And the latest brilliant innovation from the marketing geniuses in Hollywood is shortened theatrical-release schedules? Disney has asked theater owners to go along with a curtailed run of thirteen weeks in first-run theaters for Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s 3-D Alice in Wonderland (the standard is sixteen weeks). The logic here is that the big-name-having, family-friendly movie will be a natural hit on home-entertainment, and that the sooner it comes to DVD and on-demand, the more money it will make. But we’re confused: Doesn’t pulling it out of theaters early take away the lure of 3-D and undercut all the money generated by those more expensive movie tickets? Also, Disney is getting the theater chains to go along, the Hollywood Reporter speculates, by offering a better-than-usual revenue split early on, so how lucrative can this be? (The studio is also promising exhibitors they won’t be pulling this stunt too often). Finally, did Disney forget that nobody buys DVDs anymore?
