The past week Netflix made a couple of interesting announcements. First off they will be showing the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel on the same day it is released in IMAX theaters. I think it is great news that this is happening more (and something I hoped for in an article I wrote for Flixchatter). Of course various cinema chains were not happy about this and have stated they won’t play the release. The thing which stood out to me was the following quote:
“While a homevideo release may be simultaneously performing in certain Imax locations, at Regal we will not participate in an experiment where you can see the same product on screens varying from three stories tall to 3-inch wide on a smart phone,” said Nunley. “We believe the choice for truly enjoying a magnificent movie is clear.”
The thing I don’t understand about it is if the choice is clear, why would you not show it? It means you aren’t that confident that that choice really is that clear. These chains are seeing it as a big risk to their business and losing revenue, but they should be embracing this and think of ways to make it worth going to the cinema to see it.
The other news I read was that Netflix has signed a four movie deal with Adam Sandler. These movies will be exclusive to Netflix. As you can read in the article Netflix has made the deal based on their statistics on which movies subscribers watch most. While a lot of his latest movies didn’t get many positive reviews it seems that big data on which movies viewers check out on Netflix tells a different story. There still seem to be enough people who enjoy his films and therefore it makes a lot of sense for Netflix to go ahead with this.
What are your thoughts on these Netflix announcements?
