The Big Picture

At a press conference in Los Angeles later this week, executives from the Dubai-based Aries Group will announce their plans to increase the international investment in the Indian film industry and to build 10,000 new 4K-projection multiplexes to serve the country’s burgeoning and entertainment-hungry middle class. If the group is successful, they will address a problem that has long plagued the Indian film industry.

Replacing the world’s 35mm projectors with digital ones was the beginning of the digital cinema era, not the end. Now, with the end of the virtual print fee deals in sight, exhibitors are exploring what new technologies they can use to manage theatres, excite moviegoers and grow revenue. As was the case last year, the major technology topics of CinemaCon 2016 were laser projection, theatre sound, and immersive cinema. Leading exhibitors understand that their future success demands that they rethink virtually every aspect of their businesses, and that they must transform their movie theatres into entertainment centers designed to serve their specific communities. The best of them are making great strides to that end and CinemaCon 2016 brimmed with their energy.

One of the hottest topics in Hollywood these days is Napster co-founder Sean Parker’s proposal called Screening Room. When I think of a screening room it looks something like the photograph that’s next to this paragraph. Apparently, when Parker thinks of a screening room, it’s basically my living room with a set-top box in it that I buy from him for $150. With that box I can then pay him $50 to save myself the trouble of driving to the theatre to see a first-run movie. The studios and most film directors are opposed. But a handful of directors and one exhibitor, AMC, reportedly support the idea. Many questions have been raised about the idea but mine is this: why not Netflix?

Traveling the world filming a documentary about his former acting students, retired professor John Henry discovers that one of them, Marita Gomsrud, has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving only a postcard from Salzburg with the words: "Remember our games of hide and seek." Now the film goes from documentary to documystery, as someone else is also searching for Marita, a man from her shaded past who will stop at nothing to find her.