Screening Room will offer its subscribers in-home movies for $50 at the same time (day-and-date) as they debut in cinemas. Subscribers will have 48 hours to watch the movies and there is a one-time charge of $150 for the set-top box that serves up the movies. Screening Room management's marketing strategy is to capture a middle-aged adult audience whose busy schedules make a trip to the cinema difficult.
To entice, both the studios and movie exhibitors, to support their scheme, Screening Room would pay as much as $20 of the $50 watch-fee to exhibitors. Additionally, subscribers would receive two free admission tickets to see a movie at a cinema, which further benefits exhibitors' and their concession sales. The studios, as distributors, would get a cut of the $50 per-view-fee as well (believed to be 20%).
Exhibitors have always been adamantly opposed to any shorting of the release window, particularly in regards to home-cinema schemes. Most exhibitors feel that a smaller window (or no window) of exclusive release drastically hurts their business.
The support of big-name film makers is a key for Screening Room in convincing exhibitors and studios to embrace their concept. Screening Room representatives have stated that they are close to a deal with the AMC theater chain (which will soon be the largest chain). Regal Entertainment, the other large cinema circuit, has stated that they will refuse to exhibit any movie that does not adhere to the current, roughly, 90 day exclusive theatrical release window. On the studio side, Universal, Fox, and Sony are studying the Screening Room proposal. Disney stated that they are not interested in the plan.
Representatives of the film-makers/investors declined CMG's request for comment on their Screening Room involvement.
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