"Consumer interest in renting this stuff simultaneous [with the DVD release] is way, way up, off the charts," said Sanders, Warner's head of home video.
The trade-off of in-store DVD rentals for video on demand is one the studio could afford to make, Bernstein Research said. In retail, studios take 30% of revenue, whereas they grab 70% of a video-on-demand purchase.
Such a calculation was not lost on Time Warner, which announced in April that its Warner Bros. studio would release its DVD titles, including such forthcoming releases as "Fool's Gold" and "10,000 BC," simultaneously on cable and iTunes.
"You saw Warner Bros. go first. Another studio will go in the not too distant future. It'll just keep adding," Comcast Chief Operating Officer Stephen B. Burke said. "It's hard to predict when all that happens, but I think there's a growing belief that this . . . is additive."
Other studios are watching closely.
Fox's Dunn said it would prefer to preserve the traditional distribution model -- offering movies for sale immediately after the theatrical release, then renting them online and through cable video-on-demand services. But it's considering offering day-and-date distribution for films that would benefit from broader distribution.
"You would look at a few movies to go day and date, movies that need as many points of access as you can get, to encourage sampling," Dunn said.
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dawn.chmielewski@latimes.com
