Folks, there’s one thing that’s become abundantly clear to pretty much everybody.  In fact, it’s become SO abundantly clear that even the Hollywood suits are starting to get it, and they’re most righteously freaked out by it.

The thing in question is that the home theatre revolution, in which a downright cinema-quality experience is available to pretty much anyone for a few hundred dollars, is going to irrevocably change the movie industry forever.

But if you listen to people like Liesl Copland of William Morris Endeavor’s Global Finance & Distribution Group, you start to get a little hope.  She delivered the keynote address at the Toronto International Film Festival, which you can find here, She said something that I’ve said several times in the past–that changes will have to be made to keep the movie theatre industry afloat, and that’s already well underway in a lot of places.

As the quality of projectors and screens increases for home consumption, the theatres’ primary advantage will fall with it.  But if the theatres can innovate, think of new advantages not so easily replicable by a trip to Best Buy, then they may be able to survive.  Otherwise, fat chance.