Jay Chandrasekhar Quotes

The current distribution model for movies, in the U.S. particularly, but also around the world, is pretty antiquated relative to the on-demand generation that we're trying to serve.

When I started in the late 1950s, every film I made - no matter how low the budget - got a theatrical release. Today, less that 20-percent of our films get a theatrical release.

Every film may not be appropriate for a theatrical release, and the theatrical business is not a very good business for anybody except the distributor.

Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will.

I don't think, by the way, that any network would have given us their show to release all 13 episodes once ahead of them, and the same way, I don't think any studio will give us their movies to release the same day they are in the theaters - not yet, not yet.

Now, DVD can represent more income than the box office-and typically does.

I just want to do movies, and I want to sell them. I don't want to link up with some product.

'Brothers McMullen' would not be picked up for theatrical distribution now.

One of the things that's driving films in a particular direction is that the after market value of them is dropping really fast and in many segments of it, not just DVDs. Pay television is dropping.

The movies have a way of seeping out there over time. We don't put them in 2,000 theaters. It wouldn't work that way.

The movie business has been in enormous flux. It's always changing, and you've got to scramble. The Internet came along and devoured the DVD backend of the movie business. Suddenly you're watching dollars turn into nickels, and that's interesting to me.

Usually the films that I do are released theatrically in foreign markets. In the U.S., they're either picked up as HBO premier films or Showtime first-runs. In today's market, in America, you need at least $50 million for your budget to go to the big show, and I'm not quite there yet. But keep watching - maybe someday I will be.

Why not premiere movies on Netflix the same day they're opening in theaters? Listen to the consumer; give the consumer what they want.

So much of the downstream revenue is linked to that initial excitement, to how much revenue is produced in the domestic box office. For example, what we pay for a film three years later is highly correlated to how well it did in the box office.

Just selling through a movie theater is not ever going to be a viable way to make money back on a movie anymore.

Movie theaters still exist in spite of all of the alternatives that are available, video and video-on-demand and DVD and streaming video and all of these things.

The idea of a film staying in theaters for a year is something of a fantasy today.

So many movies get made, and so many go to VOD, which is a market I admire.

If my films did better at the box office in Japan, it would be easier to get them made.

A theatrical release is not possible for a short film.

I think, it's important to understand how to release a film.

There will be more chances for films to be released through streaming services, such as Netflix.

I do indeed think that cinema is mortal. There is a lot of evidence already that it is dying on its feet.

Movie theaters barely make any money. A movie can make a couple of thousand dollars, or could get lucky and make ten or fifteen thousand dollars, but theatrical releases don't really sustain the work. For me, it's the best sort of advertisement for anything else you'd want to do.

To have a film in America means precisely nothing if you don't have a distributor who stands behind it.