It’s still more than a month away from live trading, you can sort of see why the Cantor Exchange movie futures trading system is stirring discomfort among studio executives.
A demo of the new system on the ShoWest floor Wednesday already had the expected four-week performance of this weekend’s wide-opening new releases, based on "practice trading" currently being performed by several thousand users who have already registered for the service.
The line on Sony’s "Bounty Hunter" has set by Canter Exchange traders at $64 million after four weeks of domestic release. For Fox’s "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," the "over/under" is $45.5 million. It’s $39.5 million for Universal’s "Repo Men."
The system won’t go live until April 22, when Cantor Fitzgerald is hoping to gain approval from the Commidity Futures Trading Commission.
However, studios are already concerned the new system will add another layer of pre-release complexity to a issues that also include research screenings, bad press, tracking and star tantrums.
