Kodak's Latest Deal
Over the past year, Kodak has formed film distribution deals with Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, NBC-Universal, and Disney.
20th Century Fox was the sixth major studio to join the ranks June 3, 2013. Andrew Evenski, President of Kodak's Entertainment and Commercial Films Division, explained that the exclusive deal meets Fox's "content creation, film distribution, and archival needs" for its film and television productions.
Film's Bleak Holding Pattern
Technology presses mercilessly forward, sometimes abandoning decent innovations that many of us are still content with or even prefer. Variety reports that to this day black-and-white film in a climate-controlled vault is still the best archival medium for moving images, despite today's advances in digital imaging.
However, the digital tsunami forced Kodak's hand. The company filed for bankruptcy protection back in January 2012 and had to eliminate its consumer film manufacturing arm as well as much of its other departments.
And Kodak wasn't alone. Its main competitor Fuji officially shut down its motion picture film manufacturing in March 2013 according to Doddle, which largely deflated all hope for film's survival.
Furthermore, most movie theaters have ditched their film projectors in favor of digital projection. In fact, Doddle reports that the National Association of Theater Owners predicts that 85% of movie theaters will be using digital projectors by the end of 2013.
That makes deflation number two, especially with the advent of 4K and 5K digital resolution cameras and video projection (which is still in its infancy).
Thankfully Kodak decided not to go down without a fighting chance.
Kodak's alliance with the major studios not only guarantees further demand for film, but it ensures its own long-term success, especially now that it's a much leaner business-to-business (B2B) firm. It can focus far more keenly on manufacturing motion picture film than juggling the other printing and consumer film services that have already fallen victim to the digital revolution.
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Flickr photo of Coca Cola filmstrip taken by Bart Everson.
She has also published three books: From a Babe: A Weekly Devotional, From a Babe: A Weekly Devotional Small Group Bible Study Workbook, and the first ebook of her 5-ebook suspense series, Abstracted: Episode 1 of the Tenderfoot Series.
