The Big Picture

In the late 1990s, a relatively small group of men and women, mainly in Hollywood, had the radical idea of reinventing the motion picture business, a business that had been working successfully for more than one hundred years. Twenty years ago this month, Digital Cinema Report began reporting on that effort and chronicled one of the most amazing transitions in history. The changes did not happen easily or quickly and there were many people opposed to the very idea. But there’s no need here to rehash every battle; this is not a history. Rather, this is what five motion picture industry leaders and I think were the top twenty most significant developments in making that change a reality. For weeks we asked readers to tell us what they thought belonged on the list, and from that list we chose the final twenty. In addition to me, the judges, in alphabetical order were Tom Bert, director of cinema technology, Barco; Brock Bagby, executive vice president, chief content and development officer, B&B Theatres; Cedric Lejeune, vice president of technology, EclairColor; Loren Nielsen, vice president, content and strategy, Xperi Corporation; and Leon Silverman, advisor, 2030 Vision, strategy and industry relations, MovieLabs. Here then is Digital Cinema Report’s Twenty-Twenty.

This has been a momentous year for PVR Cinemas. In March, the company announced that it was merging when INOX Cinemas. When that deal is finally approved, which is expected in the coming months, the combined entity will become the largest film exhibition company in India operating 1,546 screens across 341 properties in 109 cities. In May PVR entered into an agreement with Oma Cinema of France to introduce the concept of cinema pods in the Indian market. Through its vertical architecture, Oma provides the audience with an intimate cinematic experience with tiered balconies, or pods, enabling viewers to enjoy a sociable cinema experience while enjoying a perfect view of the screen. Later that month, PVR introduced 270-degree on-screen experiential cinema advertising. The car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki was the first advertiser to use the platform to launch its new 2022 Maruti Suzuki Brezza. In July the company announced it was working with Cinionic to convert all its screens to laser projection. And last month it worked with Amazon to present a truly unique cinema ad. The commercial begins with a voice-over giving a command to Alexa to dim the lights. To the audience’s surprise, not only do the lights in the film dim, but the theatre lights dim as well. I recently spoke via email with PVR Cinemas CEO Gautam Dutta and Cinionic CEO Wim Buyens to speak about innovation and its role in cinema’s future. Here is our conversation.

Launched in 2014 by the Korean producer of premium film formats and cinema technologies, CJ4DPlex, ScreenX is the world's first digital multi-projection theatre technology to enable a 270-degree panoramic movie watching experience. ScreenX uses a proprietary system to expand specially selected sequences of a film onto the left and right-side walls of an auditorium, surrounding the audience with exclusive imagery that makes them feel as if they’re inside the movie, creating a truly immersive experience. In the beginning, exhibitors, especially in the United States, were slow to embrace the new technology. In part, that was because so many were pre-occupied with the challenge of simply converting from film to digital projection and, in part, because CJ4DPlex was a new brand to them. But growing success in Korea and hard work by a lot of people paid off. In 2018, the ScreenX technology proved its worth at the worldwide box-office, with the successful panoramic release of Marvel Studios' Black Panther.

When the MSG Sphere opens in Las Vegas sometime next year, it promises to get even more attention than it has already, which is saying a lot. To date, most of the media coverage has focused on the construction of the massive complex, a story well worth being told. But, while some people have gone so far as to label it the future of entertainment, it’s difficult to understand why, given that to date the people running the sphere have offered few details about what kinds of shows and events it plans to host. And most of the reporting about MSG Sphere has attributed the idea behind it to James Dolan, who is invariably described as the project’s billionaire brainchild. Few, if any of the reports that I’ve seen, have added anything more about the man, which seems like an oversight and, possibly, a serious oversight.