28 CFR Part 36 Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability by Public Accommodations - Movie Theaters; Movie Captioning and Audio Description Final Rule

A. Transformation From Analog Films to Digital Movies

Digital technology has revolutionized the way movies are produced, delivered, and exhibited. For nearly 100 years, movie studios produced films exclusively in analog film format (analog movies), meaning that they were typically shot with 35 mm film, cut and spliced for editing, shipped to individual movie theaters on several large, heavy reels, and exhibited with a conventional reel-to-reel movie projector. All that changed at the beginning of the twenty-first century with the development of digital cinema technology and the commercial production of movies in digital cinema format (digital movies).^[7]

Digital cinema captures images, data, and sound as a digital cinema “package” (DCP) that is stored on a hard drive or a flash drive. Digital movies are physically delivered on high resolution DVDs or removable or external hard drives, or can be transmitted to movie theaters' servers via Internet, fiber-optic, or satellite networks. Digital production, distribution, and exhibition have many advantages over analog film, including better and longer lasting image quality, availability of higher resolution images, significantly lower production and distribution costs, ease of distribution, availability of enhanced effects such as 3D, ease of exhibition of live events or performances, greater flexibility in arranging or increasing show times to accommodate unanticipated audience demand, and remote monitoring of projection. See Rajesh K, Digital Cinema—Advantages and Limitations, excITingIP.com (Oct. 2, 2009), available at http://www.excitingip.com/​611/​advantages-limitations-digital-cinema/​ (last visited Sept. 12, 2016).

The shift to digital cinema has led to a precipitous decline in the filming, distribution, and exhibition of analog movies, resulting in enormous uncertainty about the future of the analog film market. See Helen Alexander & Rhys Blakely, The Triumph of Digital Will Be the Death of Many Movies, New Republic (Sep. 12, 2014), available at http://www.newrepublic.com/​article/​119431/​how-digital-cinema-took-over-35mm-film (last visited Sept. 12, 2016); see also John Belton, If Film is Dead, What is Cinema?, 55 Screen 460, 461-63 (2014), available at http://english.rutgers.edu/​docman/​documents/​104-screen-2014-belton-460-70-2/​file.html (last visited Sept. 12, 2016). In 2013, Fujifilm, one of the two major producers of movie film stock, announced it was ceasing production of movie film stock. In 2014, Kodak, the other major producer of movie film stock, after first announcing it would cease production of film stock, committed to produce only 449 million linear feet (as compared to the 12.4 billion linear feet it produced in 2006). See Michael Idato, Quentin Tarantino, JJ Abrams Help Save Old-Fashioned Film Stock, Sydney Morning Herald (July 31, 2014), available at http://www.smh.com.au/​entertainment/​movies/​quentin-tarantino-jj-abrams-help-save-oldfashioned-film-stock-20140731-zytlw.html (last visited Sept. 12, 2016).

Some movie studios have also begun to release first-run movies exclusively in digital cinema format. For example, both Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox have completely stopped releasing movies in analog format. See Richard Verrier, End of Film: Paramount First Studio to Stop Distributing Film Prints, L.A. Times (Jan. 17, 2014), available at http://articles.latimes.com/​2014/​jan/​17/​entertainment/​la-et-ct-paramount-digital-20140117 (last visited Sept. 12, 2016); Matt Alderton, Films Without Film, Profile Magazine (2014), available at http://profilemagazine.com/​2014/​twentieth-century-fox (last visited Sept. 12, 2016). In its comment on the Department's 2014 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) reported that several other movie studios plan to stop producing analog movies, and NATO expects independent production companies to follow suit.^[8]              

7.  Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones, released in 2002, was the first major motion picture to be shot entirely on digital video. See Helen Alexander & Rhys Blakely, The Triumph of Digital Will Be the Death of Many Movies, New Republic (Sept. 12, 2014), available at http://newrepublic.com/​article/​119431/​how-digital-cinema-took-over-35mm-film (last visited Sept. 12, 2016).

8.  See National Association of Theater Owners, Statement of Position on RIN 1190-AA63, CRT Docket No. 126, Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability by Public Accommodations—Movie Theaters; Movie Captioning and Audio Description 4, available at http://www.regulations.gov/​contentStreamer?​documentId=​DOJ-CRT-2014-0004-0401&​attachmentNumber=​4&​disposition=​attachment&​contentType=​pdf (last visited Sept. 12, 2016). NATO is the largest association of motion picture theater owners in the world, and its members include the nation's ten largest movie theater companies as well as hundreds of smaller entities. Together, its member movie theaters operate 32,000 of the 40,000 movie theater auditoriums in the United States.