Cable operators, you have been warned.
If anything underscores the long-term threat to cable companies’ video service from the Internet, it is Wal-Mart Stores’ purchase of Vudu — a video-on-demand (VOD) Web service. Investors in Time Warner Cable and Comcast must hope they pay attention.
The danger isn’t immediate. Vudu is one of several digital services, including Apple’s iTunes [...]

Coinstar Inc.’s Redbox unit, which rents movies for $1 a day from vending machines, reached an agreement with Warner Bros. that gives the studio 28 days to sell DVDs before they become available in the company’s kiosks.
The two-year accord ends a lawsuit Redbox filed against the Time Warner Inc. film studio in August to gain [...]

Bob Iger wasn’t bluffing.
The Disney CEO has been telling Wall Street for months that he’s going to have studio executives begin fiddling with traditional movie release windows, and it appears the time has arrived for the first grand experiment.
A day after the revelation that U.K. exhibitors are being asked to accept a tightened theatrical window on Disney’s [...]

It was built on sex, lies and videotape. Also “Sex, Lies and Videotape.” And “Pulp Fiction,” “Shakespeare in Love,” “The English Patient” and “The Postman.” Plus Quentin Tarantino, Matt and Ben, Gwyneth and Renee, and a foul-mouthed Jersey clerk named Smith.
And yesterday, it finally faded out.
Thirty-one years after it started – and 17 years after [...]

The starkest picture to emerge from the opening days of this year’s Sundance Film Festival may be of an independent film business forced to stretch in untested directions because its old distribution model no longer works.
Standard operating procedure over the years at Sundance, the cinematic bazaar now under way in this resort town, has been simple: show [...]

Indie filmmakers have had a hard time getting their films sold and distributed over the last few years. Many are feeling the pinch of their hard work not getting any recognition and payday to sustain a living making movies.
So here’s a plot twist worthy of any Hollywood movie. To save independent films from extinction, the [...]

Reasonable people can debate the artistic merits of James Cameron’s work. Anyone for whom Arnold Schwarzenegger is a muse isn’t likely to specialize in observing the human condition, unless it’s in the aftermath of an exploding building or a run-in with a mercenary robot from the future.
What’s indisputable is that the “Avatar” director’s influence extends beyond his movie [...]

A major movie-making publication has given Albuquerque an excellent review.
“In the past, when people said, ‘New Mexico?’ they didn’t really think of Albuquerque. Now, they can spell it,” said Ann Lerner, of the New Mexico Film Office.
MovieMaker magazine named the Duke City the best place to live and work in film in 2010, citing more than 300 [...]

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos bypassed Hollywood to jump-start the company’s online film-rental business in 2008. Now he has to convince the studios the company is a friend and not a foe.

Chief executive officer Reed Hastings is counting on Sarandos to cut deals with studios giving Netflix rights to show more films online. Sarandos, [...]

It gained early success on the awards circuit, but the star-studded musical “Nine” will likely be pulled back from hundreds of smaller U.S. cities, after disappointing box office and lackluster reviews.
After playing in 1,400 screens last weekend, the Weinstein Company, which is behind “Nine”, said on Tuesday it expects the movie to play in 800-900 [...]