Odeon Cinema's Annouce they will NOT show Alice In Wonderland

source BBC

If you are a movie fan and you plan to see Tim Burton’s version of the Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice In Wonderland, well if your local cinema is an Odeon cinema you will have to go elsewhere as they will not be showing the movie.

The cinema chain confirmed today that there cinema’s in U.K, Irealnd and Italy will not be screening the Walt Disney movie in repsonse to Disneys plans to reduce the time the movie will be shown in the cinema. With the movie due to be released on March 5th Disney are planning to release the movie on DVD at end of May which they say is an one off.

In response Odeon said it would “set a new benchmark” and this 12 week could eventually become normality so they offically annouced the boycott. This is sad news and I posted something on this a few weeks ago (post link here) and feedback I got was this an joke, well the hit the fan today.

I dont know what the sitution is in other countries but in UK (possibly Ireland) there is usually a minimum of 18 weeks between the cinematicl release and the DVD release but Disney have reduced that to 12 weeks which has started all this comotion. Basically the Cinema chains are loosing 6 weeks of possible income and if you look at it its double income as this as the movie is been released on 3D as well. This movie may not do as well as Avatar but it is looking likely to be 2010’s highest grossing movie and a chance to second ever grossing movie and with Avatar still going strong at the cinema 13 weeks on from its release you can fully understand the Odeon’s reasons to boycott.

Origanlly Cineworld and Vue where also boycotting as well but only a few hours ago it was confirmed that Cineworld and Vue have struck a deal with Disney to show the movie. Even though UK/Ireland’s second and third largest chains will now be showing the movie it will be still extremely hard to see this movie 2d or 3d as Odeon been largest chain (over 100 cinemas nationwide) thus more likely the other chains as well as the smaller chains/cinema’s selling out screens quicker. It has its other negative effects and it effects all cinema big and small and all it needs is one big domino effect and as they fall cinema’s could close due to this.

If you live in spain, austria or germany Disney intend to honour the agreement they originally made but USA, Belgium and Netherlands are keeping a vlose eye on the situation and chains in those countries are also considering similar actions to Odeon.

Think about it many movie studios are spending barrel loads of money on releasing their movies in 3d format and 3d is made solely for cinemas and when you reduce the time the movie is in the cinema you are actually undermining the money you put into releasing in 3d. This is n’t the first time something like this has happened or at least nearly happened.

When Bafta winner animation UP last year Pixar attempted to reduce the time as well only for the UK chains threaten not to screen Pixar’s other titles. Ben Stillar’s Night At The Museum , 20th century Foc tried and failed to get the time reduced to 13 weeks after Vue and Odeon nearly boycotted the movie.

Lets get one thing straight its all about money when cinema’s and film studios start fighting with each other and when Disney uses pirating of there movies as the reason for the reduction is there indication they believe the world’s pirated movie industry is in UK. That is stupid but not saying there isn’t pirating happening but there’s many other countries that are far worse though we here no plans of reduction in those countries. Could it be UK/Irish movie fans are big DVD buyers than other countries, possibly. As I said before it doesnt matter if it was reduced to one week or increased upwards there is always someone who gets a pirated copy, movie tickets are high enough target the people instigators not the people you want to see this movie.

Well you know its bad when Morrisons (I live 5 and 15 minutes between 2 of them in my town) supermarket are already promoting the movie dvd before its even got to a big screen!!!