I’ve previously written on my hopes/expectations that digital projection will allow for the revival market (i.e., the theatrical showing of old movies) to, well, revive. In a nutshell, home video killed a once very heathly national market for revival houses. Video tapes started reducing the audience for revival theatrical showings back in the ’80s, leading to the closing of many revival theaters, such as Chicago’s glorious Parkway and Varsity venues. At one time, both those theaters showed a different double bill every day of the week–that’s right, over 700 movies showcased every year at each venue.
The real issue was that distributors had to pay a lot of money, like five to ten grand, to purchase new prints of these old movies when their old prints would get worn out. (Aside from the fee for the right to distribute the movies in the first place.) When the market started drying up, it took longer for more obscure movies to make money, and some indeed likely never would. So less successful films weren’t replenished, and less films were available, and audiences shrank more, and even more films weren’t replenished, and so on.
Digital projection changes all that, since you don’t need prints anymore. And why not offer audiences the chance to see, say, The Godfather or Ben Hur or Casablanca on slow Tuesday nights rather than selling ten tickets to Jack Black’s latest flick?
Happily, I appeared to be spot on:
“That this 25-year-old Matthew Broderick/Ally Sheedy movie [War Games] would be returning to hundreds of theaters, including 15 in the Chicago area, gives an indication of how digital technology is transforming the business.
In the pre-videocassette era, re-releases were a fixture of commercial theaters; you used to be able to see, say, “2001: A Space Odyssey” with some regularity. But in these days of widespread DVD availability and elaborate home theaters, old movies only occasionally play at certain specialty houses.
Now, however, digital prints can be transmitted in high definition via satellite to an ever-increasing number of theaters, meaning that “WarGames” can play in 300-plus locations without the $3,000-a-pop cost of new prints.”
War Games, meh. Jaws would be great. Still, I believe this is just the start of this sort of thing. I’d love, and fully expect, to see actually revival houses starting up again sometime in the next ten years.
