Sooner or later, the other shoe was going to drop. There has been speculation for a long time that eventually theatrical releasing will become obsolete, and movies could one day be viewed strictly through streaming. Has The Interview already forced the hand of progress?
This is something Hollywood’s been fighting for a long time. There have been tentative plans over the years to release movies online and in theaters simultaneously, but again, the business doesn’t want it to happen. If The Interview does big download business, could it change the game?
You can now watch The Interview on YouTube, Xbox, and Google Play, and as a report in the L.A. Times feels, this “changes the game,” and that “other studios are looking to The Interview digital model to see if they can emulate it for their own films.” And if The Interview becomes a big hit online, it could indeed bring major changes to the movie industry.
So the film that originally wasn’t even going to be released at all made a modest take at theaters and online this weekend. Variety reported that the $15 million it made online was “impressive,” and it made almost $3 million in limited theatrical release.
Things won’t dramatically change overnight, but we’re wondering if this could indeed be another big moment of change in technology, much like the dawn of Napster, which changed the music business changed forever. The bastards who hacked Sony really set out to do some serious damage, and while they didn’t stop The Interview from being released, but the long-term damage could bring about changes they never imagined in a million years.
