The scores of footprints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre chronicle Hollywood's history. What David Gale witnessed inside the auditorium on a recent evening may help predict the industry's future.
As the head of MTV Films, Gale was at the theater for a research screening of his "Jackass: Number Two," a crude teen comedy coming out next month. The film had just started when a teenager seated next to Gale began pecking away on his BlackBerry.
"It was an amazing experience. My first instinct was to slap him," Gale said. "But then I realized he was just enjoying the movie."
In fact, the teenager was e-mailing a friend, recounting the movie's best jokes.
"The kid was just doing what kids do," Gale said. "This is how they watch movies. This is how they consume entertainment. And when they like something, they let people know."
For decades, the movie business has followed an inflexible formula: Produce features, show them first in theaters, release them on video, then broadcast them on television. But what Gale observed -- and what a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll of teens and young adults has found -- is that Hollywood's rickety model is poised to be torn apart.
With an array of devices competing to fill their leisure time, today's teens and young adults show diminishing interest in adhering to Hollywood tradition. They're willing to watch brand-new movies at home rather than in theaters, are starting to use their PCs as their entertainment gateway and are slowly turning to their iPods and cellphones for video programming.
They still crave to be entertained, but not necessarily inside a movie theater.
Poll respondent Kim Boyko, an 18-year-old student in Colonia, N.J., said in a follow-up interview that she found herself watching more movies at home on a computer, on TV or on DVD. "I'd much rather have the comfort of my own couch," Boyko said.
For years, theater owners and movie studios have argued about the timing of home video releases. The people running the multiplexes want to keep the wait period between theatrical debut and the DVD's first day on sale -- known in the industry as a window -- as long as possible. The studios have been pushing to shrink that gap (it now averages about 20 weeks) to minimize the need for two separate advertising campaigns.
