M+E Daily
Studios Reportedly Forging Ahead With Premium VOD Plans: Movie Rentals Could Cost $30
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Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., and Walt Disney are still seeking to offer new theatrical releases for rental on cable systems’ video-on-demand platforms — with plans to charge a hefty premium for screenings, according to Bloomberg.
The three studios are in talks with In Demand — the VOD partnership between cable operators Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable — to test a so-called “premium” VOD service. True to its name, the service would charge viewers a considerable premium for the privilege to watch new films at home, months before their release on Blu-ray or conventional VOD channels: rentals could cost as much as $30 each, Bloomberg reports.
The studios, some of which openly discussed their plans at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York last week, are evidently undaunted by the recent hacking of the Intel-created content security system that the premium VOD platform would rely on.
Time Warner CFO John Martin reportedly told conference attendees that Warner Bros. expects to begin premium VOD tests later this year, offering films for between $20 and $30 per screening.
Such pricing comports with premium VOD offers that Sony has made in previous years. Last fall, for example, purchasers of Sony Blu-ray players or Bravia TVs to stream the studio’s “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” one month before the film’s release on disc.
Bloomberg also reported that Disney, for itself, is mulling a streaming extension of premium VOD, via Internet-connected devices such as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3.
Besides pricing, the other unknown is how soon after their theatrical debut movies would be made available under the new service. But theater owners have vocally opposed any “collapsing” of their window of exclusivity on new films.
The proposed premium VOD service, the National Association of Theater Owners asserted in June, “muddies the value proposition for the consumer, blurs distinctions between theatrical and ‘straight-to-video’ and undercuts one of the important selling points for theatrical exhibition — the timeliness of the exclusive event.”
