Alice in Wonderland should have enchanted cinemagoers this spring and earned tens of millions of pounds at the box office as the latest 3D blockbuster. Instead, the Disney film could disappear down the rabbit hole, as a boycott means that it may not be coming to a cinema near you.
A dispute between Disney and two of Britain’s biggest cinema chains, Odeon and Vue, means that the film will not be shown in about 40 per cent of cinemas. Today is the last day that a compromise can realistically be reached, though neither side is likely to break the impasse.
The dispute began when Disney stated that it would bring Alice out on DVD within 12 weeks instead of the customary 17 to try to stem the abrupt decline in DVD sales, traditionally the biggest earner for studios.
A shorter gap between the film’s launch at the cinema and on DVD would mean that advertising campaigns would be fresher in consumers’ minds and could also curb sales of pirate DVDs.
Bob Iger, the chief executive of Disney, believes that he must break cinemas’ insistence on strict DVD delays and has chosen Alice as his battleground. He knows that British cinemas are more powerful than their continental counterparts (they take about 60 per cent of box-office receipts compared with 50 per cent elsewhere in Europe) and is using a film that would be expected to perform well in Britain.
Directed by Tim Burton, Alice was partly shot here and features a British cast including Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman and Stephen Fry.
While other studios wait to see if Disney is successful before adopting a similar strategy, cinemas are outraged after spending millions of pounds on 3D equipment in the belief that studios’ terms would remain the same.
They are also irritated because, while DVD sales in Britain declined by about 10 per cent last year, cinema takings were up by 11 per cent. A senior cinema executive told The Times: “There is nothing wrong with our business model. [The studios] are coming to us and saying, ‘We’ve got a broken model on our side and we want you to pay for it.’ ”
Cineworld, a third British cinema chain, has angered rivals by refusing to join the boycott after a visit from Bob Chapek, Disney’s president of distribution, who reassured it that Disney wished to shorten the window for only two or three films a year. The DVD release for Alice was extended to 13 weeks.
Odeon issued a tart response, saying that it was dropping plans to show Alice “as a result of Disney’s insistence on reducing at short notice the theatrical window on a major 3D title”.
]Disney tried to shorten the window for Up, the Pixar animation, last year, but relented when cinemas said that they would drop Up and A Christmas Carol.
Disney declined to comment, but is understood to be resolute. A cinema industry source said it is prepared to risk about £10 million in lost revenue.
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