FInancial incentives for going HD DVD; Transformers' director's mini-rant

Hands up who believed that Paramount and Dreamworks moved to the HD DVD format purely for quality reasons?

Unsurprisingly in business, money talks very loudly. According to two anonymous Viacom executives (Viacom owns Paramount), the two companies will receive a total of $150m in financial incentives thanks to their newfound commitment to HD DVD.

The two companies remain tight-lipped. Microsoft, self-confessed slave to the HD DVD format, said that it would never rule out incentive payments, but in this case claimed not to have done so. Perhaps Toshiba slipped them a few notes?

In any case, there appears to be plenty of room for the two companies to crawl back to Blu-ray should market conditions change. Paramount have agreed to stick with HD DVD for 18 months, and Steven Spielberg's films were not included in the deal.

Meanwhile, director of the Transformers movie, Michael Bay, recently threw his toys out of the pram on a (now deleted) blog post which ranted about the two companies' decision to drop Blu-ray, threatening not to make "Transformers 2" as a consequence.

However, not 12 hours later, he retracted that statement, writing instead:

Last night at dinner I was having dinner with three Blu-Ray owners, they were pissed about no Transformers Blu-Ray and I drank the kool aid hook line and sinker. So at 1:30 in the morning I posted - nothing good ever comes out of early am posts mind you - I over reacted. I heard where Paramount is coming from and the future of HD and players that will be close to the $200 mark which is the magic number. I like what I heard.

As a director, I'm all about people seeing films in the best quality possible, and I saw and heard firsthand people upset about a corporate decision.

So today I saw 300 on HD-DVD, it rocks!

So I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!

It's all a bit sad really. Can't say I'm really bothered about whether Transformers 2 happens, and on what format it's released, but there you go.

(Via New York Times and Engadget)

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