Spider-Man: Homecoming has a Limited Edition Holiday Giftset!
In time for the holidays, you can get your hands on a Limited Edition Holiday Giftset of ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming‘, which is exclusively available at Wal-Mart. In addition to the Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy, you’ll receive two pairs of Spider-Man socks, a Pop! Spider-Man figure, a button, a comic, and collectible packaging. These will make great gifts for the Spider-Man fan in your life, because you get so much. In addition to that, Sony Pictures is putting up an actual Spider-Man suit for auction, which proceeds will go to Toys for Tots. More info below.
read comments (0)Check Out The ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ VR Experience!!!
Hey guys, Jana here,
Wanna get your Spider-Man on a week before ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming‘ hits theaters? How about getting a taste of being the web crawler? That’s what Sony Pictures Virtual Reality is offering with a new VR experience for the upcoming Columbia Pictures flick ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming‘.
Baby Driver is Coming to 4K UHD and Blu-ray!
Hi everyone, Bryan here….
Perhaps the best film of the year BABY DRIVER is coming to 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and Digital HD, which I couldn’t be more excited for. On September 12th, you’ll be able to watch the film on any digital platform. On October 10th, the 4K UHD and Blu-ray will be available with a ton of bonus features. I’m super excited about this release and I hope it wins an OSCAR. Details below.
‘T2 Trainspotting 2’ is coming to 4K UHD and Blu-ray!
Hey guys, Jana here,
The sequel to the 1996 original ‘Trainspotting‘ film, ‘T2 Trainspotting‘ is being released to 4K UHD, and Blu-ray. The film will debut on digital platforms on June 13th with the actual Blu-ray and 4K UHD discs being released on June 27th. There are some pretty cool extras with audio commentary, deleted scenes, and some behind the scenes bonus features. I can’t wait for this. Below is the official press release. Enjoy and don’t forget to Pre-order.
The Fifth Element and Leon: The Professional are coming to 4K UHD!
Hi everyone, Bryan here….
Hooray for Luc Besson! Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is releasing both The Fifth Element and Leon: The Professional on 4K UHD with all new bonus features for the release. I can’t believe The Fifth Element is 20 years old. Below is the official press release for both films. Expect full reviews of the new awesome Dolby Atmos sound and HDR video. Both films will be released on July 11th. I can’t wait.
‘The Comedian’ Coming To DVD in May!!!
Hey guys, Jana here,
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is readying ‘The Comedian‘ for Blu-ray, DVD and digital release May 2. Robert De Niro (‘Goodfellas‘) stars in this film about an aging comedian. Also featured in the film is a star-packed cast all under the direction of Taylor Hackford (‘Ray‘). DeNiro stars with Leslie Mann (‘Knocked Up‘), Danny DeVito (‘Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘), Edie Falco (‘The Sopranos‘), Charles Grodin (‘Dave‘), Cloris Leachman (‘The Last Picture Show‘), Patti LuPone (‘Penny Dreadful‘), Harvey Keitel (‘Bugsy‘), Lucy Devito (‘Leaves of Grass‘) and Billy Crystal (‘When Harry Met Sally‘).
Blu-ray Announcement: ‘A League of Their Own’ 25TH Anniversary!
Hi everyone, Bryan here….
Has it really been 25 years since Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna hit one out of the park with the all-American comedy A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN? On April 18, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the iconic, memorable and relevant comedy favorite when A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN returns to Blu-ray in an all-new special anniversary edition.
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‘The Night Manager’ Will Be Available On Blu-ray and DVD In August!!!
Get Olympic Fever With ‘The Bronze’!!!
Hey guys, Jana here,
‘The Bronze‘ comes from the witty brain of co-creator and star, ‘Big Bang Theory‘ actress, Melissa Rauch. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment delivers the funny and some mind-bending gymnastics to Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on August 2. An excellent way to get pumped up for the Rio Summer Olympics on August 5.
If you “Ain’t afraid of no ghost” You’ll Buy the 4K Ultra HD Edition of Ghostbusters 1 & 2!!!
Hey guys, Jana here,
“I ain’t afraid of no ghost!” OK, so I AM afraid of a ghost, lucky for me I know who to call to take care of my problems and, on DVD, they deliver. If you didn’t come up with ‘Ghostbusters‘ after that sentence, you need to reboot your life to a time where it’s acceptable for you to pop your Ghostbusting cherry and get on it and may Harold Ramis have mercy on your soul. For the rest of you that totally got GB, you win all the points, you can’t use them for anything but you’re a winner today, dammit.
Check Out “FLICK ME”!!! It’s The Newest Company To Enter The Video Streaming Market!!!
Hi Bryan Here….
“The start-up movie-streaming service Flickme is up and running in beta mode beginning today, kicking off with licenses from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Warner Bros Digital Distribution. Mitch Galbraith, the former COO of Funny Or Die, is CEO of the venture, which enables users to watch Hollywood films in a social-media environment.
Blu-ray Announcement: ‘Underworld: Blood Wars’!
Hi everyone, Bryan here….
The fifth installment in the blockbuster franchise, the high-octane sci-fi thriller, UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS, debuts on digital April 11 and 4K Ultra HD™/Blu-ray™ Combo Pack, Blu-ray™ and DVD April 25 from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Kate Beckinsale (Underworld franchise) returns as iconic Death Dealer Selene, more powerful than ever before. As the war between Vampires and Lycans escalates, Selene must end the battle that has raged for centuries, once and for all. UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS also stars Theo James (The Divergent Series), Lara Pulver (Edge of Tomorrow), Tobias Menzies (“Outlander”), Bradley James (“Damien”), James Faulkner (“Game of Thrones”) and Charles Dance (“Game of Thrones”).
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Blu-ray Announcement and Pre-Order: ‘The Marine 5: Battleground’!
Hi everyone, Bryan here….
In what looks like to be the BEST film of the year, ‘The Marine‘ is on its 5th installment, which is headed direct to Blu-ray and DVD on April 25th, but will be available for HD streaming on March 28th. The first ‘Marine‘ film came out eleven years ago in 2006 and starred John Cena as a marine who gives the Attitude Adjustment to terrorists. Solid gold entertainment, Jerry. Solid gold. That first film cost $15 million, but only made $22 million at the box office. I guess that was enough to have WWE Studios create a franchise, which now we are on Part 5 with Mike ‘The Miz‘ as Cena’s replacement.
And the 2016 Golden Globe Nominees Are….
Hi everyone, Bryan Here…
The awards show is January 10 on NBC hosted by Ricky Gervais. First off, let’s look at something AWESOME here. ‘MAD MAX: FURY ROAD‘ is nominated for BEST PICTURE. It needs to win. It should win. And if does win, we all go streaking. That being said…I can’t believe that ‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl‘ was not nominated for anything. Come on. It’s one of the BEST films of the year. It’s also interesting to see no love for the final season of ‘Mad Men’ her either. Oh well.
Here is the list of nominees:
Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’ Moves Forward With Director!!!
Hey guys, Jana here,
Fans of the brilliant writer Stephen King get excited when we see a new film being made based on one of his brilliant tomes. We got creeped out by our dead pets in ‘Pet Sematary‘, our healthy fear of clowns graduated into a full on psychosis after seeing Pennywise as ‘It‘, groaned in pain when we saw ‘Misery‘ on the big screen, in short, we laughed, we cried, we cringed and we loved every minute of it. One novel that has had trouble making it’s way to the silver screen is King’s western epic better known as the collective work of ‘The Gunslinger‘.
And the 2014 Golden Globes Nominations Are….
Hi everyone, Bryan Here….
It is time for the 2014 Golden Globe nominations. The 72nd Golden Globes will be held on Sunday, Jan. 11 and broadcast live at 5 PM PST, 8 PM EST on NBC. It looks like there were quite a few films that were overlooked. What do you think?
October 5th, 2012 Is Officially ‘Global James Bond Day’!!!
Hi, Bryan Here….
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise on the anniversary of Dr. No, which enjoyed its world film premiere in London on October 5, 1962, and in anticipation of the worldwide release of the 23rd James Bond adventure SKYFALL™, Albert R. Broccoli’s EON Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment announced today that October 5, 2012 will be Global James Bond Day, a day-long series of events for Bond fans around the world.
Tom Cruise Will Play Van Helsing in a Van Helsing Reboot!!!
Hi, Bryan Here….
Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman jus signed an exclusive two year deal with Universal where they are set to produce a few films for the studio. Orci and Kurtzman were the screenwriters for J.J. Abrams’ ‘Star Trek’ reboot back in 2009. According to a press release that came out today, Orci and Kurtzman are rebooting ‘The Mummy’ franchise (as we previously reported), and a Van Helsing reboot starring Tom Cruise. Press release below.
G4 PREMIERES NEW MARVEL ORIGINAL ANIME SERIES “X-MEN” ON FRIDAY OCTOBER 21ST!!!
Hi Bryan Here….
“X-Men” Series Premiere Comes on the Heels of Hit Marvel Original Anime Series “Iron Man” and “Wolverine” on G4
LOS ANGELES – September 14, 2011 – This summer, G4 and Marvel teamed up to bring legions of fans their favorite Super Heroes with the original Marvel anime series, “Iron Man” and “Wolverine.” Next up, Marvel’s most popular team of mutants will tear up the small screen when G4 premieres 12 half-hour weekly episodes of the new original anime series “X-Men” this fall, bringing even more action, drama, and high energy anime heroics. Featuring the voice of actor Scott Porter (“The Good Wife,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Caprica”) as Cyclops, “X-Men” premieres Friday October 21st at 11pm ET/PT. The fourth anime series as part of G4 and Marvel’s exclusive partnership, “Blade,” will premiere this winter.
A War is Brewing in the Film Industry
We go to the movie theater for the same reason we go to a ball game. It’s not just to see the main event. We do it to smell the smells, devour greasy food, relax with friends and family, escape the everyday, and experience camaraderie with perfect strangers. The laughter, fear, anger, sadness, and joy expressed by the collective magically heighten the experience of the individual.
But something wicked this way comes.
Movie studios want to reduce the time that movies will be shown in
theaters. Instead, they want to be able to provide video-on-demand
service so you can watch new movies from the comfort of your home just
five weeks after theater release. It will only cost you $24.99 per
movie. Also the FCC (which I think should NOT exist) are going to
allow movie studios to activate technology to prevent films sold
through video-on-demand systems from being copied.
This is outrageous. First, if you implement software technology to
prevent movies from being copied, within a couple of weeks, people
will develop ways to get around your technology. You will never be
able to completely prevent pirating. EVER. Don’t fight it, find a way
to work with it. The home video industry still makes tons of money
even while pirated copies are being made.
Movie studios are justifying the quick release of movies on-demand
because the numbers show that 90% of a movie’s gross revenue is made
within the first 30 days of release. These numbers, however, fail to
factor in DVD sales. Last year, home video sales revenue equaled about
10 billion dollars. Early on-demand release will actually reduce DVD
sales. DVD retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart are well
aware of this risk. In an effort to protect their economic interests,
they have threatened litigation against the movie studios.
Since there is a market for physical copies of DVDs and blurays, I
don’t think they should change the model. A physical copy of anything
is much, much better than a movie streaming online (although
admittedly I am biased since I am a professional collector). But most
importantly, I don’t want to see the death of the movie theater. It is
an important part of our culture – an experience that we should
preserve.
Brooke Barnes from the New York Times wrote this article about the upcoming movie industry war.
SOMETIME in the next few months, there is likely to be an explosion in the movie business. The question is which studio will detonate the bomb.
Tension between studios and theater owners has been simmeringa long time, but it intensified in May, when the Federal Communications Commission issued what appeared on the surface to be an arcane ruling. After two years of prodding from Hollywood, the F.C.C. agreed to let movie studios activate technology to prevent films sold through video-on-demand systems from being copied.
Ho-hum? Hardly. The ruling gave studios the ability to pursue a new business — so-called premium V.O.D. — that may be the industry’s best hope of restoring itself to health, now that the bottom has fallen out of the DVD market.
Right now, theaters get an exclusive period — 120 days, on average — to serve up new movies. Then the releases appear on television video-on-demand services at a price of about $4.99. Armed with the new copy-blocking technology, studios want to offer new movies on video-on-demand services about 45 days after they arrive in theaters, for a premium price of $24.99.
The business opportunity is multifold. With as much as 80 percent of that early V.O.D. revenue going to the studio, movie executives see a new engine to compensate for the sputtering DVD. And for the studios, the need is urgent: DVD sales for the year are expected to total about $9.9 billion, down 30 percent from their peak in 2004, according to Adams Media Research.
Studios also want to cut marketing costs by interweaving advertising for theatrical, DVD and video-on-demand releases; reducing the exclusive “window” given to theaters would make it easier to combine those campaigns. Premium V.O.D. would also bring greater consumer awareness to regular video on demand, which has not caught on as much as other rental options like Netflix, according to a research report by Anthony DiClemente, an analyst at Barclays Capital.
Last but not least, studios are aware that consumers are growing impatient about being unable to access all movies whenever and wherever they want. Layering in an early video-on-demand option might prevent some of those frustrated customers from turning to pirated copies.
“There are people who we believe would like to see movies sooner than later and would pay a premium price to do that,” Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, told analysts on a conference call last month. “We are going to become aggressive.”
Cable and satellite television providers like Time Warner Cable (which is no longer connected to Warner Brothers) and DirecTV are ready to push the button on premium V.O.D. as soon as they reach a deal with studios. After all, the service would represent another revenue stream for these providers and another way to differentiate themselves with customers. The promise of the new business is one reason that Comcast is so eager for government regulators to clear its deal to take control of NBC Universal, analysts say.
SO what’s the problem? DVD retailers, for a start. The likes of Best Buy and Wal-Mart“have told studios they will retaliate against anyone who tries early-release V.O.D. because of the threat it poses to DVD sales,” Richard Greenfield, an analyst at the financial services company BTIG, wrote in a research note last Monday.
But the real wrath will come from theater owners, who have made it clear that releasing a movie early on video-on-demand services — thus cutting into their window — would be the equivalent of declaring war. Over the summer, the National Association of Theater Owners took out full-page ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter making its opposition clear.
The worry for theaters, of course, is that people will be more reluctant to buy movie tickets, at an average cost of almost $8, if they know they can catch the same film just a few weeks later in their living rooms, and for less money than it costs to haul the whole family to the multiplex. Considering that the average moviegoer spends more than $3 on popcorn and soda and the like, the cost of Friday night at the movies for a family of four can easily reach $45 — or much more in cities like New York — even before premium-priced 3-D screenings or possible parking fees are factored in.
“While exhibitors understand the new pressures that a weakened DVD market creates for their studio partners,” the ads read in part, “four decades of box-office growth and three straight years of record-breaking box office argue for caution in tampering with a business model that clearly works.”
The Big Three theater chains — Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment and Cinemark — declined to comment, but smaller theater companies have been more vocal.
“Be careful before you cook us all, yourselves included,” wrote Gregory S. Marcus, the chief executive of the Marcus Corporation — the parent of Marcus Theatres, a Midwest exhibitor — in a July opinion article in The Hollywood Reporter.
Exhibitors are also arguing that the copy-blocking technology approved by the F.C.C. won’t work. “If past is prologue, technological locks will be overcome with technological crowbars,” the ads from the National Association of Theater Owners stated.
Adding to this argument was news last week that hackers were able to crack Intel technology used to securely transmit high-definition content between televisions and set-top boxes. (Intel played down the threat, saying that a special device would need to be built to exploit the information.)
Theater owners mean business. When Sony Pictures Entertainment tried a test with“Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” last year — owners of Internet-connected Bravia televisions could rent that movie before it was available on DVD, for $25 for a month — some theaters yanked the film.
In a similar showdown, Disney’s decision last spring to release “Alice in Wonderland” early on DVD was greeted by boycott calls from theater owners, most forcefully in Britain.
Studio executives say they are going to risk premium V.O.D. anyway, contending that they have little choice, given the DVD downturn. Besides, analysts estimate that 90 percent of a film’s admissions revenue is now generated within 30 days of its release.
(The rebuttal from theater owners is that the data doesn’t take into account second-run and discount theaters, and that there are big exceptions: “Inception,” for instance, was still raking in millions in theaters 10 weeks after its release.)
Protecting the box office is crucial for studios, and for reasons beyond the importance of their ticket-revenue share. For a start, under long-term contracts, premium television networks like HBO and Showtime typically pay for movies using formulas based on domestic box-office revenue. So shrinking ticket sales would also mean shrinking television revenue.
Studios also rely on big theatrical runs to catapult titles into the public consciousness. Without all of the hoopla surrounding a hit at the multiplex — the lines, the marquees, the buzz in the corridors afterward — movies start to feel an awful lot like their more commodified cousin, television.
SO which studio is going to go first, and when? All six of the major studios declined to comment for this article. But multiple movie executives with deep knowledge of the landscape say the first quarter of next year is the target, in part because big Christmas releases like “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” and “Tron: Legacy” give studios extra leverage.
The studios that seem most likely to make a move are Disney, 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers. In part because its size gives it more muscle than other studios, Warner has historically shown a willingness to rewrite the blueprints for the home entertainment business. It was Warner, for instance, that aggressively pushed to release movies on traditional V.O.D. at the same time the DVDs arrived in stores.
One thing is certain, said a top motion picture agent who requested anonymity so as not to anger his contacts in the industry: “Studios have made it clear they are not interested in testing the waters on premium V.O.D. Once they start, they’re going to do it.”
What do you think?
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