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Major Movie Studios Partner to Support Digital Cinema, Raise $1 Billion

In an effort to convert over 20,000 U.S. cinema screens to digital technology

Oct 2, 2008 16:31 GMT  ·  By
Digital 3D cinema
   Digital 3D cinema

Classical cinema has taken a turn for the worse over the past few years, a lot of people opting to either download illegal copies of blockbuster flicks from the Internet or simply wait until they become available either on DVDs or Blu-ray discs. However, things are not exactly that bad yet, since some of the most important movie studios from Hollywood have just entered a partnership that will lead to the replacement of old projection systems from theaters across the US with new, digital 3-D screens.

According to sources quoted by Reuters, Variety or the Wall Street Journal, it would seem that a group of studios formed out of Walt Disney Co, Viacom's Paramount Pictures, News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox and General Electric Co's Universal Pictures, plus Lions Gate Entertainment Corp is about to announce an agreement with the Digital Cinema Implementation Partners, a consortium formed out of AMC Entertainment, Cinemark and Regal Cinemas, who operate around 14,000 screens. Sony Pictures is also rumored to prep its separate deal with the DCIP.

The studios’ interest can be explained quite well by the fact that quite a few 3-D titles are set to be released next year (including here the second coming of “Transformers”, which will feature a few 3D-only scenes). Plus, if they manage to deliver a cinematographic experience way better than users can get right in their own homes, then the income resulting from ticket sales might also increase.

The money required for this deal to go down (apparently around 1 Billion dollars), will be raised by two of the important (and still reliable) funding institutions in the US, Blackstone Group LP and JPMorgan Chase. However, given the relatively poor current state of the US economy, they might actually have quite a hard time doing so.

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