Emerging Pictures Digital Rollout

With Investment from Participant, Emerging Pictures Announces 12 City Digital Cinema Rollout for '05
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"Emerging Pictures, the digital cinema initiative being forged by Ira Deutchman, Giovanni Cozzi, and Barry Rebo has announced an investment from Participant Productions. As part of the partnership, Emerging will roll-out its Digital Cinema Network in 12 cities this year, offering an array of programming, including independent films and international films and other content, ranging from film festival programming, dramatic performances, and concerts."

http://www.emergingpictures.com/

This headline went from very exciting to deflating in the time it took me to get through the article. I was thinking that these guys were after what I was after. Leveraging the flexibility of digital cinema to strike meaningful deals with distributors and get the film product to more places in superior quality while giving the digital exhibition a little jumpstart.

But these guys appear to be small fries. They're going the ultra-conservative route with non-commercial venue installations and proprietary content deals. Not trying to go head to head with traditional theaters and distribution deals. My guess is that this effort will fade into the background and not do much for digital cinema at all. But who knows, maybe they have something bigger planned.

Their staff seems to be fairly accomplished, so either these guys aren't as smart as their resumes claim or they don't have their heart in the effort. They seem to be big enough guns to challenge the big players in the industry to reinvent their distribution and leverage their power for good, but they seem to be settling for building their own content network instead of going after the whole pie.

What they do is still cool Still providing free equipment and installations for people who _have_ venues in "underserved" areas. I hope they find some way of making them useful to the populace and commercially viable.