Thursday, January 7, 2010

2011 Movies On The Sony releasing movies in 3D on Blu-ray (Reuters)

Article courtesy of Reuters
LOS ANGELES (Home Media Magazine) - Sony Pictures said Thursday it will release 3D movies on Blu-ray Disc worldwide for the first time, beginning in the summer with the animated release "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs."

The launch is aimed to coincide with the summer arrival of Sony Electronics' 3D compatible Bravia LCD televisions and 3D compatible Blu-ray disc players.

"3D entertainment on Blu-ray is poised to revolutionize the home viewing experience in much the same way that high-definition televisions and Blu-ray Disc have over the past several years," said David Bishop, global president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Sony's homevideo arm.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Disney unveils KeyChest technology (Reuters)

Source: Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Walt Disney Co on Tuesday unveiled a technology called KeyChest to enable consumers to buy films or television shows from various distributors, store them on remote servers, and play them on multiple platforms ranging from TVs to computers and phones.

Disney said it plans to roll-out KeyChest for both the U.S. and the international market, and that it will soon announce partners who will participate in the program.

"Discussions are going to step up dramatically at the Consumer Electronics Show," said a Disney spokesman, referring to the upcoming technology conference in Las Vegas.

Disney said negotiations with content distributors, cable companies and telecommunications services have been ongoing for several months.

Disney hopes the technology will be deployed before the end of 2010.

The company also said a third-party company will operate KeyChest, and that it expects other studios to make their content available through the authenticating technology Disney has developed.

Company officials said the goal of KeyChest is to make it easy for viewers to see a movie accessed from various outlets and to address the issue of compatibility in maneuvering content from device to device as well as limited storage space on consumers' hard drives.

She also said this was not intended as a Disney only venture.

"The idea is to have all the movies consumers want to buy available in this way," said Kelly Summers, vice president of digital distribution at Disney, on Tuesday in a briefing about KeyChest. "If it's Disney only, there really isn't much value here," she said.

Disney officials said they hope to use KeyChest to build momentum for the long-stalled digital distribution of films.

It comes at a critical juncture for the industry which saw the sale of films on DVDs and Blu-rays drop by an estimated 13 percent in 2009. Online sales of movies, the hoped-for bright spot for the industry, grew from $150 million to $250 million in 2009, but not an enough to offset the decline in physical sales.

With KeyChest, a consumer can buy a movie from a participating store. That customer's account with other participating services, such as telecom services or cable companies, would be updated to show the film is available for viewing.

Summers stressed that KeyChest will not be a service that consumers access directly.

Rather, Disney envisions KeyChest as a program that retailers can tap into to verify that consumers have already purchased the right to access a movie, and then make that movie available to the consumer across different devices.

(Editing by Carol Bishopric)

New 007 James Bond Movie

Sam Mendes to direct next Bond picture (Reuters)
Source: Reuters 32 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - It's Mendes. Sam Mendes. The British director is in negotiations to direct the 23rd installment of the venerable James Bond franchise.

Production is being fast-tracked and could begin as early as June with an eye toward a 2011 release.

Daniel Craig will play 007 for a third time. Marc Forster directed the previous Bond film, 2008's "Quantum of Solace," which grossed $586 million worldwide.

The MGM film will be Mendes' first action-heavy project, though his 2005 effort "Jarhead" was set amid U.S. war in Kuwait. Mendes' last directorial effort, the road-trip dramedy "Away We Go," grossed $10 million domestically last summer.