Wired magazine goes to the movies this month, interviewing AMC Entertainment CEO Peter Brown:
In January, director Steven Soderbergh and billionaire producer Mark Cuban tried to release the film Bubble on DVD the same week it hit the big screen. Most theater chains froze them out. Industry insiders say the simultaneous availability of first-run tickets and movie rentals could put cineplexes out of business. Wired asked Peter Brown, CEO of AMC Entertainment, what’s so scary about a little competition. – Lucas Graves
Wired: Why deny theatergoers the chance to see Bubble?
Brown: We want to put up on the large screen a product made with that format in mind. Bubble, and some of these other direct-to-video titles, are simply not. We want to serve steak, not hamburger.
Shouldn’t the audience decide what’s steak and what’s hamburger?
Direct-to-video is nothing new. And 99.9 percent of the time you don’t get the same quality of manufacturing.