Amazon, the online retailer where you can rent a movie, order groceries or buy a tank, has announced that it’s venturing into a territory that seems counterintuitive for a company that focuses on delivering its products to consumers’ homes — bringing its original video productions to actual movie theaters.
The company announced today that its still-young Amazon Studios division, which recently mopped up at the Golden Globes with multiple wins for Transparent, will also be making Amazon Original movies for theatrical release.
Obviously those movies will also show up on Amazon’s streaming service, but don’t expect a simultaneous home video release of these films. Instead, says the company, Amazon Original pictures will show up online for Amazon Prime subscribers 4-8 weeks after hitting theaters.
Amazon already offers a slate of online rentals you can stream while the movies are still being shown in theaters, but theatrical movies often take longer than two months before being included in subscription plans like Prime or Netflix.
Roy Price of Amazon Studios says the company hopes to crank out 12 movies a year and aims to start production later this year.
“[W]e hope this program will also benefit filmmakers, who too often struggle to mount fresh and daring stories that deserve an audience,” says Price in a statement.
Movie producer Ted Hope (21 Grams, Adventureland, Martha Marcy May Marlene) has been tapped to run creative development as Head of Production for Amazon Original.
This explains why Hope recently stepped down as CEO of Fandor, a competing subscription streaming service where he’d only been since Jan. 2014.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
No comments:
Post a Comment