We all know that pirated DVDs in China is a HUGE problem. How on earth can the studios hope to sell their product in a market where people are selling illegal DVD copies of their movies for $3 or less? Well… the folks over at Warner Brothers Home Video have just come up with an interesting way to fight them…. sell the DVDs for even CHEAPER!
Yes that’s right. According to the good folks over at Gizmodo, Warner Borthers is going to start selling the DVD of The Aviator in China for… are you ready for this… $1.50!!!!
Now, I’ve got 2 thoughts on this. First of all I think this is a great and innovative idea. Instead of trying (in vain) to shut down all the pirates out there… beat them at their own game! Become more competative and meet the consumers obvious demand. It will be in simple cardboard packaging… but no one cares about that. Warner Brothers will make less profit from it… but they’ll win back a lot of the business and maybe find a new model that will work for them and put the pirates out of business. GREAT IDEA!
HOWEVER… this also makes me mad as hell. You mean to tell me that WB can sell their DVDs for $1.50 and still make a little profit… AN YET I STILL HAVE TO PAY $25 FOR ONE OF THEIR %@##$ MOVIES!?!?! What the hell?!?!?!
Maybe the lesson here is that we need to start pirating a WHOLE LOT MORE MOVIES so that WB and other studios will stop bending us over and screwing us like it’s prom night. We all knew they were making a big profit margin on DVD sales… but even I didn’t think it was THIS big.
So hurray for WB for being forward thinking in how to fight the piracy problem. But at the same time… I must ask… WHY THE F*CK ARE YOU abusing your customers over here so badly?!?! Oh that’s right… you do it because we’re to stupid to force you to do otherwise. Something has to change.
Your thoughts?
If the pirates are already so good at making cheap (*now with qualtastity!) DVDs, why doesn’t the studio just sub-contract the pirates to make the discs?
The Aviator isn’t a good example. I’d give that movie away for free. ;)
I am also against illegal downloads, but having DVDs -such as The Aviator- drop down to a buck and a half overseas is insane…so it would seem. Isn’t the US dollar stronger in some countries? DVDs themselves combat piracy when you put craploads of bonus material, commentaries and other stuff on them.
What I’m against mostly is the double dipping.,triple dipping, freaking fourth time around..and it’s even worse when it’s crap.
Maybe if the studios lose enough income (an urban myth if ever there was one is that the studios feel the affect of piracy in the LEAST), they’ll stop pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into films that are nothing more than brainless, souless clones of movies from two years before and start making films that are smaller and more condenced.
And maybe Ben Affleck will make a good film, both have about as much cahnce of happening (i.e. a snow filled chicken in hell)
The funny thing is, as China’s piracy has grown, China’s film industry has taken off. More large scale productions have been produced in the last few years and are currently in producton than have ever been in China’s past. While the two may not share a common link, I personaly believe that piracy can be a boon to the film industry if they learn to work within their means.
Sorry
I know the topic is movies, but fuck same shit different pile.
This is why i do not feel guilty about downloading music. I will however buy a cd if the album is sick from begining to end.(well for the most part)
How manmy of you bought cd’s back in the day for $30 ??
Payback is a bitch
John,
I’m sure that they can make per unit a physical disk and a piece of paper its in for under $1,50. I can do that myself. However there are more costs tied to it than actually making the thing.
You have to pay to make it, ship it, the store has to have its just to sell it, and you have to have a buffer to cover shrinkage (theft). THEN we have to pay the people who made the movie and all the related rights. (Hollywood contracts now days ALL have clauses for this kind of thing)
Yeah John fuck them want Slither on Dvd ill give that 2 u for 1.50 US
because these bastard are willing to bend over backward for other countries but not here
fuck fuck
fuck fuck
damn
those stupid fatherless bastard
Having just visited SE Asia, where the handful of $1-$2 DVDs I purchased were all of the lowest quality (missing scenes, music cutting off dialogue, etc.), this is indeed a smart move by WB.
As for the effects – it’s just a matter of time before those versions will be circulating here. The piraters now have a new business model to perfect.
I don’t pirate because I like to own stuff, but the idea that internet downloads are poor is a very dated one, yes if your talking about filmed in the cinema stuff, but DVD rips via bittorent will be pretty good quality for those who just want to watch a film and don’t care about extra‚Äôs etc.
Hi Mr Stay Puft
When the prices of books came closer to the cost of copying them the book piracy industry could only make small profits and it no longer became viable. Very few novels are pirated in China as the profits are far too small.
Though there are people who copy high quality DVD’s from the internet the majority of piracy revenue is generated by releasing a low quality copy when the movie first comes out, people are excited about seeing the movie and either can not see it at a cinema, do not want to see it at a cinema or can not afford to see it. If you remove those people from the market stream then the pirates will find it much harder to make a profit. The idea is not to defeat all piracy but to reduce its effect as much as possible.
I’m totally with you on this argument. WTF??? Makes me not want to buy another dvd EVER again!
A film’s theatrical release returns a small percentage of the production costs. Production costs are completely out of control with the up front dollars being paid to mediocre talent, as well as the money spent on advertising and film prints. Plus, the studios produce far too many films.
Read “The Big Picture” by Edward Jay Epstein. There are exceptions, but studios make their money back from all the ancillary products – DVD, merchandising, video game tie-in, even theme park admissions. As DVD sales and rentals slow down, foreign markets become increasingly important.
Film studios are in real danger financially from piracy. Look at record companies. They waited too long to jump on the download bandwagon and at the same time CD prices rose. The end result has been steadily declining CD sales and major loses.
As to the Warner Brothers idea, I doubt it will solve their problems. It seems like pirates are always one step ahead. I agree it’s annoying. The studios treat their American audience like shit while catering to the foreign audience. They will eventually start to see major loses in the U.S. that they’ll be too late in dealing with.
“Maybe the lesson here is that we need to start pirating a WHOLE LOT MORE MOVIES…”
Got you way covered there. For years now. And if the versions you are getting of the Internet are craptacular, I am not sure you are using the Internet properly. In the days of DVD rips and 5 gig movie downloads, trust me, the quality is fine.
And of course they are making a profit off 1.50$. They would me making one off less than that too, I am sure.
Hi John
The global revenues in DVD and merchandising are far larger then the global profits made in ticket sales. The domestic market ticket sales may compete healthy against domestic market DVD sales but studios are global companies and finance themselves on an international level. Ticket sales for smaller movies may still offer a viable way of rising sufficient profits to cover the risk of financing them but bigger movies need to make multiple times their cost to offer a sufficient return for investors to risk such large amounts of capital.
So the pressure from piracy and opening new markets in economically poorer countries means that either the studio will have to rethink how it finances movies or rethink how it prices its DVD’s. It depends on how many people stop buying DVD’s and start pirating them as to when investors will feel sufficiently uncomfortable about the likely DVD revenues raised to stop funding big budget movies.
John, does this really surprise you???!!?? The movie industry…. the: what me worry?-industry, the: we wipe our butts with rare, 500 dollar-bill industry? Yep, we’ve been getting rolled all the while!
Blame Bush…that’s what Hollywood will do.
When the blue-ray dvds start coming out the cost of them is suppose to jump up to $25 – $35 a dvd. We will be get screwed more with a bulkier dvd.
Hey there Rob
From the articles I read, with the cardbord covers, the cost per unit of these dvds are under the $1.50 price point for the studios.
Hey there Nox,
Good thoughts. I’m not sure I agree with you… but it’s certainly something to think about.
But, Studios income from DVD sales are not what pays for movie production. Traditionally (and still today) DVD sale are considered suplimentary income for the studios. The films theatrical releases are suposed to pay for the production of the films.
They aren’t making a “profit.” They are providing these movies at a loss in order to get chiness consumers use to the idea of buying movies and the prices will gradually raise if sucessful.
Studio’s can not make sufficient profit from selling $1.50 DVD’s worldwide to pay for the cost of making a modern movie. These DVD’s need to be at a lower quality then the current standard of DVD or to many sales will be lost due to people importing them from China, region coding has been cracked and laws against importing have had as little success as the anti-piracy laws.
If the studios on release of a movie sell a low quality copy of their movie, similar in quality to current pirated copies for $1.50 and release these copies free on the internet then they will cut out the major profit source of the pirates. The studio’s would lose the ability to spend a lot of money hyping a bad movie because everyone will get to see that it is a bad movie but the good movies should sell well on 1-disc high quality and 2-disc high quality with extras.
Unless the studios find a way of stopping piracy fewer and fewer legitimate customers will need to pay more and more per DVD to maintain the studios profits. When those “legal” customers finally stop paying, the economic model will have to change so that cheap low quality DVD’s flood the market to stop piracy and are followed by high quality expensive box sets containing items hard to copy such as statues and photos.
that we need to start pirating a WHOLE LOT MORE MOVIES so that WB and other studios will stop bending us over and screwing us like it’s prom night
I believe I have said this for 20 years…
i have never pirated a dvd off the net, but this makes me want to start.
i really resent spending 25 bucks on a movie as is, and this just makes it sting that much more.
could you image how huge our dvd collections would be if we could get these movies for 2 bucks? even 5 bucks? i know mine would fill a van.
Hey id,
Yeah… I’ve always taken the position that the craptacular versions you get off the internet would never stop someone who WOULD have bought the DVD (with its much superior quality). Just my two cents worth.
Well, at least we’re not paying Japan prices…
interesting idea, though would it work in America where most people pirating movies are doing it for free off the internet?