Live From the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in Qatar

This is my first visit to Qatar and I’m blown away by the energy and potential. And we at Miramax are so excited to be participating here at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival, run by the Doha Film Institute (DFI). The photos above are from their premiere of the film Black Gold last night at the Katara Open Air Theatre. What an event…..

I encourage all my brethren in the U.S. film business to join us as we come back for next year’s Festival.

In addition, I’m excited to announce today the launch of our Miramax eXperience App on Facebook for the markets of Qatar, UAE and Egypt. Facebook users in these markets can now access Miramax clips, enjoy our films and play with the various social features integrated into the App. We believe launching the App today in these emerging markets is an important signal of our commitment to the region.

We are big believers in the potential of these markets – not only for digital distribution, but as a place for emerging filmmakers. And we’re especially honored to be posting this blog from the Festival’s Social Media Lounge here at Katara Cultural Village, Doha.

I was surprised to hear from our friends at Facebook that there are over 15M users in the region — and that number is growing fast. We can’t think of a better partner than Facebook to begin building a direct relationship with these Miramax fans via our App. We believe this brings us another step closer to providing wider and easier consumer access to Miramax’s amazing content throughout the world – complementing the existing availability of the App in the UK and Turkey and with many more international markets to come.

Few things to remind you about our App – first and foremost, it’s still in beta. We’re working through the bugs and are eager to hear any feedback from you at facebook.com/miramax and on Twitter at twitter.com/miramax. Don’t be shy. The App is also cross-platform – so test it on your iPad and Google TV enabled televisions. Our goal is to get many more devices available, so as consumers you can you achieve greater inter-operability – which we believe is an important step in driving success of this App. Additionally, we plan to add a lot more titles from our library soon – so come back and visit as the App continues to improve.

But most importantly, this announcement is about how important we at Miramax view the region to be – not only for our company interests, but for the film and media business in the future. As I’ve spent time here on this trip and others to the region, it’s tough not to get incredibly optimistic about the future of this part of the world. And as more and more young people access content like ours through digital platforms like Facebook, we believe the market opportunity will only grow.

So for now, it’s ma’ al salam – and shukran for allowing us the opportunity to become friends with the incredible people of Qatar and the other markets we’re launching our App in today.

ML

Miramax eXperience App on Facebook

Today we are launching our first digital App on Facebook.  We call it the Miramax eXperience and you can check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/miramaxapp

We are big believers in Facebook and what it could mean for the future of the content business.  Today there are over 50 million friends on Facebook that mention a Miramax film in their profile, interact with our Miramax page (www.facebook.com/miramax), or like the fan pages of beloved Miramax titles and talent — from Good Will Hunting to Pulp Fiction and Ben Affleck to Quentin Tarantino.

Our goal with the Miramax App is to offer consumers a great user experience where they can watch movie clips and feature length films, play games and share the experience with their friends within the Facebook community.  And in doing so, we aim to ultimately build our reach to 150 million+ Facebook friends within the next 18 months.

What’s different about this App from others out there?  A few things…

First thing is we listened to our friends at Facebook, and worked closely with them to develop the concept — many thanks to Sheryl Sandberg, Dan Rose and Joanna Shields to name a few.  Importantly, we asked a lot of questions about what we could do to build a better experience for the Facebook community.  The result is what is being launched today in beta.  With it we aim to unite all things Miramax and provide a great user experience for friends of our movies and brand.

The Miramax eXperience integrates into user profiles and news feeds and will hopefully become a part of the fabric of many discussions.  It was important to us that Facebook users could easily invite and interact with their friends, by leveraging the social graph via games and other features such as enabling friends to “like” movies.  We are also excited that the App allows users to view Miramax films on multiple devices, including their PC, iPad or TV.  And Miramax friends around the globe will not be left out as the App will be made available to Facebook users worldwide.  Finally, we’re using Facebook Credits and Facebook Connect to make it easier to use the service.

But more than this — notice the word beta.  I know you don’t hear that word a lot from movie studios.  Usually we premiere a film after working on it for years, see how it does over a weekend or two and then move on to the next project — for those in the technology world this must sound like a crazy business…

Our goal in building this App in just 8 short weeks (with the help of Ooyala and AllDigital) is to emulate what Facebook does better than any company in the world — don’t wait for perfection; launch and then iterate, iterate and iterate again.  We encourage you to track our progress and come back to see fresh content, improved user functionality and information on other Miramax initiatives, such as new films or TV shows.  And tell us what you think on our fan page www.facebook.com/miramax or @Miramax on Twitter.

In addition, you’ll notice we launched the App first with just rental VOD — but our ultimate goal is to give consumers the opportunity to buy films and store them in their own cloud-based digital locker — to then access the content anywhere they want, across ALL devices.  Yes, that’s right — any PC, smartphone, tablet or TV, whether at home, on the go, on vacation, etc.   iPad users can access it at apps.miramax.com/ipad.html.

Sounds like an easy concept – but one that we need multiple partners to help support to make possible.  To that extent, we encourage our industry peers to join us in this vision – including the other great digital retailers and technology companies of the world.  The time is now to make cloud-based movie ownership a reality for consumers.

We believe this App is an important step in Miramax’s evolution.  And thanks again to Facebook.  Once again you’ve proven that you’re one of the most innovative companies in the world.  We’re honored to be your partner and look forward to working together more in the future.

ML

Netflix, Cannes and Hulu

Lots of activity to discuss since my last post – primarily on the digital front:

Netflix Announcement & Cannes
You may have seen the press a few weeks back regarding our groundbreaking deal w/Netflix announced @ Cannes.

We couldn’t be happier to be in business w/Netflix.  They have built an incredible company focused on tremendous customer service and accessibility of content – especially library via their queue and streaming services.  Ted Sarandos and Pauline Fischer are fantastic partners and we appreciate all their support throughout our negotiations.

When we bought the company, we were very clear that our goal was to enable Miramax fans to access our incredible films anytime and anywhere – and across multiple platforms, from physical discs, to streaming services, to ultimately buying content in a digital cloud.  We’ll ultimately have as many as 300+ titles a month up on the site for Netflix users to enjoy.

This Netflix deal is the first of many more to come, as we see the future of digital distribution as very bright – and friend, not foe.

We also decided to do the deal on a non-exclusive basis.  We firmly believe it is important for others (see Hulu below) to participate and grow the marketplace for digital content.  We’re also eager to work with TV Networks to expand their digital offering via authenticated on-demand content.  Our view of the world is one in which digital-only and TV Nets both offer digital content to subscribers – and we hope to enable all of these players to compete and let the market define the winners.

Here’s an interview that I did with Bloomberg TV announcing the Netflix deal.

And by the way, the Cannes Film Festival was quite an event – I’m still recovering.  Clearly it signaled that the film business is alive and well globally — not only in terms of emerging digital platforms and international pay-TV opportunities, but also for worldwide theatrical distribution.  One only has to look at the results from markets like Russia or this weekend’s box office numbers as indicators that consumers want more and more film content – and our goal is to give it to them.

Below are some pics from our Miramax Brunch at Cannes – including some great ones of our friend and Partner Rob Lowe.

Hulu
Today we’re very excited to announce a multi-year agreement with Hulu – both for their Hulu+ subscription service and their successful ad-supported, streaming site.

I had the privilege of being involved with Hulu for over 4-years – from the inception of the concept while working at Fox Entertainment, to bringing-on the original partners from NBCU, the recruiting/hiring of Jason Kilar as CEO, raising outside equity capital from Providence Equity Partners and ultimately bringing in Disney to be a partner.

Beyond the tremendous opportunity I now have as CEO of Miramax – Hulu is one of the things I’m most proud of professionally in my career.

Lost in much of the fanfare about the success of Hulu are the visionary efforts by Peter Chernin and Jeff Zucker in launching the concept – and then Bob Iger’s leadership when Disney joined.  In an environment where digital strategies are under constant pressure from various constituencies, these three amazing media execs had the courage to say, “We’re going to zig, when others zag.”  In particular, Peter Chernin was quite aware of the “Innovator’s Dilemma” with these new digital businesses, but instead of running from it, he embraced it — challenging content owners to maximize value from all distribution platforms, while enabling emerging ones like digital to be born.  And there are many others that helped Hulu along the way including: Jonathan Nelson, JB Perrette, Salil Mehta, Dan Fawcett, Michael Bunder, Kevin Mayer, Al Dobron and Spencer Neumann.

But the major reason why we’re doing this deal today w/Hulu is the leadership of Jason Kilar and his management team.  Jason and his team have consistently delivered in building a world-class product that monetizes content for companies like Miramax.

In today’s world, it’s easy to criticize leaders.  Jason Kilar is someone who has proven that he is willing to fight for what he believes in and take arrows along the way.  One of the main reasons why Jason was hired as CEO was because we all knew that he’d build a great product and push the envelope to create a meaningful stand-alone business.  I know Miramax couldn’t be prouder to be associated with Hulu as they compete in the expanding digital marketplace.

And there will be multiple winners in online video distribution — not only Netflix who have proven themselves time and time again, but others as we work to build multiple digital business models for Miramax content around the world.

Here’s a link to the press release: http://www.miramax.com/2011/06/01/miramax-and-hulu-announce-multi-year-agreement

ML

New Releases:  The Debt, Last Night and Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark
Last week we announced that the espionage thriller The Debt will be distributed for Miramax by Focus Features and Universal Pictures International.  The film, which will be released just in time for Labor Day, has a stellar cast, including Helen Mirren and Sam Worthington, as well as Jessica Chastain, who we think is going to be a big star. The Debt continues our proud history of producing the highest-quality films, with the most respected talent and directors.  In particular, it’s an honor to be working again with John Madden, who directed Shakespeare in Love.

You may have also seen the recent announcement about Last Night and our partnership with Tribeca to distribute the film in select markets as well as via video-on-demand cable and satellite platforms nationwide.  We’re big fans of Keira Knightley and the rest of the cast, and think the movie will garner a lot of attention when released this spring.

[Update: We’re announcing today our partnership with FilmDistrict for Guillermo Del Toro’s Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark.  FilmDistrict will be releasing the film domestically in late summer, with a kick-off premier at the Comic-Con event in San Diego.  Pathé are our international representatives on the film.  I just got back from the Berlin Film Festival where Dark played in front of a packed house – and let me tell you, I’ve seen the film a few times now and still get scared and have to turn away.  We are so lucky to be working with the incredibly talented Guillermo as well as our friends from FilmDistrict and Pathé -- and are hoping to do much more with them all in the future.]

Lionsgate & Studiocanal Partnership
We’re very excited to have announced last week our long-term partnership with Lionsgate and Studiocanal for home entertainment distribution.  The partnership is worldwide and includes everything from packaged DVD and Blu-ray media to downloads and VOD on platforms like iTunes and Amazon.

One of the driving goals here at Miramax is to maximize our unparalleled catalog by bringing these films to movie lovers around the world. We went through an extensive process to find the right home entertainment partner, and we’re very excited to be in business with the Lionsgate team, including my friend Steve Beeks (Lionsgate’s President and Co-Chief Operating Officer) and their European partner Studiocanal. Both companies working together are hands-down the best. And this outstanding alliance will help ensure continued success.

Our first home entertainment release with Lionsgate (available on Blu-ray/DVD and VOD starting March 15th) will be The Switch, starring Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman. The movie was released last summer, and is a fun story about relationships and having kids. There are many more releases to come soon thereafter, including all three films in the Scream franchise, in conjunction with the April 15th theatrical release of Scream 4.

And of course the highly anticipated Blu-ray release of Pulp Fiction will hit stores this year. We’re especially excited about this classic Quentin Tarantino film finally being released on this format. Not only was this film ground-breaking, but it established Quentin as one of the greatest directors of the era.

The Lionsgate and Studiocanal partnership is a tremendous milestone for Miramax. Beyond the respect we have for our new partners, I am unapologetically bullish on the future of home entertainment, despite the fact that many others in the industry seem to be writing it off. For sure, the packaged DVD media market is maturing and consumers are beginning to look for digital alternatives. With my experience in the digital space, I understand that reality.

However, I believe we’re seeing renewed interest in Blu-ray — and this will be especially true for Miramax given the fact that many of our titles have never been released on the format. We also plan to work closely with our filmmakers and talent to create special edition product available on re-releases – everything from roundtables discussing making of films, to director’s cuts, to new short-form content.

Blu-ray also offers interactive features that can (and should) be a portal to new downloadable content and algorithmic search, so consumers can sample and buy additional films from the Miramax library. In the not-so-distant future, consumers will be able to go a step further and upload their purchased Blu-ray/DVD content via the “cloud” into their own personalized and fully accessible “digital locker” (roughly equivalent to having one’s own personalized TiVo with no storage constraints).

This emerging eco-system will allow users to watch their movies, TV content and personal videos/photos on any TV, PC or tablet device – anytime, with no restrictions.

One of the things that made buying a DVD so attractive in the first place wasn’t just picture quality per se – but the fact that when you bought it, you knew you could watch it anywhere, anytime. Cloud can offer this same consumer proposition, allowing users to access their digital content from any television via a broadband connection, and use any tablet or mobile device to manage their digital locker.

While the industry as a whole is not fully there supporting this vision, I believe growth in Blu-ray can be one step in moving us towards this reality — and can help revitalize the industry in the process. We all need to fully embrace the opportunity for consumers to BUY both physical and digital content for their libraries — and enjoy them when and where they choose. And let’s make the purchase transaction as easy as possible, across multiple platforms and at a good price value.

I hope that today’s news regarding our new releases and the Lionsgate & Studiocanal partnership offers a glimpse as to where we’re headed — and why I’m so excited about Miramax’s future.

ML