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THEATER TRACKER SAYS SLUMP SHOULD SERVE AS WARNING TO INDUSTRY Monday, January 16 2006 The president of Exhibitor Relations says that last year's box office slump should serve as a "wakeup call" to the movie industry. In an interview with Fox News Channel, Paul Dergarabedian remarked, "It's fair warning with plenty of time to fix things. If ignored, it's at the peril of the entire industry." Dergarabedian suggested that there was no quick cure for the downturn at the box office. "This convergence of technology and culture, combined with (more) DIRECTOR URGES MOVIE INDUSTRY TO KEEP ITS WINDOWS OPEN Friday, October 28 2005 
Talk
about
delivering
what
theater
owners
want
--
writer-director
M.
Night
Shyamalan
delivered
a
speech
to
the
ShowEast
convention
Thursday
that
articulated
the
owners'
sentiments
concisely.
Taking
aim
at
proposals
to
eliminate
the
window
between
the
time
a
movie
is
released
in
theaters
and
the
time
it
is
released
on
DVD,
Shyamalan
warned
that
such
plans
could
result
in
the
demise
of
movie
theaters.
"If
this
thing
happens,
you
know
the
majority
of
your
theaters
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Theater owners are apparently mounting a fairly united front to black out the Steven Soderbergh-directed Bubble in many cities on Friday. Exhibitors object to the planned simultaneous release of the movie on DVD and on pay-per-view high-definition TV. (The film is actually being released on DVD on Tuesday, the day of the week that virtually all DVDs are released.) The film is being distributed by Magnolia Pictures, owned by Mark Cuban, the dot-com entrepreneur who also owns 2929 Entertainment, the film company that backed Bubble, and the art-house theater chain Landmark Theaters. The Baltimore Sun reported today (Thursday) that no theater in that city, the country's 24th largest market, will screen the film. It quoted Scott Cohen, head of R/C Theater Management, as saying, "At this point we're not going to play any movie that is under that model." In Seattle, where the film will open at one theater, Landmark's Metro, an unnamed exhibitor told the Post-Intelligencer, "It's not a question of if we will be hurt [by simultaneous release of movies in theaters and on DVD]; it's a question of how much." In an article on his website posted on Wednesday, Cuban indicated that some exhibitors have defied the stonewall being erected against his film, but he does not indicated how many have agreed to screen it. He urges patrons of those theaters to "thank the manager ... for having the balls to go against the rest of the industry."
