Is this the future of cinema-going? Photograph: Getty
Is cinema dead? And, no, I don't mean that metaphorically. I'm not asking if film is creatively dead (although, given that a little birdie tells me that a sequel to Drop Dead Fred is in the pipeline, perhaps that is what I really mean). Neither am I harking back to those glory days of the 70s, when Hollywood was apparently made up entirely of radical auteurs like Scorsese, Coppola and, er, Spielberg.
I literally mean, is cinema dead? Do we no longer enjoy the thrill of finding ourselves in a darkened room with hundreds of strangers, waiting eagerly to discover what cinematic delights are in store for us?
Obviously a few of these arguments are well rehearsed. DVD sales are now a huge part of the Hollywood marketing machine – an estimated 60% of revenue from the US came in home sales, compared to 23% for tickets. While the opening weekend extravaganza is as important as ever for summer blockbusters like Star Wars III, any number of films now do as much, if not more, business on the small screen. And, of course, there's that old problem for Hollywood of piracy (oddly not something that Joe Public is losing too much sleep over), which meant that Star Wars was available on DVD across the world just hours after it hit the cinema.
Some film-makers are already taking the fight to the pirates. Witness Steven Soderbergh's latest project. In conjunction with 2929 Entertainment, Soderbergh will make six experimental films and simultaneously release them in the cinema and on DVD.
Now, you might think that the fact that Soderbergh wants to release a few arthouse films on DVD isn't going to have Hollywood shaking in its boots. But, that's not taking into account that the two men behind 2929 Entertainment, Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, know a fair bit about making cash in the digital era. After all, they sold Broadcast.com for a hell of a lot of money to Yahoo! back in 1999, before the bubble burst. And they know that plenty of you would far sooner sit in front of the TV than schlep over to the cinema to check out the latest release. Given that we're hardly in a golden age of cinema, who can blame the humble viewer who doesn't want to shell out up to a tenner for a film that is as likely as not to be utter tosh? It makes more sense to rent it, download, or, though of course we're not recommending this, copy it from a friend ...
Hollywood may not be as digitally savvy as it likes to think, but it knows a threat when it sees one. Warner, for example, has just released a film on DVD in China on the same day it came out in the cinema in the US, in a bid to stay one step ahead of those pesky pirates. OK, so the film was only The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, but it's the first time something like this has happened, and they're surely only testing the water ahead of bigger releases. Sony released Kung Fu Hustle on DVD in China just a month after it came out in the cinema, and are apparently rather pleased with the resulting sales.
Cinema owners are understandably unmoved by this idea, what with their vested interest in getting bums on seats, and some have refused to screen films that are to be released simultaneously on DVD. But the challenge is up to them to make the cinema-going experience a more enjoyable one. Bigger seats, cheaper tickets, and so on, would go some way to improving the matter. But can they compete with the comforts of home, where you can drink and smoke to your heart's content, shout at the screen, and answer your mobile phone should you so desire? All of which sounds like a midnight screening I once went to in King's Cross.
