Movies At Home

As a parent, I’ve obviously found it hard to see movies in a theater. Heck, it’s even hard to see them at home. Before Maeve, I’d bet that we saw maybe one movie a month in the theater and maybe three to five rentals during the same time period. Now it’s maybe two rentals a month. Maybe.

I have missed out on a lot of movies over the past couple years. Once a movie leaves the theater, the desire to see it is drastically reduced. A lot of that is due to marketing. The lead up to release and opening weekend builds up demand in my mind. Once that initial marketing period is over I move on to the next thing. The ability to see first run movies on my big screen in the basement would be excellent. And apparently that future might not be too far-fetched.

Netflix has partnered with Relativity Media (a newer production house) to stream movies during the pay-TV time window. That means that instead of being able to rent a film from your cable company’s movies on demand after a theater run, you could stream it directly from Netflix. Even though I’ve moved to Apple TV from Netflix, this is a step in the right direction. The big movie studios need to wake up and realize that they could make up a lot of lost revenue by moving to a new business model. Paying $20 to see a movie isn’t that enticing anymore. And trying to force me to spend $20 to by the DVD is just nuts. $10 for one night rental on opening weekend is better than $0, no?

Will that future ever come to fruition? Perhaps. But at least someone is trying.