Westlife come south - to the big screen

POPULAR Irish boy band Westlife gave their last performance at Croke Park in Ireland on June 23.

Westlife had a 14-year career in which the band sold more than 45 million albums worldwide and had 14 No 1 hits in the UK alone.

No wonder then that more than 85 000 fans crammed into the stadium to catch a last glimpse of the favourite four crooners.

Well, the money-making continues and we haven’t even reached the DVD stage of the marketing yet.

Westlife – The Final Concert is coming to a cinema screen near you, courtesy of BBC WorldWide.

The commercial arm of the BBC struck a deal with Sony Music and Westlife to co-produce a live film of this last concert and channelled it through alternative content provider BY Experience to screen it at cinemas worldwide.

Tickets to that final concert sold out in five minutes and more than 50 000 additional people attended live screenings across Europe.

Now SA fans can watch the live concert screenings in a cinema.

This concert screening follows the success of the international theatrical screening of Robbie Williams at the Electric Proms and the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms.

When Williams kicked off his comeback in 2009 with an appearance at the Electric Proms, BBC WorldWide licensed the live show to more than 250 screens in 23 countries, setting a Guinness World Record for simultaneous live screenings in cinemas.

That concert was subsequently screened in Australia and SA – the southern hemisphere countries don’t get the live screenings simply because of timing issues.

While many cinephiles will dispute Ster-Kinekor Nouveau’s claim that it shows art films, the “art house” chain does try to deliver alternative content and it regularly screens concerts, opera and theatre productions and documentaries we would not otherwise see.

The positive response from audiences will hopefully see it expanding its range beyond the commercial Hollywood fare local distributors dish up.

The cinematic experience has changed drastically over the past few years as home-viewing digital platforms become more widely available to South Africans.

If the local cinema chains are to survive they need to provide an alternative and better experience than people can have in their living rooms.

This means not only excellent content but also a different experience with all the bells and whistles, such as excellent sound and picture quality beyond what a big TV can deliver.

It also means access for the audience. Whether this means bringing in good African content or building cinemas where the people are, as opposed to only in cosy malls, there is no easy answer to that conundrum.