As entertainment creators and presenters look to grow audiences through the marriage of product and technology, consumer choice is the winner. Every day, it seems, an event or announcement heralds a new option for the quickly evolving ways we view entertainment. This month has brought a wave of news to illustrate the point.
- More than 225,000 viewers attended 1,400 screenings in 25 countries to see Benedict Cumberbatch as “Hamlet” on its first day of screening Oct. 15. It was the largest global audience for a live-captured broadcast since National Theatre Live launched in 2009.
- It was announced that the BBC television special “Sherlock: The Abominable Bride,” starring Emmy winners Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, will be in theaters worldwide — including the United States on Jan. 5 and 6 — after it airs on PBS New Year’s Day.
- Broadway producers Stewart Lane and Bonnie Comley on Monday launched BroadwayHD, an online paid streaming service with high-quality, live-captured theater events.
- Exclusive behind-the-scenes content from the film “Spectre” was rolled out on Snapchat Discover Channel Monday for one day only.
Live (or almost live) at the movies
The Brits are steadily building a “live at the movies” kingdom, using a concept first championed by the Metropolitan Opera a decade ago with the award-winning series “The Met: Live in HD.”
Live or live-captured performances from across the pond have become a regular feature of U.S. movie theaters through companies such as Fathom Events and National Theatre Live, which this weekend brought the Barbican’s sold out “Hamlet” from London to SouthSide Works Cinema, including a show at 11 a.m. today. For NTL, the screenings already have been a triumph.
BBC, which has held cinema events for “Doctor Who” season launches and specials, isn’t just jumping on the bandwagon with its “Sherlock” cinema release. The show that airs on PBS here also will be seen on screens across China as part of a deal that also gives British filmmakers increased access to Chinese studios and the country’s domestic market.
Oscar-nominated actor, director and writer Kenneth Branagh is a DIY guy in the stage-to-film industry. He has been seen onscreen in NTL presentations including “Macbeth,” a production he co-directed with Rob Ashford. He now has his own Branagh Theatre Live company that will bring three of his London stage productions to the screen, including “The Winter’s Tale” with co-star Judi Dench. Also co-directed by Mr. Ashford, a Point Park alumnus, it will be in Cinemark theaters (nearby at McCandless, Robinson, Frazer near Tarentum and Monroeville) Nov. 30.
In a 2014 commentary, theater critic Michael Billington of the Guardian of London voiced his support for global distribution of theatrical works.
“While I remain an evangelist for live theater, I think it's time we stopped pretending that it offers an unreproducible event,” he wrote. “A theater performance can now be disseminated worldwide with astonishing fidelity. This represents, as I noted when I saw the first ever National Theatre Live transmission of Racine’s ’Phedre,’ a revolution which knocks on the head the old argument that theater is an elitist medium aimed at the privileged few.”
Content from the U.K. may be getting all the buzz, but the Met isn’t the only live entertainment from the U.S. on the big screen. Another recent announcement comes from “American Saturday Night: Live From The Grand Ole Opry,” which is set for a limited engagement at select Carmike Cinemas beginning Dec. 4. Distribution across America will follow in January in a partnership between the Opry and independent distributor DigiNext, a direct-to-consumer movie release platform.
TV at the movies
The old-is-new-again channel Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Fathom Events have extended their partnership to bring monthly screenings of the “TCM Presents” series to movie theaters.
Fathom Events offers a wide range of event programming or entertainment recast for the big screen. Presentations this month at Cinemark theaters include “The Importance of Being Earnest” from the Vaudeville Theatre in London on Tuesday, a “Home Alone 25th Anniversary” screening Nov. 11 and “Ballet Hispanico” by Carmen Maquia and Club Havana on Nov. 12.
From Broadway to digital
Digital Theatre Live offers online content from London stages such as the Old Vic, including the acclaimed “The Crucible,” starring “The Hobbit’s” Richard Armitage, and Almeida Theatre’s “King Lear,” starring Jonathan Pryce.
But look out, Internet. A Broadway invasion is under way.
Husband-and-wife producing partners Lane and Comley believe that on-the-go, on-demand technology has caught up with content. For almost a decade, they have building that content by helping to create and distribute live-captured theatrical productions to the big screen. Enter their new streaming subscription service, BroadwayHD — think Netflix, Hulu, etc. With much of its current content originating from the BBC, it begins at $14.99 a month or $169.99 for a year’s worth of titles, although there is free content as well.
BroadwayHD’s titles include Orlando Bloom in the 2013 Broadway revival of “Romeo and Juliet,” a live “Jekyll & Hyde” with David Hasselhoff in 2001, Helen Mirren in “A Midsummer Night's Dream” and original stars Montego Glover and Chad Kimball in the Tony Award-winning musical “Memphis.” “Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill,” starring Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday, will be available after it appears on HBO in the spring.
BroadwayHD’s roots go back to 1991, when Mr. Lane was a producer of “The Will Rogers Follies,” which was filmed for distribution only in Japan, “because there was fear of cannibalizing the tickets for the live show,” Ms. Comley said.
Today, the couple sees streaming as a way to preserve original productions and promote live theater.
Which shows will come to be part of the streaming service remains to be seen. Limited-run events with big names — such as the James Franco-Chris O’Dowd “Of Mice and Men” and Nathan Lane in “The Nance” — are naturals. But with so many top musicals out on long-lasting tours or being reimagined for the big screen, a la “Chicago” and “Into the Woods,” there often is a reluctance to make those shows available online.
“A lot of authors are holding out. They would prefer if they can get a big Hollywood movie, and no one can blame them. We still feel a movie is very different than what we are doing,” said Ms. Comley, who compared a live-capture presentation to a sporting event — filmed in real time, in front of an audience, with laughter, coughing and applause part of the package.
“We are looking at our colleagues in the industry and saying, ‘Here’s a platform for you when a show gets done with being in the cinema or on cable,’ ” Mr. Lane said. “Now here’s a place for it to land — streaming.”
The name’s Snapchat
It sounds like something Q might have created for James Bond if the super spy were marketing a movie. Sony Pictures' “Spectre” is the latest Bond film and the first brand to purchase its own Snapchat Discover Channel. Fans had access to cast interviews and behind-the-scenes videos made just for the channel all day Monday — then it was all gone.
In case you missed it, you can go directly to 007’s next Q encounter when “Spectre” opens Friday.
Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg.
First Published: November 1, 2015, 4:00 a.m.