[Richard W. Haines]

Anthony,

Steven Seagal has been doing straight to DVD releases and surviving. A lot of indies do it too.
Perhaps some major filmmaker/distributor will try a straight to DVD release combined with a multi-media publicity campaign as a test. That means taking out newspaper ads, getting interviews on talk shows and so forth as if there's a theatrical opening but instead selling to consumers directly in retail stores.
It would be a very risky proposal but if it worked, would have a real impact on exhibition and how
movies are marketed.


One of big problems of theatrical release is it's so astronomically expensive
to make hard copies compared to DVD copies. In the range of $1000-$1500
per print for most movies and the prints don't look good. Top quality DVDs can be mass produced for a fraction of that
cost. Newpaper ads for films are charged at a higher column inch rate than
regular ads too. If the distributor doesn't at least break even in exhibition,
he recoups out of home video, cable and foreign sales which is why many movies don't make much (if any) profit for the filmmakers. However, if you don't go
theatrical there is a stigma attached, at least for the time being and you won't
make as much potential profit as if you went theatrical. It's a high risk/high
stakes business.