Drew Turney
The first major casualty of the new battleground of VOD happened recently, as Microsoft announced back in July that it was shutting up shop on Xbox Entertainment Studios, the division charged with developing original content for sale to subscribers of the game console.
In the last few weeks the studio has closed its door, jettisoning the executives in charge and selling live projects to other networks.
Microsoft is still going ahead with digital Halo series, but in-house live action content seems deader than Windows XP at this stage.
Not that the division itself was a failure, but with 18,000 company wide layoffs, non-core products were always going to be the first to face the chop.
One of the trickiest aspects of reporting on VOD is talking about how much it’s actually making for distributors and producers. Studio accounting has always been ‘creative’, but at least they release numbers we can go with. VOD comprises such a mish-mash of platforms, players and tools, many of them un- (or under) reported, which makes any talk of profits or viability mere guesswork. The Dissolve has a great story about just this conundrum.
http://thedissolve.com/features/exposition/594-the-hidden-world-of-video-on-demand-profits/
In related news that’s going to affect the VOD world in ways we can scarcely imagine yet, finance firm PricewaterhouseCoopers released a study that said internet advertising would surpass that of TV within seven years. You can hear the concurrent rubbing of hands together with glee and nervous gulps from here, depending which end of town you’re at.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/internet-ads-poised-top-television-708902
Meanwhile in Moviehole.net’s home turf of Australia, one of our largest DVD/streaming movie services – Quickflix – apparently came under the watchful eye of Netflix.
Wonder if they were considering buying up some of the competition before they announced their expansion into Australasia recently.
On VOD now, Poker Night (https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/poker-night/id948480186?uo=4&at=10lorC), a twisted thriller where a young detective is caught in a sadistic game of cat-and-mouse when he’s kidnapped and tormented by a masked serial killer. In order to survive, he has to use the wisdom he learns from by senior detectives on their regular poker night.
Also out, Print the Legend (http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/80005444?strkid=491430782_0_0&trkid=222336&movieid=80005444), about the titanic battle for control of the 3D printer market that you never knew existed.
In Murder of a Cat (xxxxxxxxxxx), a loser who lives in his mother’s basement and designs action figures runs a yard sale promoting his hardboiled detective toy line with his pet cat and best friend, Mouser. When he wakes up one morning to find Mouser impaled by a crossbow arrow he’s devastated, and realising the local Sheriff is only interested in flirting with his mother, he sets off on his own to find out who killed Mouser and why.
And finally, the movie that started the Schwarzenegger legend, Pumping Iron (https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/pumping-iron/id919803773?uo=4&at=10lorC). The 1977 classic put not just Schwarzenegger but body building on the world stage, and it’s available for the first time digitally with rarely seen new interviews and material.
