Christopher Nolan's $250 million movie depends on one building in Burbank, 41 theaters worldwide, and roughly 90 people on Earth who know how to run the projector.
The Odyssey is the first feature shot entirely on IMAX film, and FotoKem is the last lab anywhere that can make the 70mm prints. Every one of the thousands of cuts in the film was spliced by hand with a glue pot. The production burned through 2.1 million feet of negative, about 400 miles of film, and every foot of it flew back to that single lab for processing.
Each finished print costs around $80,000 to make. One Las Vegas theater spent $32,000 on humidifiers just to keep its copy from drying out. Its projector had sat idle since Interstellar in 2014.
Here's what the scarcity bought: when 70mm tickets went on sale a full year before release, 95% of seats sold within an hour. Retail price was $25 to $28. Resellers got $300 to $400. Presales have already broken the all-time IMAX record.
Studios spent 20 years abandoning film because digital was cheaper to ship. Nolan kept the last lab alive and turned the bottleneck itself into the marketing. Thousands of rooms can play the 4K version. Only 41 can show the 18K version, and that gap is why people are crossing state lines for a movie ticket.
The format Hollywood declared dead in 2010 is now the scarcest luxury good in entertainment.
Absolutely dystopian day for gamers everywhere. Yes, even you who doesn't care about physical games and has a fully digital library.
All this does is funnel everyone into digital storefronts where PlayStation and co. control the pricing operation. You will lose additional options and pay more for games. Look at any nearby storefront's pricing versus what you'd pay for with that very same game on PSN.
This is not about upcoming handhelds or even that digital purchases outweighing physical. It is about maximizing the dollar spent everywhere and cutting out the middle man. Pulling the trigger when PSN isn't even feature complete with things like back compat, gifting games, has major security exploits, etc. is certifiably insane.
The court ruled today in Brian Flores, Steve Wilks and Ray Horton’s ongoing discrimination case against the NFL that all the coaches’ respective claims that had previously been compelled to arbitration now can proceed in open court.
“The court’s decision recognizes that an arbitration forum in which the defendant’s own chief executive gets to decide the case would strip employees of their rights under the law,” said attorneys Douglas H. Wigdor and David E. Gottlieb. “It is long overdue for the NFL to recognize this and finally provide a fair, neutral and transparent forum for these issues to be addressed.”