Distribution scheme’s fans think outside the box office

Screening Room poses challenge to traditional theatre experience

How’s this for an idea? Instead of hiring a babysitter, trekking to a multiplex and buying a pair of tickets for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, you could watch the new release at home. Legally.

You would need to be in possession of a set-top box (proposed cost: $150), and would pay a fee ($50), to hire each film for a 48-hour period. Invite your friends round. Order in pizza.

This is the concept of Screening Room, a startup rental proposal backed by Sean Parker, cofounder of the music file-sharing site Napster.

Hollywood is rapidly taking sides on it. Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, J.J. Abrams and Martin Scorsese are already shareholders, while Christopher Nolan and James Cameron are firmly in the “anti” camp.

You can expect the arguments to rumble on for some time. The scheme’s fans, like Jackson, argue that it will “expand the audience for a movie.” He sees a “critical point of difference” with earlier attempts to collapse the window between theatrical and home-viewing debuts.

“It does not play studios off against (cinema) owners,” he says of Screening Room. “It respects both and is structured to support the long-term health of exhibitors and distributors, resulting in greater sustainability for the wider film industry.”

The anti-brigade are wary of a paradigm shift, though. Cinema owners obviously fear a reduction in the all-important selling of popcorn and soft drinks — the mark-up on these, often an exorbitant 85 per cent, makes a critical difference to their profit margins, since studios can receive as much as 90-95 per cent of the gross ticket sales in the first week.

Cinemas are already fighting to hold on, with the proliferation of home-viewing platforms, blockbuster TV series and the narrowing of the window between cinema release and rental.

Cinema theatre owners such as the Art House Convergence (AHC), a U.S. organization comprising 600 different businesses, issued a stern open letter about the potential economic impact of Parker’s proposal.

Parker and his co-backer, the music executive Prem Akkaraju, have been canny about recruiting support, partly by proposing to allocate as much as $20 out of each $50 rental to the cinema chains, and sweetening the deal for cash-strapped consumers with free cinema tickets.

This would offset what may sound like a steep rental cost, but some analysts view the price as too low, pointing out that it would be possible for 10 teenage girls to hold a sleepover screening of Frozen 2 at a cost of just $5 each — “cannibalization” for the industry.

The Screening Room idea has prompted renewed debate about whether the primacy of the filmgoing experience is heading further into a slump.

Cinema owners are perhaps missing one upside of Parker’s idea, which is the potential it might have to rescue a certain category of underperforming theatrical releases from commercial failure.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Brothers Grimsby, for example, only managed to drum up a measly $6 million over a two-week frame of release.

It simply didn’t have “event” buzz, but Screening Room rentals wouldn’t depend on that. It could also be a godsend for modest prestige fare such as Room, Spotlight, or 45 Years.

Still, there’s a lot to be said for the collective, among-strangers experience, even when you’re watching a low-budget drama about a mother and son being abused in a garden shed.

Beyond the economics, the whole ethos of filmgoing will cease to exist if viewing at home becomes the gold standard.