So... wow. Where to begin? As we figured it might, the craziness continues today with more new announcements and reaction to yesterday's Paramount/DreamWorks news.
First up, Buena Vista has fired back with another new Blu-ray Disc exclusive announcement. As expected, Disney and Pixar's Ratatouille will be released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on 11/6, the same day as the already announced Cars. It also publicly confirmed that Lost: Season Three would be coming to Blu-ray Disc on 12/11. You can read more here at Video Business.
Now for a fascinating bit of reaction. It seems that Transformers director Michael Bay was none to pleased about the announcement that his film would only be released on the HD-DVD format. In fact, he went so far as to make this comment on his website's forums (requires registration):
"I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!
Bay"
We'd heard heard that Michael was a Blu-ray supporter and that he wasn't happy when he found out about Paramount's decision, but we didn't expect that he'd make that displeasure public so quickly. But there you go. FYI, his site has been understandably getting a lot of traffic this morning, so if you're trying to log in, you might want to be patient. Something tells me you're going to start seeing Michael Bay movies on Blu-ray from OTHER studios announced soon...
Speaking of Bay's reaction and Paramount's decision, it seems Michael wasn't alone. A lot of people have been e-mailing the studio in the last 24 hours as you can imagine. Some of the replies to those e-mails have been posted on various discussion forums around the Net. We don't want to get anyone in trouble over there, so we're not going to post the full text of any of them. But among the factoids that have been gleaned from these replies are:
1) All of the previously announced Blu-ray titles that had been completed and were being prepared for release have been cancelled. This includes Blades of Glory, NEXT, Face/Off, Top Gun and the Tom Clancy Collection. Indeed, we've checked the studio's press site and discovered that all of these titles, which had still been listed there for Blu-ray release as late as yesterday, have been removed from the site.
2) The terms of the deal with Microsoft SEEMS to be 18 months, however the deal contains "a lot of clauses which would allow us to release certain films on Blu-ray during this time period." In other words, the studio seems to be leaving itself plenty of wiggle room.
And here's the most interesting bit. This is taken from one of the actual e-mails...
3) "Actually we were as surprised as everyone else today when we found out about the agreement with HD-DVD. We found out when we arrived to work today and there had been no rumors at all circulating. I think it surprised us all because we have been working on Blu-ray versions of films such Blades, Face/Off, Top Gun, etc. through the end of last week. I can tell you we have received many calls today from various talent and certain directors voicing their displeasure with this decision. We even had VP's of other studios calling in from what I hear. I have never seen this type of atmosphere in the office."
In other words, Michael Bay probably wasn't alone among filmmakers that work with Paramount in being pissed off about this news. And it seems that the whole decision was concocted without telling ANYONE actually working on the discs. It was as much a surprise to the studio's employees as it was to the rest of the industry.
Here's another interesting story I've heard through the grapevine. People at Paramount who were working on the HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc versions of Blades of Glory had actually been planning to do some kind of elaborate interactive feature on both versions... except that they discovered the 30GB HD-DVD disc didn't have enough space to do what they'd wanted to do. So they were planning to include this feature exclusively on the Blu-ray version. Now, of course, that's all changed. But this casts some doubt on comments made by Paramount's chief technology officer, Alan Bell, in the media since yesterday, to the effect that the studio considered HD-DVD the superior format from a technical standpoint. Apparently someone didn't tell that to the guys actually WORKING with these formats at the studio.
Speaking of the media, there's another new story on all this over at the New York Times today that's worth a read. It CONFIRMS that Paramount and DreamWorks are being paid $150 million in cash and incentives to go HD-DVD exclusive.
Also today, reaction from the Blu-ray camp is as you'd expect. Here's what Pioneer's Andy Parsons (also the Chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association's U.S. Promotions Committee) had to say late yesterday:
"The decision seems oddly timed given Blu-ray's tremendous momentum both with consumers and with retail. Blu-ray title sales continue to outpace HD-DVD sales by nearly a 2 to 1 margin, and major retailers have expressed a strong preference for Blu-ray. Moreover, the price delta between HD DVD and Blu-ray players has been greatly reduced in the past few months, a trend that is on its way to eliminating any perceived cost advantage the HD DVD format has claimed to have. Under these circumstances, we can only imagine what could have enticed Paramount to walk away from a format that is clearly selling significantly more software than the HD-DVD format."
And Scott Hettrick has weighed in with an editorial over at Hollywood in High-Def as well.
Finally this morning, Paul Sweeting has posted an editorial of his own over at Content Agenda that I wanted to comment on. Paul's a good guy, and he's been doing this a long time, but he and I disagree on the format war. And I think his editorial focuses too much on the business side of the equation, and not nearly enough on the consumers who are actually the point of all this. All too often, Hollywood makes decisions like these in a vacuum, having little contact with (and real world knowledge of - I'm not talking about focus groups and spreadsheets) their actual consumers. That was never more clear than in the comments of Paramount Home Entertainment president Kelly Avery in Paul's piece:
"Our real focus is on, how do we jump start this thing? This is still a very small market and we need to start moving some movies and some players. Ultimately, we don't want this to become a niche business. We need to get consumers to step up to high-def DVD players and we think this fourth quarter presents an opportunity to do that."
Ironically, Paramount's actions will almost certainly have the OPPOSITE effect going into the holiday season. Why? Because just at a time when it started to appear as if the outcome of this format war was getting clearer, Paramount and DreamWorks' decision has just made the choice even more confusing for all those consumers who were paying attention but were still sitting on the sidelines. It's certainly pissed off all those consumers who had already chosen Blu-ray, and who were already purchasing Paramount Blu-ray titles (not to mention those looking forward to announced titles like Top Gun). Furthermore, anyone who hasn't been paying attention, but starts considering high-def over the next 18 months, is going to be even MORE confused. They're going to see Hollywood studio support for high-def split between two camps. They're going to be bombarded by ads for two formats. They're going to see Cars and Pirates 3 in one color case, and Shrek 3 and Transformers in another, and they're going to ask themselves, "WTF should I do?!" And what they're going to do is stick with DVD. This format war isn't just about cost deltas. It's about public perception. And when it comes to public perception of high-def discs, this industry has just screwed itself but good.
One last note today: We've been getting a LOT of readers asking us how they can weigh in with their opinions on Paramount and DreamWorks' decision yesterday, and also express their desire for Warner to stay format neutral in the face of pressure (and money) from Microsoft. You can find contact information for all these studios on our Links page. Whether you call or send postcards and letters (the latter is always much more effective than e-mail, which can easily be ignored), we would strongly suggest that you be polite and professional at all times. Enough said.
Stay tuned...
Bill Hunt, Editor
The Digital Bits
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