Digital Cinemas First Decade

The case could be made that digital cinema has been around much longer than just the past ten years. For example, I wrote an article for Variety in 1990 about electronic cinema’ potential to transform the movie industry. The consensus at that time was that any serious implementation was a decade away. However, cut to May 1999. That was when Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace opened with a handful of digital screenings in movie theatres in and around New York and Los Angeles. Admittedly major developments were decidedly slow for many years after that, but that movie gave the idea of digital cinema serious momentum and the transformation had begun: digital cinema’s first decade was underway.