Red Carpet Home Cinema Lets The Super Rich Rent Theatrical Releases At Home, Away From The Poor
Rich people. They're just like us! Except when it comes to having the capability to do things that the middle class can't afford. And while the movie theater used to give us some common ground with all those enjoying caviar on their yachts docked at an island no one has heard of, the super rich now have another way to avoid all us dirty poor people while enjoying a major motion picture.
Red Carpet Home Cinema is a new streaming service that caters only to the super rich by giving them the opportunity to rent first-run theatrical releases for anywhere between $1,500 and $3,000 each. And since this is something only for the kind of people who have rugs that cost more than a college education, there's a very strict verification process to sign up. Find out more about high society streaming theatrical releases at home below.The New York Times profiled Red Carpet Cinema co-founder Fred Rosen, the architect of computerized ticketing system known as Ticketmaster, who described the service as being the different between buying a belt at Walmart for $4 or getting one from Gucci for $1,500. It's lauded as Netflix for one-percenters, people like tech billionaires, Wall Street titans, professional athletes, Russian oligarchs, and other douchebags.
Red Carpet Cinema has contracts with Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate, Annapurna Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchllight, but Universal, Sony Pictures and Disney are holdouts for now. That still gives subscribers around 40 theatrical releases they can watch from the comfort of their home while the rest of us $4 belt-wearing commoners sit in theaters with gum under the armrests and a woman nearby telling her five-year old child to whisper in the middle of Pet Sematary.
What seems to be helping Red Carpet Cinema work for the super rich and industry professionals alike is co-founders Fred Rosen and his rich, old golfing buddy Dan Fellman aren't trying to shake up the theatrical release distribution system with innovation. They let studios set the terms, and they're not trying to become this wide-ranging business endeavor for the public at large. Fellman said:
"I'm not interested in starting a business that is disruptive to the theatrical experience. Maybe we get 400 homes in New York and L.A. Maybe 100 in each of the 30 biggest cities in the United States."
That's why the verification process to get Red Carpet Cinema is quite extensive and expensive. First, you must have a credit card with a limit of at least $50,000. You know, the kind of money people without health insurance spend on surgery. If approved, you then have to buy a $15,000 set-top box that connects to the Red Carpet Cinema home theater system, which is loaded with piracy protection. Then you pay anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 for a 36-hour rental that allows you to watch the movie twice. Talk about luxury!
This kind of service is largely for those rich people who work outside the movie industry. That's because there's already a way for celebrities and Hollywood executives to watch theatrical releases at home. It's called the Bel-Air Circuit, and it has a limited number of pre-approved members who can use it.
The super rich already have butlers, private planes, and a place to cryogenically freeze their head to be preserved so they can be assholes in the future. So why not let them enjoy movies away from all of us dirty people who brush their own teeth like a bunch of chumps?