Apple looks to movies

With Apple's dominance of the digital music world, the film industry is worried that Apple's enormous clout will extend to the digital movie world, as the company negotiates contracts with various studios. A report on Variety, which touches upon about the secrecy of Apple, Steve Jobs' wealth, and his management style, says that the Apple CEO personally heads up most negotiations, while Apple VP Eddie Cue takes up some of the slack as competing studios are wary of doing business with a member of Disney's board. "Studios have resisted Jobs' initial insistence that feature films be priced at the easy-to-remember $9.99. After all, library titles are typically sold to Wal-Mart and Best Buy significantly cheaper than new releases. Studios now are trying to convince Apple to sell similar content at multiple price points, something the company has never done." The report notes that the film studios are trying, simultaneously, to work out deals with a host of other distributors, including Amazon, Movielink and BitTorrent, in part to make sure that one company does not dominate. The publication expects most major studios to add movies to its iTunes Music Store by the end of the year.

by MacNN Staff