From the category archives:

Studios

Virtual Print Fees (VPFs)

April 2009

Nearly all major studios report that they’re overwhelmed with deployment agreement negotiations at this time. By the sound of it, these are largely non-US deals. It’s likely that a number of these deals involve significant education of the prospective deployment entity.
From experience in working on such deals together, international virtual print fee agreements can be [...]

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RealD and Fox

March 2009

Fox chose ShoWest to announce that it would not pay for Real D glasses with the release of Ice Age in June. This has caused tremendous backlash from exhibitors, particularly Regal. The implicit agreement for using Real D was that exhibitors pay for the Real D license, and studios pay for the Real D glasses. [...]

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Paramount

February 2009

Is Paramount helping to put more 3-D screens in theatres? Some say not. The company’s direct virtual print fee (VFP) financing plan, where it offers to make such payments directly to exhibitors for a single 3-D screen, may have done more to hold up negotiations for digital screens than help. 3rd party deployment entities certainly [...]

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Disney

February 2009

I’m behind in reporting a site created by Disney specifically for the benefit of the digital cinema exhibition industry. The link is:
http://digitalcinema.disney.com/
The site includes the current version of Disney’s approved equipment list, plus specially-prepared training videos for loading content and keys into digital cinema systems.

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Paramount

January 2009

Jeffrey Katzenberg must be congratulated for putting his money where his vision is. He is without peer in his tenacity to bring 3-D to the entertainment world. Equally impressive, he also managed to get Paramount to put its money where his vision is. Upon learning that some exhibitors are reticent to sign long term agreements [...]

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