A story on the BBC News site yesterday reported that the new version of Alice in Wonderland won’t be playing at Odeon cinemas when it opens next month on 5th March. Odeon won’t be showing the film because they’re annoyed at Disney’s plans to limit the usual 17-week cinema run to a meagre 12 weeks so they can release the DVD at the end of May.
So Odeon are crapping themselves [citation needed] over the shortened cinema run, saying “12 weeks will become the standard” and I think they’ve got good reason. I think unless you’re desperate to see certain films, most people will wait for the DVD or Blu-Ray release in 3 months time. Disney have said that one of the main reasons for the decision was to stop piracy. The thought being, if it’s out on DVD sooner, people will be less likely to pirate it.
What a load of shit. That’s blatantly just an excuse to get the DVD out early and make more money off that. Releasing the DVD early won’t have an affect on piracy if you ask me, and Disney must know that. Films are available to pirate even before they’re out at the cinema thanks to Screeners being leaked online prior to release. And to be honest, they’d have to release the DVD within the first week to have even the slightest effect on those lost sales.
Even if 12-week cinema runs become the norm, I don’t think it’ll have any effect on my particular cinema habits. I like going to the cinema, no matter what happens. I like the act of going out and sitting in a big old cinema eating ludicrously expensive popcorn and waiting for the new trailers. Sitting at home watching a DVD just isn’t as exciting, or rewarding. People may moan at the price of the cinema these days, and yeah, I can see that, but even with the astronomical price, it’s still hard to say the cinema isn’t an enjoyable experience.
Admittedly, I only tend to go to the cinema on Orange Wednesdays. Orange Wednesdays for those of you who don’t know, allows Orange customers to get 2-4-1 cinema tickets on Wednesdays just by sending off for a text. I’m on O2, but luckily my girlfriend is on Orange. It’d be a lie to say I never asked around to see what network she was on before asking her out, but at £7 a pop (the cinema, I mean) it pays to know these things.
Going on Orange Wednesdays means you’re pretty much saving £7, which is pretty good as offers go. It’s so good, I even sort of resent going the see a film on any other day. The only thing is, it’s so busy on Wednesday’s that you really need to book your ticket super early (especially with those chairs) which usually means I go off at lunchtime to grab our tickets.
But as I said, I’m an O2 customer so I usually either borrow my girlfriend’s phone or she goes to get the tickets. This one time, she was away all day at a meeting so she couldn’t buy the tickets, and I couldn’t borrow her phone either so I had to find other ways of getting those tickets.
The only way for this shit to go down was for my girlfriend to forward me the text, then I’ll show the text when I’m buying my tickets, thus pulling off the greatest stunt ever dreamt of! As most of you well know, when you receive the text from Orange it comes from a number with the id of ’241′. I knew this to be the case so I cleverly renamed my girlfriend as 241 and I was away.
At least I thought so. It wasn’t until a week or so later when I showed my girlfriend one of her texts (don’t ask why) that I realised my mistake. Turns out I hadn’t written 241 at all; I’d written 121 instead.
UPDATE: Odeon has since reversed its boycott. Alice in Wonderland for everyone!
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