The film industry may not be dead yet, but new businesses are already opening up to take over from the movie moguls.
From digital capture to digital projection, the onslaught of modern technology has brought a sea of change in the hundred years old movie Industry, leading to new ways it is run and creating some new businesses on the way.
No one has any better idea than Steven Spielberg and George Lucas where the movie industry is heading for. If any one must know, surely these doyens must know.
"There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even half a dozen of these mega-budgeted movies are going to go crashing into the ground," Spielberg had stated in a function, "and that's going to change the paradigm again."
Spielberg and Lucas expect consumers to watch more content, including movies and TV shows, on giant screens at home, as the separation between TV and film content disappears and theatrical releases are limited to fewer, big-budget films.
Not surprisingly, the two veteran directors and a lot of other big wigs had been putting their money where their mouth is building their own personal screening rooms, setting off a trend in the future of the movie industry and sort of a final word in opulence, to show off to friends.
This has spun off in to a new class of products for architects like Jeff Cooper who can mix aesthetics with acoustics and technology, who has built the facilities for both Spielberg and Lucas and a dozen other celebrities.
These exotic screening rooms which can cost anywhere from half a million to a million dollars to build, often boast high end digital projectors and sophisticated sound systems and 18 feet screens, all of which have become new niche products in their own expanding markets.
The patronage of celebrities have certainly taken the whole concept of private screening rooms out of LA and in to several hotels which have built their own facilities around the world and even private facilities like the Screening Rooms at Cheltenham in the UK.
Sites like Screening Room Map also have sprung up to channel the marketing of these available amenities locally, which has promises of a new business on its own.
The proliferation of screening rooms in to hotels and even in to the standard living rooms of people have rendered not only these movie related products but their accessories also in to lucrative business opportunities.
The best movie experiences are ones "where we lose control, and the movie and the images and the excitement is washing over us," Spielberg said.
True to this idea, rich and famous owners had been equipping their exotically designed screening rooms with not only sophisticated digital projection equipment and 18 feet screens, but also plush and comfortable chairs called theater seats.
Over time these theater chairs themselves have become status symbols in living rooms in the U S and around the world bursting in to a mini industry on its own right, with products from one vendor, theater seat store, sold through high end home theater rooms in select stores.
The concept of a home theater has grown in popularity with the advent of flat screen technology becoming affordable over the last 7-10 years -- a key requirement for re-creating a movie experience at home, while the comfort of plush seats have migrated from expensive screening rooms to ordinary living rooms.
The veteran directors are not the only ones looking in to the future of the film Industry.
Tribeca Enterprises, a diversified global media company based in New York City and Established by Robert Deniro, provides various platforms for discussions about the future of the Industry. Some opinions expressed by experts:
Cinema is going to become more of a personal experience. More luxury theaters with food and beverage service will pop up, and rentals and collectible like dvd and blu ray will phase out. Digital will take over the content delivery market and there won't be a dime to be made in the traditional media.
Anything we can get as an input we can put up on screen. That means we go from being a place where you can just see 35mm films to becoming a true general entertainment place providing everything from gambling to gaming, educational lessons to movies they might not have seen for 40 years, and all sort of things like that.
All that means one thing, the movie Industry is here to stay, with new businesses supporting and growing out of it.