Steve Soderberg tries new ways to distribute the Bubble
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Slashdot writes:
“Steve Soderberg’s latest film will be released in a manner that directly challenges the traditional Hollywood distribution chain. Soderberg’s been influenced by Mark Cuban, the dot-com billionaire who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and Todd Wagner, another dot-commer whose ideas about the movie business are radical departures. Wagner’s financing this one. The movie, Bubble, is the first of six that Soderberg will film in HD video; all will be released simultaneously in theaters, as HDNet movies, and on DVDs.” From the article: “As independents, Soderbergh and Wagner are willing to talk openly about subjects that are being hotly debated behind closed doors elsewhere in Hollywood. When Disney chief Robert Iger recently brought up the concept of shortening the window between theatrical release and DVD, he was fiercely criticised by the National Association of Theatre Owners.”
Steve Soderberg is doing what should’ve been done a long time ago: release a film in multiple distribution-chains at once and see how these compare with each other. This is especially wise of a director such as Steve Soderberg who makes movies that are slightly different from those of Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott (i.e. is films that don’t have a mastodont budget and are aimed at a mass-audience). I doubt that this experiment or even the discussion will be repeated again by any of the above filmmakers, but it’s most certainly healthy that it has been done by such a big fish as Soderberg.
Well done.
Tags: Distribution, Entertainment Industry, Film, In the news, Inspiration, PR
Technorati Tags: Distribution, Entertainment Industry, Film, In the news, Inspiration, PR
Next step, BitTorrent!!
For the publisher there’s one major problem: Getting paid.
Excellent. Those that love to create should not be governed by those that ride on the coat tails. They say money runs the world, but not really, about time artists take the cultural lead again. In the end, very few people will be remembered because they had millions of dollars, unless an artist immortalizes them. Who has the power here?
Go Soderberg: return dignity to the art/patron/collector relationship and put the money grubbing salesman back in their place of service not governor.