Several of the movie industry's top executives said Wednesday that piracy is forcing them to think about radically shortening the time between when a film hits theaters and when it is released on DVD.

Warner Bros. Entertainment chairman and CEO Barry Meyer said he envisions a day when some major movies, not just animated family fare, debut on DVD simultaneously with their theatrical release.

"Your premiere will be in Wal-Mart," he said.

Meyer's sentiments were echoed by Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and Fox Group chairman and CEO Peter Chernin during a discussion Wednesday at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills.

"The day you have a public performance of a movie anywhere in the world, you can count on the fact there will be a physical product on the streets in Asia, Eastern Europe, Russia within a few days," Meyer said.

He related a story of how pirates were selling camcorder copies of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" outside a multiplex in Shanghai, China, the day that movie premiered there, though the cheap product didn't deter moviegoers.

"Right now," Meyer said, "theatrical is the main way we set value in these movies, and video is the first aftermarket. It might well be in the certain territories, it should be exactly the reverse -- that theatrical is the added value."

Last year, boxoffice revenue in the United States hit a record $9.5 billion, though it was dwarfed by the estimated $24.5 billion in rental and sales of DVD and video, a fact that shouldn't go unnoticed by exhibitors.

"If you force the industry to make a 'Sophie's Choice' between theatrical and DVD and video, it's not a big question which way the industry will go," Chernin said. "It's why we need to work closely with the theater owners."

Lynton warned of what he called the "paperback effect," whereby would-be moviegoers are waiting for the DVD release rather than spending more money to take the family to the movie theater.

He said his research has shown that as many as 50% of those purchasing DVDs for movies that have grossed more than $100 million are doing so without having seen the movie beforehand.

Nevertheless, the executives agreed that the movie industry won't find itself in the same dire position the music industry was in after Napster and its knockoffs got a hold of it. That's because audiences have so many different ways of consuming movies: rentals, theaters, television, etc.

"Where piracy tends to thrive is where the consumer perceives that goods and services are not convenient and price is out of whack," Chernin said, adding that the music industry was in some ways the "poster boy" for that scenario.

Not so fast, said former RIAA chief executive Hilary Rosen, who also took part in the discussion.

"My brilliant friends are sounding too smug," she said.

Rosen said, in fact, that "it's getting too late" for the movie industry to fight back, even if the Grokster case, now on appeal at the Supreme Court, is settled to the industry's satisfaction. That's because file-trading software is already in the hands of about 300 million potential pirates worldwide.

"Fourteen bucks might sound like a great price for a DVD, but with 30 million movies being downloaded a month, it's just not going to be that great a price," Rosen said. "The most critical mistake the music industry made was the presumption that tech will wait until we're ready."