We're through the looking-glass now, as the cinematic stranglehold on new movie content weakens...

The BBC reports today that cinemas in the UK, the Irish Republic and Italy will be boycotting Tim Burton's highly-anticipated cinematic take on Lewis Caroll's Alice In Wonderland due to the studio's insistence on shortening the period of theatrical exclusivity for the release.

The influential Odeon chain is protesting against Disney's '12 week window' cutting five weeks off the standard period in which new cinema releases remain exclusively within the purview of theatrical exhibitors. The Beeb reports Odeon as saying that the new deal would "set a new benchmark, leading to a 12-week window becoming rapidly standard". It seemed for a while that Vue were joining in the fight, but the chain's Twitter feed has now denied this.

Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland will still premiere in London on Thursday at the Odeon Leicester Square, however.

The continuing problem of piracy is placing pressure on distributors to transfer from the theatrical release model to the solution frequently adopted in China and other countries which currently lead the world in piratical pre-empting of cinema sales - the simultaneous release of new movies at the cinema and to disc.

The practical effect of the R5 distribution model has been that R5 releases that emerge at the same time as their theatrical equivalents are nearly always available via Bittorrent-based distribution methods within 12 hours - a clue to Hollywood that we may not be as attached to big-screen spectacle as it would like to believe.

Disney are an obvious choice to pursue this innovative line, with a repressive rights regime that has seen disc and home video profits contributing a huge proportion of its takings, both on its highly popular back-archive and its current releases.

Odeon is reported to have stated "The negative impact on cinema attendance that such a reduction in the window will have will threaten the continued existence of many cinemas, especially the smaller and medium-sized cinemas." Additionally it bemoans the recent and continuing costs of adapting to new 3D technologies for major releases such as Avatar.

There does seem to be a lot of bet-hedging going on in Hollywood as to whether 3D can still save the traditional cinema experience, despite the world-beating receipts of James Cameron's green SF epic over Christmas and into the new year. On the one hand, a reduction in the gap between theatrical and disc releases promises to severely undermine piracy, and on the other lies the tantalising possibility that new technology can save cinema in the way that widescreen and various other innovations attempted - woth varying results - in the desperate two decades between the new dominance of television and the advent of the Star Wars-style blockbuster in the late 1970s.

The Wonderland debacle is attempt No.#2 by Disney to cut down the theatrical-disc window in Europe, having backed down from similar plans regarding the release of Up in 2009.

BBC news