In the weird world of movies, streaming, and television, one of the top names in film has made the switch to streaming: AMC. Movie fans will be able to rent and buy movies in the comfort of their own homes from one of the United States’ largest movie theater chains. The movie theater company, AMC Entertainment, will roll out an iTunes-style video store in the United States starting October 15th. The service is said to offer over 2,000 films to rent or purchase and will have a similar layout to iTunes, Amazon, and other video-on-demand retailers.
In light of the new streaming service companies like Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Sony, and Paramount have all made deals with AMC for catalog and new-release movies. Ron Sanders, president of worldwide distribution at Warner says, “For us, it’s all upside. Most of our other big digital partners are focused on multiple other categories — music, books. The great thing about AMC is that movies are the whole focus.” Mr. Aron, an executive at AMC says, “Our theater business is mature. There is a high-growth opportunity in this digital expansion.”
In my opinion, I think this is a great move from AMC. With the expansion of technology and streaming, movie theaters have become less and less popular. AMC moving into the streaming game opens up a whole other world for them. The article talks a little bit about the company using this service hand-in-hand with their AMC Stubs program and I think that’s a great idea. In the article it says, “AMC Stubs members bought about six million tickets to ‘The Lion King’ over the summer. When ‘The Lion King’ becomes available digitally on Tuesday, ‘those people will all get a personalized message from AMC saying that they can now enjoy it at home through AMC Theaters On Demand.'” I think this is such a good idea and even if a small percentage of the people who receive the message rent or purchase The Lion King, the company will still be generating more revenue (after factoring in costs of content acquisition).
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