Staggered releases, 12A action films, regional coding and more.

We might not like them but they work… We had no world wide web to compare country with country, and staggered releases were an accepted norm.

But the internet inevitalby played its part in cutting the gap.

Furthermore, the spectre of piracy also changed things.

So that was the end of staggered releases, then, surely?

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Well, no.

Why does it upset so many cinemagoers in doing so?

The best example of how dramatically this can work actually came with a DreamWorks release, the thirdMadagascarfilm.

That notwithstanding, the film was a huge hit in the UK.

It seems a curse of the modern age that youre not allowed a simple trailer for a film now.

You know whats coming.

There is a growing degree of backlash to the trailer trailer.

Weve yet to see a film that splits a book like this to do it convincingly.

Its forcing new endings and beginnings into a story thats never been designed to have them.

However, as a business decision?

Splitting books has created absolute box office gold.

No matter whether the story deserves it or not… And yet remakes and reboots are working.

Every one of them sits in the US box office top 50 for the year.

Not every remake/reboot works, of course, but studios argue that it hedges their bets slightly.

Once again, the numbers not always, but usually tend to back the studios up.

If people had cared more about the film, then there may have been more of an outcry.

That, or its just accepted now, that big action franchises will target a softer rating.

The two most contentious examples wereTaken 2andDie Hard 5.So lets take them in turn.

The online reaction was not positive, and many threatened to boycott the film.

But for everybody who did, a lot more went to see it.

How much a difference its 12A certificate made is up for debate, but it clearly made some.

The film took over 10m in the UK, off the back of hostile reviews.

In the US, it earned just shy of $70m, the lowest by distance for aDie Hardmovie.

As the DVD market has declined, this has become less and less of a problem.

In some cases, the filmmakers were transparent, and Peter Jackson led the way on this.

So accepted was this process, that it even got a name double dipping.

And for a long time, it worked.

Thus, DVDs are increasingly bereft of special features, forcing people who want everything towards the Blu-ray.

To date, noStar Trek Into Darknessdisc with all of the features included has been released.

There is a sense that the tide has turned here, at least.

Heck, even the UK anti-piracy adverts that used to adorn discs have turned into a thank you.

But for a long time, the double dip was the curse of the DVD collector.

Lets end on another relic of the movie business, thats still just about grasping on.

Pre-internet, very few moviegoers in the UK would import videos and laserdiscs other countries.

Regional coding tried to put a stop to that.

And there was an argument that was unfair.

Consumers roared back that blocking people trying to legitimately and entirely legally buy discs was even worse.

So did it ever work?

For consumers, no.

It was an inconvenience, and punished arguably the most enthusiastic of film fans.

Did it work for movie studios?