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A comment on The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record. Parent comment

Re:The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office ... by jcr on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @11:40AM (#3944151)
I certainly do not qualify for "have the background" but I do have some information. One part is cost of reproduction; it's rumored to cost $1,500 for each reproduced film reel set. The current work (that I know about) is the move towards digital distribution.

http://singularityhub.com/2012/04/27/movie-theaters-ramp-up-...

Another part is translation. Though language barriers have been decreasing during the last two decades, they still exist, and most people prefer to watch movies in their native language, or at least have subtitles in a language they know well.

Various "fan groups" release subtitled versions of their favorite anime, and at least to some degree, this addresses the time delay of translation. More importantly, the entertainment industry has been slowly learning from the fan subbing groups. A good example would be the partnership between entertainment companies (read: investors) and groups like CrunchyRoll which does and distributes officially sanctioned, subtitled (re)releases a short time after the programs have originally aired.

http://www.crunchyroll.com/

Though the former could easily be considered just cost cutting, the latter is undoubtedly due to pressure from alternate distribution channels.

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Re:The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office ... by cdr on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @11:54AM (#3944250)
My local indie theater recently ran a substantial (for them) fundraising campaign to upgrade to digital. They claimed that within a year or two, the major studios were going digital only and any theater without digital would be completely shut out. I didn't verify this, but I have no reason to doubt them.
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Re:The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office ... by lawnchair_larry on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @03:47PM (#3945486)
Kevin Smith just mentioned this on reddit today as well.

"I like both, but it doesn't matter what I think, as the last 35mm film camera rolled off the assembly line months back and most studios are ceasing print distribution altogether: first overseas, then domestically."

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/tcxgh/i_am_thekevin_sm...

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Re:The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office ... by Keyframe on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @01:53PM (#3944947)
DCP is de facto standard for a few years now. It is pretty rare to see 35mm copies around except on festivals. It is even rare to see film cameras on set, even on commercials which are usually ripe with, what would one call, 'hipsters'.
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Re:The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office ... by waterlesscloud on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @01:04PM (#3944617)
Fox just announced officially that they will cease all 35mm print distribution within 2 years.
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Re:The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office ... by ChiperSoft on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @01:33PM (#3944823)
As a film geek, this news saddens me so much....
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