The End of Film

By the end of this year, major studios will stop distributing first-run movies on film reels.

In order to understand the significance of this, you need to understand what traditionally happens before you buy a movie ticket at the theater opening night:
At some unspecified time in the past, someone made the movie. {I'm going to completely gloss over how that happened since it's not the point of this article but it involves lots of money and some cameras, I think.} The people that made said movie sold the rights to a production studio (usually before the movie is actually made). The studio then made an agreement with a distribution company. Subsequently, the distribution company made reels of film (aka 'prints') and showed it to buyers representing movie theaters. The buyers reached an agreement with the distribution company where they leased prints for a certain amount of time (an 'engagement'). Before opening night, the distribution company sent the agreed upon number of prints to the theaters they leased them to. The theater then charges you admission and you empty your retirement account for popcorn and enjoy the movie.

"How is that different from today?" I hear you ask. Well the distribution process is actually quite similar between digital and film. What's really different is the print being distributed. Print for digital movies is a computer file in DCP (Digital Cinema Package) format. The space taken up by this print can be huge so they are usually distributed to theaters on hard drives but can also be downloaded over fiber-optic networks (essentially really fast internet).

This whole digital process requires both a computer and a digital projector that are capable of handling and projecting these files. These aren't cheap and can easily set you back $100,000. This isn't a problem for movie theater chains as they've all moved to digital projection at this point and had the money to do it. But what about the little guys? Theater grade digital projectors are very expensive and lots of small privately owned cinemas will be forced to pony up the money or close down if they can't. Hopefully, the communities that small theaters are in can help with the cost.

It's also worth noting that even though new non-digital prints aren't being made, old ones still exist and can still be leased out (provided studios don't stick them in locked vaults somewhere). This means that theaters that run classic movies can still go on. A lot of big names in movie-making have also come to the defense of 35mm film and some refuse to shoot on anything else. You can read more about the defenders and about the transition process in this lovely article: http://www.laweekly.com/2012-04-12/film-tv/35-mm-film-digital-Hollywood/