Who needs Hollywood? A healthy new revenue stream is growing for the theatrical exhibition industry. It's coming not from studio suites and backlots but from the more rarefied realm of high art.
Indeed, while the domestic motion-picture box office may be down 21.4 percent year-to-date, and the major studios on the verge of playing havoc with release windows, the market for alternative programming shown in movie theaters -- everything from opera to Broadway productions -- is burgeoning.
In 2010, theatrical presentations beyond just movies generated $112 million for the exhibition industry, a 51 percent uptick over 2009, according to Screen Digest.
"We think this is an historic moment in terms of alternate content in movie theaters," said Dan Diamond, VP of National CineMedia's Fathom Events, which presents hundreds of special events in a digital broadcast network of nearly 1,400 movie theaters around the U.S.
Driving the market: the rapid adoption of digital projection technology, with exhibitors hurrying to keep pace with the demand for 3D films. And it's that digital technology that's allowing theaters to expand their program offerings.
Also read: 'Broadening Broadway: In-Theater Broadcasts Take the Arts to Main Street'
In addition to opera, which has drawn sellout audiences to movie theaters for the last five years, recent weeks have seen capacity crowds showing up in movie theaters around the country not just for live productions from New York's Met but for a major Danny Boyle play from London, and orchestral concerts from Los Angeles featuring wunderkind conductor Gustavo Dudamel with help from actors Orlando Bloom, Malcolm McDowell and Matthew Rhys.
Indeed, as theater companies, symphony orchestras and opera companies fight the continuing effects of the recession, high-definition movie-theater broadcasts of their work have hit a new high:
>> London's National Theatre is in its second season of bringing its productions to movie theaters worldwide, currently with Boyle's acclaimed production of "Frankenstein." The production (pictured above left) showed last week with Jonny Lee Miller as Dr. Frankenstein and Benedict Cumberbatch as the monster; a second screening on Thursday (postponed until next week at the Chinese 6 in Hollywood) finds the two actors swapping roles. (National Theatre photo by Catherine Ashmore.)
>> "Memphis," the reigning Tony winner for Best Musical, is about to become the first current Broadway show to broadcast a complete performance in theaters around the country. Another hot Broadway musical, "Fela!," had its London production broadcast as part of the National Theatre Live season in advance of its national tour, while the "Les Miserables" 25th anniversary show last November was enormously successful in movie theaters.
>> The Los Angeles Philharmonic just showed the second concert in its inaugural season of "LA Phil Live," a Tchaikovsky program featuring the orchestra's music director Dudamel. One more HD transmission, broadcast live from Walt Disney Concert Hall to more than 400 theaters, is scheduled for June.
>> The Rave Motion Pictures theater circuit has joined forces with Emerging Pictures to present live and pre-recorded cultural programming, much of it from European opera and ballet companies like the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Teatro Alla Scala and the Bolshoi Theater and Ballet.
