If I were Steven Spielberg I would be after jobs right now as reports are out that the Bafta screeners of his movie Munich were accidentally cut to the wrong Region Code and couldn’t be seen by the voters.
Let’s just go through that again slowly and all you DVD people out there who hate Region Coding for the inane, purile, and controlling feature it is, can smile and nay even applaud.
Screeners for the Bafta members were to be released on the new encoded discs playable only on encoded players (in another controlling move because Hollywood is quite openly saying that they don’t trust the Award Organisation Members, you know the people who decide the Bafta’s and Oscars, totally untrustworthy) however Universal were late releasing Munich in this format. Then in the rush to get them out to the Bafta guys, they cut them to Region 1.
Woah, this is where I go really slow. Bafta, that’s British…that’s Region 2. Region 1 is the US. Ooops! Well tough crap, you created the stupid regionalisation system merely to take advantage of different currencies and markets, so shove that up your encoded player.
From The Scotsman:
“Someone pushed the wrong button,” Premier’s Sara Keene told The Guardian. “It was a case of rotten bad luck.”…
One Bafta member told the newspaper: “The general feeling among members is that the film has now been shut out of the nominations simply because not enough people have actually had the opportunity to see the thing.”
However, it does mean that most of the Bafta voters haven’t seen Munich. The Studio hastily arranged some screening in the UK, but you know, we are a big place. One can only hope that they caught the majority. Whatever it has ended up as, it does mean that Munich has stumbled on one of those hurdles to the podium in the Bafta races.
Perhaps Spielberg might, in his anger, latch onto this stupid regional coding malarky and campaign for it’s removal? Oh, of course not, it exploits foreign markets to bring in more money. It stops Mr McTavish from purchasing a DVD in Canada at half the price of his local store, months before release in his country, and watching it at home. Actually it doesn’t since everyone has worked around it…so why not drop it? Breath…rant over.
I think it’s too late for “Munich”, and I’m sure Spielberg/Universal are more interested in its Oscar prospects than the BAFTAs, but you can rest assured this will never happen again. If Spielberg doesn’t make sure of it himself, Universal will, cos despite the PR company’s claims that the cockup wasn’t Universal’s fault, the studio clearly allowed these things to be issued without making sure the BAFTA voters’ machines were capable of playing them. That’s a piece of embarrassment they’ll do their damnedest to avoid in future…