For the majors, the benefits of digital cinema were manifold. DCPs were some 90 percent cheaper to distribute than multi-reel film canisters, and even multinational studios are beholden to postal costs. At a time when Hollywood had become wholly dependent on global box office receipts, digital distribution simplified the process of releasing films across continents and digital platforms in one fell swoop.
The largest exhibitors realized they had something to gain, too. In part they were tricked by digital boosters like Cameron, whose baroque hearts-and-minds propaganda vehicle Avatar had recently become the highest-grossing film of all time. With serious faces these boosters claimed that new digital 3D systems would attract audiences in droves. (More accurately, Avatar’s digital 3D technology would perform like 1952’s stereoscopic 3D, fading as quickly as it appeared.) Audience numbers aside, theater chains identified another benefit of digital projection: they no longer needed to pay unionized projectionists. Anyone who knew how to operate a computer could theoretically screen a DCP. Some theaters opted to get rid of their projection booths altogether, installing theater management systems in closets and using the old space for building out concession areas.
Not all exhibitors, however, were satisfied with the digital technology being air-dropped on top of them. The cost of converting a single screen to digital was between $50,000 and $100,000. The big three theater chains (AMC, Regal, and Cinemark) were able to secure financing to convert their screens because of their enormous capital reserves, access to Wall Street money, and economies of scale. For independent theaters, especially rural ones, the outlook was bleak. “All of the movie theaters in the Adirondacks were going to close,” Sally Wagshaw, owner of the State Theater in Tupper Lake, New York, told me. “No one was going to be able to take on a hundred-thousand-dollar loan and stay in business.” Wagshaw, along with several independent theater owners in the Adirondacks, launched a group fundraising effort. They succeeded. But the projectors they purchased are far more expensive to maintain. Thirty-five millimeter film projectors need only $1,000 to $2,000 per year in maintenance, use easily sourceable mechanical parts, and can last several decades with proper upkeep. Digital projectors require as much as $10,000 per year for maintenance, use proprietary digital parts that can take up to a week to install (during which they’re inoperable), and are estimated to last only ten years.
