Good news to Hollywood. There is a plan to convert the old-fashioned 35-mm film projectors to more modern technologies in many theaters in North America. The support and the cash will be provided by five Hollywood studios. In fact the plan cost around $1 billion. The agreement in effect also ends the talks between theater chains on who should shoulder the cost of transferring the old technology to a new one.

The agreement was announced Wednesday by a consortium of theater chains. The object of the conversion is around 20,000 screens and these screens will be converted into digital projection. The announcement of the deal was also timed with the opening of the ShowEast, a major trade show for theater owners.
At the initial stages of the plan, News Corp’s 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures are the ones at the forefront of the plan. But other studios joined in the plan and names of Walt Disney Motion Pictures, Universal Studios and Lionsgate Films were added to the list that will support the conversion. Two other studios, Warner Bros and Sony Pictures are in the discussion stage and may join the industry-wide effort as well. The five studios that were mentioned are expected to shoulder the estimated $70,000 per screen cost of conversion by paying the theater consortium the virtual print fee of $800 to $1000 per film, per screen. This amount was less than original projection of around $1,100 to $2,100. The agreement includes the financial commitments plus the promise as well to supply these theaters with digital films. The financing package that will be need was led by JPMorgan Chase & Co and the money will be paid over the next eight to ten years. But with the problems that happened to Wall Street there are still doubts on how the money will be raised. But the driving forces behind the move are all optimistic that the financing can be finalized in the fourth quarter of the year.

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