ShowEast Begins In Orlando Despite Hurricane

posted by Ross Melnick on October 25, 2005 at 5:03 am

ORLANDO, FL — ShowEast, where 1,300 members of the motion picture industry “gear up for the year end holiday season by gathering to learn about industry trends, screen films and product reels, and be among the first to see state-of-the-art theatre equipment along with services and technologies vital to the industry,” commenced yesterday.

Top issues this year are piracy, movie theater attendance, new technology, and the overall quality of films, amongst other industry issues. According to Reuters, Paul Hanneman, executive vp sales and strategic planning at 20th Century Fox International, asked assembled members of the industry, “Are we making the best films we can? Have profit projections led to quests for tentpoles at the expense of quality?”

Keynote speaker Shari Redstone, president of National Amusements, dismissed the fundamental worries of the business, commenting that “You’ll never hear the voice of doom and gloom out of this mouth.”

But she was quick to add: “So much of the future is not in the U.S.” — highlighting that growth opportunities for exhibitors may lie overseas.

Comments (1)

JimRankin
JimRankin on October 25, 2005 at 8:09 am

Quote: ““So much of the future is not in the U.S.” — highlighting that growth opportunities for exhibitors may lie overseas.“ It appears that miss Redstone was uncharacteristically honest in letting slip the real raison d'etere of the film makers today: sheer profits —in foreign sales where they will find less regulated markets with less competition from electronics. Here in the US, they will use DVDs or whatever other medium comes along, but they have little use for the exhibitors as time goes on. The American exhibitor had best grab his passport and build/rent overseas, for the handwriting is on the wall as regards US cinemas.

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