Soderbergh's simultaneous release

It's a film that has the industry on tenterhooks. Is it the beginning of the end of the movies as we know them - or does it mark an exciting new departure into an almost unlimited future of digital entertainment?

The subject of this speculation is Steven Soderbergh's experimental new film Bubble, which comes out in the US on 27 January. A low-budget arthouse project, it has been shot with an entirely non-professional cast in and around an Ohio doll factory.

It's not the film itself that has the movie world in a lather but the way it is being distributed, for Bubble will be the first feature released simultaneously in cinemas, on pay-per-view television and on DVD. As such, it is widely being seen as a portent of things to come.

More from Andrew Gumbel in The Independent.