring is the showing of television quality images on the large movie screens - the quality is horrendous.
Just got back from Aon Flux and it is definitely a fine screen experience. The ending does do a sort of genuflection in the direction of political correctness, but does shows how citizens should remain armed, because human society is highly competitive and people can be pretty dangerous when pushed.
That system is already here, its called Video on Demand and you can get it in your living room.
Say bye bye to movie theaters, the are going the way of druve-ins.