A Reasoned Armageddon

So it seems that David Jay Epstein can present an articulate analysis of the current state of the motion picture industry. In a two part piece from July,
Hollywood's Death Spiral Part I and Part II, in Slate, he takes apart the distribution windows, their seeming collapse and what that might mean for seeing movies in theaters.

You might take the romantic view of motion pictures and believe that there will never be a day when humans won't desire to congregate together to experience the magic of the moving image, but Isaac Asimov was just as successful in envisioning a future where xenophobia is taken to the extreme (see Spacer worlds). Epstein's point in these articles is that in pursuit of short-term revenues and profits growth, studios have slowly (potentially) cannabilized theatrical revenues. Windows of six months just ten years ago have given way to some as short as three months, with the DVD release announced during the theatrical release.

Epstein lists and then knocks several potential solutions:

• "eliminate the windowing system entirely"


• "multiplexes would 'incentivize' studios [to keep the theatrical window intact] by forking over an additional share of the box-office earnings"


• "a split-window scenario in which different movies would have different paths to DVD"

Epstein argues, successfully, that each scenario would either be unlikely to occur (the second due to the same antitrust concerns that took studios out of the distribution game) or would be ineffective (the first could shutter theaters entirely and the third would likely devolve to the first).

His conclusion? Wait and see.