Digital Cinema Find Its Way in Latin America
Thanks to cellular service company Movistar and Coca- Cola, digital cinema screens are finding their way across Latin America.
The transition is moving, however, slowly. Leading the way is Mexico, which has been accommodated with nearly half of the 7,000 ones projecting in the region. South American countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay are also benefiting from the digital screens. The number of digital-converted screens are expected to increase as the year rolls by
Variety reports,
The benefit is higher theater occupancy rates, as cinema-on-demand is pulling average rates of 40%-50% compared with 20%-30% for commercial releases.
Bollywood Not Hollywood Enough With Movie Merchandising
Bollywood is the most fertile and most prolific movie industry in the world. So why isn’t its merchandising sales up to par with that of Tinseltown’s whopping 16 million movie merchandising sales receipts? This lament from Bollywood movie giant Reliance BIG Pictures is typical,
“The Indian market is yet to catch up with movie merchandising. But there is great potential for the movie merchandise business to grow,” Saurabh Varma, chief marketing officer of Reliance BIG Pictures, said.
Ironically, the Bollywood film merchandising industry is marred by bootlegging! Another reason noted by The Indian Times is overall skepticism about the blockbuster potential of movies being released By some accounts, some Indian movie executives adopt wait-and-see attitude, by which time moviegoers have already moved on, in an industry inundated by releases.
Meanwhile, Bollywood movie marketing executives are doing what they can to fully leverage movie success into merchandise sales success with cross-promotions with clothing companies and retail chains.
But some can’t help but compare Hollywood’s widely-praised merchandising infrastructure to its slowly progressing Bollywood kin:
”If you look at a Hollywood movie, the revenues are split evenly between theatre (ticket) sales, home entertainment and merchandise. In India, cinema merchandise at the moment generates nothing. That is going to change with malls and multiplexes and a middle class of hundreds of millions,” said Andrew Heffernan of Eros International, the producers of “Drona”.
Gradually, but surely, they’ll get there.
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