Wes Craven's Legacy

Wes Craven

Wes Craven, who just passed, has left a legacy in my family beyond just the enjoyment we had watching his horror films. My daughter Sydney is named after a character in the “Scream” franchise, Sydney Prescott. I remember seeing one of the “Scream” films while pregnant and thinking, “Sydney. That’s a good name!”

It seems destined perhaps that my daughter would have the same darkly humorous take on life that infused many of Craven’s films. She’s a brooding blonde, a contrast that would likely make a great character in a Craven film, her sunny appearance belying a contemplative and serious personality underneath.

Craven always seemed to be on the inside and on the outside of his movies at the same time. While presenting his characters, he was also an omniscient eye on the proceedings — often a satirical and humorous eye.

This duality is what made his type of horror so compelling. Unlike the gore-filled horror that followed, exploiting every cringe-inducing torture imaginable, or the reality-spawned horror such as The Blair Witch Project or the “Paranormal Activity” franchise, Craven’s films, from Scream to A Nightmare on Elm Street to the original The Hills Have Eyes, had a point of view. It was somewhat matched by Joss Whedon in his screenplay for Cabin in the Woods (co-written with director Drew Goddard), which also touched on the satirical aspect of horror. However, Craven’s viewpoint was unique. It will be missed.

It lives on, perhaps in my daughter Sydney, who projects the same kind of duality that Craven always exhibited — light-hearted humor with a consciousness of the dark side of life. Or in those who will emulate his and Joss Whedon’s take on horror. The fans will remember Wes Craven. Craven’s horror allowed the audience both to experience scares and to evaluate them from afar (via humor or satire). In between was a unique truth, that life is both scary and humorous.

 

 

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Women in Home Entertainment Confronting Change

This week, we present our eighth annual Women in Home Entertainment section, in which we recognize female leaders in the industry. The list includes executives from the major studios and other content owners, as well as digital and disc retailers. This year, we also put together some commentary from the women in the section, allowing them to offer insight into the challenges and opportunities they face as the business moves into the digital realm.

The top major studio female executives also offer insight into their entertainment preferences and career knowledge. They give pieces of advice they received and would offer to others. DreamWorks Animation’s Kelley Avery said “just have fun with it,” which is sage advice in a very serious world. Fox’s Mary Daily stressed honesty and curiosity. And Sony’s Lexine Wong said it’s “OK to fail” but to not repeat the mistake and to perform at a level above.

Our industry faced several shocks in the past month, including what seemed a seismic shift in media power after Disney noted ESPN’s loss in subscribers. Industry pundits began to wonder if over-the-top services would break up the cable bundle in such a way that it resulted in the big media companies losing out. CNBC’s Jim Cramer called Netflix a “media killer.” The Dish CEO said Netflix was “the world’s largest content aggregator,” in a nod to the Wall Street darling’s growing power. Several stock market gyrations later, that narrative had lost a little steam, but the digital OTT business had caught everyone’s attention.

The Women in Home Entertainment are on the front lines of these changes in home entertainment distribution, and we salute their work in navigating new business models.

Persevering, they see both opportunities and challenges in the enormous changes in our industry.

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A Paramount Decision

Paramount Pictures has brought together two segments of the entertainment industry that are traditionally at odds: theatrical and home entertainment distribution. Cinema companies have for years bemoaned the shrinking window between theatrical release and home entertainment distribution, whether via video-on-demand, streaming or disc. Each time a studio has tried to give consumers access to theatrical releases sooner than usual, the theaters have circled the wagons and protested.

While previously at odds, these two businesses are now forming an “Odd Couple,” as our July 20 cover story notes, married by digital revenue. Paramount’s Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse will be given a wide release this fall with the digital home entertainment purchase available 17 days after the film dips below 300 domestic theaters, meaning consumers could have digital access to titles early — with theaters, for the first time, sharing in the digital revenue.

Looming in the background is the threat from streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix. Both services are looking to slam the theatrical-to-digital window shut and offer feature films to be streamed without the usual cinema exhibition period. There’s nothing like a common enemy to unite former foes and force a shotgun wedding.

I don’t think, by the way, that the theatrical and home entertainment revenues are a zero sum game. I’ve been to many theatrical showings in which audience members leave the theater musing about when they will be able to buy the film they have just seen on disc or digital. Sometimes, there is no better time to sell a film on home entertainment than just after consumers have seen it in theaters. Perhaps marketing home entertainment in the theater lobby is the next step.

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Streaming Ahead

Netflix’s growth stepped into high gear in recent weeks, as its streaming model continued to take up a bigger chunk of online traffic, span the globe and spawn competitors.  When even Apple, the most valuable company in the world, decides to get into streaming music after years as the download leader, it seems Netflix is no longer just a very successful video distributor, but is in the vanguard of entertainment consumption. Apple is facing its own form of Netflix competition in low-cost or no-cost streaming services such as Spotify. Thus, the company has decided to expand into the access-to-music model, which is growing more than its download-ownership model. Subscription streaming service Apple Music will launch in 100 countries this month. After a three-month trial, it will cost $9.99 a month, or $14.99 for a family plan for up to six people.

While the music industry doesn’t always model the video business, it certainly has some similarities.  One similarity with the Netflix service is that shorter-form content is more conducive to streaming. A TV episode in a series is like the song on an album, a quick fix of entertainment. Thus, Netflix seems to be a bigger threat to the TV business than to the theatrical market. Case in point: Netflix executives have said episodic content represents 70% of viewing. Even so, despite its overwhelmingly episodic focus, Netflix made a big move in the film realm, signing Brad Pitt’s War Machine to be streamed to its subscribers at the same time it is released theatrically in 2016. Maybe Netflix will make its mark in longer form entertainment as well.

While OTT streaming services led by Netflix are certainly making headlines, I think there will always be a market for ownership. Humans like to collect things. Witness any of the attendees that pack the show floor at Comic-con. Whole series, such as HBO’s “The Sopranos” set or my personal favorite “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” will always be collectible. As serialized programming, these shows are like long films true fans will want to revisit long after the shows cycle off streaming services such as Netflix.

So while Netflix may be streaming ahead, that doesn’t mean ownership won’t be an important part of the entertainment business for years to come.

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A Fair Exchange

The May 2 Showtime pay-per-view fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao may not have proved to be the most engaging live event ever, but it certainly made a bit of history in live Web broadcasting.

As the fight took place on pay-per-view, with many potential viewers fighting the rush in PPV traffic rather than watching a fight, Periscope members broadcast the event live from their cell phones. The Periscope service, which offers live streaming, shut down those “broadcasts” as soon as they were nabbed for piracy, according to Periscope executives. But the point — and the danger — was clear. Even live broadcasts, the last bastion of television, could be taken over by Internet video.

As observers in the home entertainment realm over the years, we’ve seen that access to content, other than that delivered by the studio at the theater or a broadcast service via the television, is desirable and profitable. Consumers crave control over what content they can access and when. That desire will never go away. But it’s up to content owners to extract a price for that access, for the fighters, players and actors, for the grips, for the directors, for the special effects team, for everybody who works to produce content.

Our annual Digital Drivers section attempts to outline and recognize some of those key players that are guiding that negotiation between content producers/owners and consumers. We are very proud of this piece, and hope it offers a bit of clarity in the murky digital future.

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Box Office Glow Might Rub Off

If there is an equivalent of a crystal ball for home entertainment, it is the box office take of films in the pipeline. When theaters have more hits, typically studios and retailers sell and rent more home entertainment product.

At the annual CinemaCon trade show in Las Vegas, John Fithian, president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners, offered an optimistic view for 2015. He predicted a record-breaking year for the industry in part based on the quality, genre breadth and expert timing of releases. He also gave a shout-out to the industry’s greater appeal to women moviegoers, citing such films as Fifty Shades of Grey, Cinderella and Insurgent. He said there would be several movies topping $1 billion in box office worldwide. The hits include Furious 7 (already raking in the dough) and the anticipated “Avengers” and “Jurassic Park” sequels as well as the “Minions” spinoff. Of course, the “Star Wars” sequel is a potential blockbuster of galactic proportions.

This is welcome news after a bit of a drought in box office power. As California has thirsted for more rain, so too have the studios suffered a drought in hits. Soon it will be the home entertainment industry’s turn to reap that expected record harvest. But this time there are many more digital competitors in the home entertainment realm that will take a bite out of the crop, putting more pressure on the traditional home entertainment business. If you have a team of all stars and still can’t bring in the trophy, pundits turn to the management to blame.

It is the home entertainment industry’s job to extract as much bounty from this wealth of hits as it can. The pressure is on. New releases have made up an ever-increasing segment of the top 50 sellers on the VideoScan charts. When the new releases are stellar, it makes sense that the home entertainment business will profit. Theaters are throwing the home entertainment industry a soft ball, and the industry needs to hit it out of the park.

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Talent in Charge?

A group of top recording artists, led by rapper Jay Z, wants to make streaming pay talent more. They’ve launched a new music streaming service — Tidal — designed to offer artists better pay for their work.

The service starts at $10 monthly and is designed to take on the likes of Spotify and Pandora by offering better-quality audio and better remuneration for artists. Such luminaries as Beyonce, Kanye West and Madonna were on hand for the announcement.

This isn’t the first time a big-name music star has called out cheap (or free) streaming services for underpaying artists. Singer Taylor Swift, fresh off the launch of her blockbuster album 1989, pulled her catalog from subscription streaming service Spotify, saying artists and their labels aren’t paid enough for the many times listeners stream their songs on the free version of the service.

“Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is,” she wrote in a column in The Wall Street Journal.

It seems Tidal may be one step in that direction, as far as artists are concerned. Artist Alicia Keys, at the press conference in New York, said Tidal will “preserve the value of music,” according to the Los Angeles Times, and will offer exclusive content not found anywhere else. Sound familiar? Tidal has no free service; it’s $9.99 monthly for basic service, with standard streaming of music and high-definition music videos, and $19.99 monthly for CD-quality streaming, HD videos and access to original content.

But in the Internet realm, who really is in charge? Is it the content producers or the technology companies that deliver content? It’s a question that has not only plagued the music business, but also the entertainment business at large.

Will Tidal’s quality streaming, offering better compensation to talent, convince consumers to pay more (or, really, pay anything at all)? That’s an open question. I, for one, hope it will, and probably so do the many movie and TV show producers out there that find they don’t get enough of the bounty from the Internet revolution. But it’s not the top stars that are really in danger. It’s the upcoming talent that is taking the biggest long-term hit for low-cost streaming. I hope Tidal finds a way to include them, too.

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Rental Market Is Boxed In

It wasn’t so long ago that the top dog in the video rental business was Blockbuster Video. Blockbuster executives crafted the rental deals that the rest of the industry emulated or worked around. Now that mantle seems to have passed to Redbox, the kiosk company that was characterized as an upstart not so many years ago.

I remember a spokesperson for a major public video store chain telling me that the kiosk market was just a marginal business that would never overtake stores. He said, “How could they possibly replace video store clerks?” Another such spokesperson said online physical rental (Netflix) was a side business, never to rival the store experience. (Now, by the way, Netflix executives think disc rental is a side business, too.)

Those public video store rental chains are long gone — and still standing is Redbox. Following the stores’ demise, Redbox is the dominant outlet at which consumers rent a physical disc. Netflix has sidelined its physical disc rental business in favor of streaming and original programming for streaming, and independent or mid-level chain video rental stores are few and far between.

Pretty much every time I go to a grocery store in my neighborhood, I see a Redbox kiosk with a customer or two. For most consumers who want to rent a physical disc, Redbox is the easiest, cheapest and quickest way to view content, especially movies. Just before Blockbuster went bust in late 2013, Home Media Magazine editors fanned out to find the closest rental outlets and Redbox kiosks were by far the most convenient. I personally had to get on a freeway and travel a half hour to find the nearest Blockbuster or indie rental store. The writing was on the wall.

After the demise of many video stores, Redbox has become important to content owners as well. The studios look to Redbox to buy and rent all of their new releases (popular or not) under output deals. Independent content owners look to Redbox to pick up art house or genre titles that used to find a place in a larger video store rental market, but that the mass merchants increasingly won’t sell.

“Everybody is taking them to lunch,” one industry observer told me of Redbox. Until some other market (perhaps digital) eats their lunch, Redbox looks to be on a roll.

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Gathering Clouds

Are gathering clouds raining on studios’ digital sales?

It seems Warner CEO Kevin Tsujihara thinks that might be the case. Different studio-backed cloud-based content ownership services are confusing consumers and slowing digital growth, he said.

Since the introduction of UltraViolet, supported by most major studios, Disney has been a holdout, preferring to support its own subsequently introduced cloud-based service, Disney Movies Anywhere, rather than join the UV accumulation. Various industry observers have debated the merits of Disney’s different path, but many came to the conclusion that both clouds could coexist nicely without damaging digital growth on the horizon.

Tsujihara appears to disagree.

“It would be my goal to bridge [UltraViolet] with what Disney is doing, so the consumer doesn’t have to guess is that a Disney movie, or is that a Fox, Sony, Paramount, Universal or Warner Bros. movie?” Tsujihara said March 4 at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom confab in San Francisco. He noted that while digital sales of movies increased 50% in 2013, growth slowed to 30% in 2014 and is about the same so far this year, which will not be strong enough to offset declining disc sales.

While two cloud services can coexist — indeed they do — it seems to me that they need to be connected through consistent marketing and operational logistics, making access to both seamless to the consumer. Consumers want simple services, and they really don’t care (or often even recall) which studio owned the content they want to acquire. Format options can stimulate, rather than kill, a market. But sometimes, as with the many TV versions of 3D, they scramble the message so much that consumers begin to boycott the market altogether.

“We have to focus on what the consumer is looking for: Simplicity. The magical thing about DVD was it was simple, easy and worked everywhere. I think we have to replicate that in EST,” Tsujihara said.

Making that sort of simplicity work for non-physical ownership is one of the key challenges facing studios, no matter which cloud they follow.

 

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A Tale of Two Retailers

Digital ownership took a hit recently with news that Target had abandoned its Target Ticket service, a key supporter of UltraViolet, the cloud-based digital content storage platform supported by most of the major studios. But Target’s digital surrender may be less of a defeat for digital ownership, than it is a case of the tortoise losing to the hare.

A key reason why another retailer, Walmart, has been able to bridge the digital gap is its quick decision to embrace digital technology and ownership with its Vudu service and its adoption of the UltraViolet platform as well as Disney’s cloud-based service, Disney Movies Anywhere. In the digital arena, often companies that move more quickly win the race. Unfortunately, Target’s caution may have cost it, making it an also-ran.

That’s why Walmart’s Louis Greth and Chris Nagelson are so worthy of our Visionary Award this year. Walmart’s decisive move (before competitor Target) to embrace UltraViolet digital cloud ownership as a complement to its robust physical disc business put it at the forefront of innovation in the retail arena. Walmart was key to supporting the UltraViolet service, and working with its studio partners, has helped consumers get what they really want from entertainment ownership — the ability to possess a physical copy with the highest possible quality and numerous extras, as well as the option of viewing content they already own on their digital devices, from tablets to PCs to cell phones. Walmart this January accepted a Software Retailer of the Year award from DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group, and Greth put it best in accepting the award for the retailer: “Our customers love your product.” Giving customers what they want is the top calling of retailers, and Walmart has never lost sight of that, whether it be physical product or digital.

As the competition heats up in the retail space, Walmart is facing the future and embracing it. Target, still an important physical disc retailer, seems to have ceded control of the digital territory, finding that it was too far behind in the digital race.

It’s hard to see now how this marathon will ultimately end. Digital ownership certainly faces challenges, as Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara reportedly told a tech group Feb. 18 at Re/code’s Code Media confab in Dana Point, Calif. But in this tale of two retailers, one competitor is out of the race.

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