4236.jpgLast month, Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner announced that their 2929 Entertainment plans to release six Steven Soderbergh films, through three different modes of distribution (cable, DVD and theatrical), simultaneously. 2929 has limited control over two of those distribution methods - they own the HDNet cable channel and 209-screen Landmark Theaters - but according to The Hollywood Reporter's Nicole Sperling, if they want to get Soderbergh's films seen in non-Landmark theaters, they may face a fight.


 Sperling quotes the president of competing theater chain Regal Entertainment Group: "Our policy will continue to be that we don't exhibit films that are already in the market on DVD or pay-per-view. We believe the plan is ill-conceived and won't receive much support from the traditional exhibition or distribution community." Meanwhile, Tony Karasotes, chairman and CEO of Karasotes Showplace Theaters, calls the plan first "wrong-headed", and then "ass-backwards".

There's still a loophole here, though. Soderbergh is a filmmaker who works in two radically different modes - experimental micro-indie (Full Frontal, Schizopolis) and prestige blockbuster (Ocean's Eleven, Erin Brockovich). As Sperling points out, the first announced film that falls under the 2929 deal is Bubble, which is shooting on location in a small Ohio town with a cast of non-professional actors and generally seems to fall into the former category of Soderbergian output. If all six films continue in this vein, 2929 might be able to provide Soderbergh with the ideal distribution model.

It's the DVD thing that seems really problematic. 2929 experimented with the simultaneous release model this spring, by opening Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room day-and-date in Landmark Theaters and on HDNet. The documentary has so-far grossed $2 million, and was eventually picked up by Laemmle for exhibition in certain markets. But to an outside exhibitor, the cable release posed much less of a threat than a simultaneous DVD release. "We felt that HDNet didn't have a significant market penetration," said Greg Laemmle. But a DVD release would have been "a whole different ball of wax. A lot of people have DVD players, and a lot of people who see art films have DVD players. I have no interest in encouraging that sort of thing."