Napster co-founder and ex-Facebook president Sean Parker has wants to bring the cinema to your home. To that end, he and Prem Akkaraju, an executive at SFX Entertainment, have recently pitches a premium day-and-date movie release service to Hollywood studios representitive.
This “premium movie release service” is allegedly called “the Screening Room”. Early reports surrounding this service shows that the service will come with a set-top box that will transmit movies the same day they come out in the theaters. With it, you’ll be able to watch any of the newly released movies within a 48-hour period. The pricing though is rather steep as it costs USD 150 for the box itself and USD 50 to watch a movie once. This means that the service is more akin to a traditional pay-per-view than it is a subscription model.
While the price is, to be completely honest, expensive, the logic behind this service is that it would allow you to watch the latest movies without needing to go to a cinema and deal with the crowd. A huge chunk of the price will go to the studios and theaters to get them on board with the service while the service itself will only take a USD 5 commission. If it still feels too expensive, Parker and Akkaraju has plans to give the user two movie tickets for every title you pay for. The logic behind this is that you’ll get free tickets to the cinema, while the cinema could earn some money via concession sales.
According to Variety, this service has been pitched to Universal, Fox and Sony, who seems to be showing serious interest and have been studying the business plan closely. While negotiations are still in its early stages, the duo has said that they’re close to signing a deal with AMC. Should the deal work, you could possibly watch newly released movies at home without having to drive to a cinema.
