Cinema says movie piracy must stop
It appeared ominously as a quarter page ad in newspapers today, but if the threat of legal action by the Princess Cinema against persons who rent or sell illegal copies of box office movies is carried out, perhaps we’re in for another epic battle in the courts. General Manager of Princess Cinema, Doncho Donchev, says that for too long people have been undermining his exclusive and sometimes expensive rights to release movies in Belize, and he just can’t let it continue any longer.
Doncho Donchev, General Manager, Princess Cinema
“I think it exists a long time, but now it’s absolutely very hard the last seven, eight months. It’s harder and a lot of people they start to burn the DVD. If they burn and they use for themselves at home, that is no problem, but if they start to distribute or sell, that’s problem, that’s absolutely illegal.”
“That’s just one announcement or warning about the situation of the illegal issue of the DVD or movie, because really, Princes Cinema is the only one in the country with license with absolute rights to show the movies. Because work very closely with the distributor in Panama for absolutely the new movie. A lot of the D.V.D.s in the country is absolutely illegal because they are burned from internet or another way an then sold after that in the small stores, small shops. It’s just a warning because we need the help of the officials, we need the help of the public, of the population, just to help and to continue to follow the law and to continue to follow the exclusive right for the movie.”
“With the cable TV we have no problem, we have a gentleman’s agreement except with one of the cable TVs, Baymen TV. Sometimes they make the same situations with the not so legal showing of movies. But we have a gentleman’s agreement with C.B.C. that after showing in the Princess, they can go to the Pay Per View Channel if they want to show some movie.”
“Our wish is to have really the new the latest movies here just to show for the population. But if that continues, we start to loose a lot of money because you pay the guarantee, you pay the minimum guarantee and we have some agreement to share the revenue. And in this way if we have no public we have to close these two nice movie theatres.”
Donchev says the Princess Cinema will debut “The Passion of the Christ” next Friday, but bootleg copies of the movie are already making the rounds in Orange Walk and San Pedro, threatening to undermine the theatre’s investment of an initial ten thousand U.S. dollars for the rights to show the movie in Belize.
One D.V.D. rental store owner we checked with says while he sympathizes with Donchev, he does not believe that the movie black-market is affecting the Princess Cinema as much as he is making it out to be and that so long as there is a demand, there will always be suppliers of cheap pirated movies.
