Jeff Sanders Quoted in The Financial Times

Jeff Sanders is quoted in the August 11, 2005 issue of The Financial Times in the article "Hollywood is facing a journey into the unknown" that explores the rise of digital technology in Hollywood and its affect on traditional movie theater screenings and the subsequent sales of DVDs. A cinematic release months before a film reaches the home may become a thing of the past as companies reassess sources of revenue, evaluate new technology and try to reinforce audience appeal. Hollywood has a long history of resisting technological change. Studio chiefs complained that innovations such as television and the video cassette recorder would destroy them. The most visible alterations to the Hollywood model can be seen in the shorter time between a film's cinema release and its availability on DVD. What was once a six-month gap has gradually eroded to as little as two months in some cases. The decline of the cinema business may be even more worrying. Box-office, after all, is the engine that drives the industry. Studios rely on box office performance when negotiating release terms for the DVD and television markets . And the big screen experience sets the film industry apart from competing forms of entertainment and serves as a springboard for subsequent revenue streams.

"For a lot of big event films, like the new Star Wars movie, the theatrical experience drives those same people to go and buy or rent the DVD," says Jeff Sanders, a partner at law firm Seyfarth Shaw. In the short term, studios could save millions of dollars each year by removing the need to create and ship thousands of film prints to cinemas. Further down the road, studios would be able to transmit films over a variety of digital platforms by pressing a button. The costs associated with pressing, shipping, packaging and warehousing DVDs would be a thing of the past.

Although not everyone agrees on the urgency, the lesson drawn from the music business is that, by embracing new technology and making content available at reasonable prices over a variety of formats, the industry could beat the pirates to the punch. So far, Hollywood has taken only small steps with services such as MovieLink, which has made a limited number of films available for temporary viewing over the internet. One snag is the need for greater interconnectivity between televisions and the internet so that consumers do not have to watch films on personal computers. A greater concern is that, without better digital security, users would be able to make unlimited copies of films or transfer them to friends. "There's almost a psychological paranoia that once you release something in a digital format, someone's going to reverse engineer it," Mr. Sanders said, explaining studios' reluctance to make their best products available.