And yet the Screening Room is merely the opening salvo in an assault that theaters are unlikely to sustain. The particulars of Parker’s plan are simple: purchase a $150 proprietary set-top box that connects to your TV, and then use it to rent premiere movies for $50 per title (watchable over a 48-hour period). According to Parker, this idea supposedly won’t steal business away from theaters, since it’ll only appeal to those customers—primarily older adults with kids and jobs—who don’t have the time or patience to head out to the multiplex. Plus, to placate distributors, they’ll get a cut of the set-top box fee, as well as twenty percent of each $50 rental.

Who’s on board for that? Well, apparently lots of filmmakers, including Spielberg, Howard, Peter Jackson, and J.J. Abrams, all of whom are reportedly shareholders in the venture. On the other side of the fence stand heavyweights like Christopher Nolan and James Cameron, who’ve actively spoken out against the Screening Room—as has, predictably, the National Association of Theatre Owners, who in so many words told Parker to butt out; they’ll figure out their business on their own.

Setting aside the fact that the Screening Room will invariably lead to greater piracy—there’s virtually no way its set-top box’s anti-piracy technology won’t be cracked by industrious hackers, given the coveted content up for grabs—there’s something questionable about the underlying logic behind the Screening Room. Specifically, it’s difficult to imagine there being an enormous untapped moviegoing market willing to shell out $50/title for any film.