Sunday, April 18, 2010

A movie marketing no-brainer

I admit it: I've never seen Wall Street. Always meant to, never got around to it. The only thing I know about the movie is that Gordon Gekko says "greed is good," a saying that's worked its way into American culture in various ways.

Now I hear that a sequel -- Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps -- is set for release this September, and I'm ready to watch the original.

But it's not available from Netflix as a streaming title.

Amazon Video on Demand, yes. Netflix streaming, no.

If I was the maker of this new movie, I'd want to get the old one in front of as many people as possible, including me.

I'm not going to buy it on DVD. I'm on a "quit bringing permanent space-consuming stuff into the house" kick.

I'm not going to pay Amazon $2.99 to watch it when I'm already paying Netflix a monthly fee for unlimited streaming of thousands of other titles (I think the number was 17,000 and climing last time I noticed).

Maybe I'll add the DVD to my Netflix queue. Maybe I'll get around to seeing it before the sequel debuts, and maybe I'll like it enough to pony up for a theater ticket to see that sequel on the big screen.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just keep watching whatever looks good in my Netflix streaming queue, and pretty much forget about Wall Street because seeing it isn't as easy as waving the Wii-mote at my TV screen and watching something else.

I don't know what the process is for getting a movie into Netflix streaming, but if I was producing a sequel for the big screen, I'd put getting the original onto as many small screens as possible at the top of my "to do" list. I'm just sayin' ...

No comments: