The Weinstein Company and Netflix announced that a sequel to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" will open in IMAX theaters *and* on the streaming service in August of next year--Regal and Cinemark, the nation's two largest film exhibitors, say "not at our multiplexes":
Weinstein isn't a member of the MPAA (which has pretty much said that its members will not open movies in theaters and on TV simultaneously) and its Radius arm distributes arthouse and indie titles to cable VOD and iTunes simultaneously with theatrical distribution (with only Landmark, the arthouse chain owned by Mark Cuban, whose Magnolia also releases films to theaters and VOD simultaneously, the only notable chain to exhibit the films). By and large, the big chains have continued to say that they will not show anything that's on what they broadly consider home video outside of one-night Fantom Events screenings of classics or one-week IMAX reissues (like "Forrest Gump" a few weeks ago) and <Don LaFontaine> in a world where most mainstream releases have to make their money on the first weekend <DL>, it's highly unlikely that they will give in. Even IFC Films, another indie distributor big on VOD, released "Boyhood" in theaters only in the hopes that it would get some crossover into mainstream plexes.