Sony and Disney begin streaming theatrical releases to combat piracy

Credit: Disney

With movie piracy reaching epidemic proportions in Asia, Disney and Sony have implemented a new method of combating online piracy.

The film studios have begun a new on-demand service in South Korea which offers current, theatrical features for rent. This makes Disney and Sony the first two US studios to provide customers with the option to either purchase a ticket to see a film in theaters or watch other major theatrical releases in their own home using their cable, internet, or satellite-TV subscription. As part of the service, Django Unchained, Wreck-it Ralph, and Brave were all made available during their respective theatrical runs in the country.

Further details via The Verge:

Tim Burton's film version of Alice in Wonderland was nearly not screened at Odeon cinemas in the UK, Ireland, or Italy in 2010 after Disney attempted to reduce the exclusive theater release window from 17 weeks to 12 weeks in order to bring forward the DVD launch. Disney also conducted an on-demand test in Portugal with a six-week window for animated movie Tangled a year later but has not repeated the experiment until now.

As the world's eighth-largest film market, South Korea is a good place for Disney and Sony to start. Should they test the model outside of Asia, both companies will likely be met with greater opposition in countries like the US and UK. With movies like Iron Man 3 performing fantastically at the US box office with an $175 million opening weekend (second only to The Avengers), theaters play a major part in building buzz for a title — helping Google to predict future box office hits. That said, the four other major Hollywood studios are said to be watching the situation closely and may follow suit, putting pressure on movie theater chains and the future of the exclusive 90-day play window in the US.

Personally, I still prefer the environment and experience of watching a movie in a theater. For me, it just wouldn't be the same watching a first-run release at home. But I certainly understand the convenience the service would provide, particularly since it's more cost-effective for families to forego the obscene concession prices at the theater and simply enjoy the feature at home, with their own bowl of popcorn. Of course, those crazy concession prices are the result of studios giving theaters a miniscule cut of a film's profits, and this new measure would only further hurt theaters, as it's kind of hard to compete with the convenience and economic soundness of the model. That said, I would still hesitate to call this the future of the film industry, as not everyone has the technical capabilities in their homes to get the full theater experience. And some movies really do demand a theater experience.

So do you think this is the future of the film industry? Or is it premature to call for the death of movie theaters? Sound off in the comments!