Cineworld has broken ranks with other theater chains in the U.K. and has agreed to screen Disney's Alice in Wonderland , the London Times reported today (Thursday). Earlier this week all of the U.K.'s exhibitors said that they would not screen the movie so long as Disney persisted in its plan to release it on DVD four weeks earlier than usual. The newspaper said that Cineworld agreed to the shorter window after Disney distribution chief Bob Chapek assured the exhibitor that it would not represent a usual practice for the studio. (If the usual practice were followed in the case of Alice, the DVD would not come out until summer, when DVD sales slow drastically.) However, another theater chain, Odeon, issued a statement Wednesday night indicating that negotiations with Disney had broken down and it would not permit the movie to be screened in its theaters. In an interview with today's Los Angeles Times, Joe Roth, the former Disney studio chief who is a producer of Alice , said "Anything that would prevent maximizing Alice for the U.K. would be horrible. ... This would be one of the biggest pictures of the year in the U.K. But I honestly think this will be worked out."

18/02/2010