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Ebert: I'll Tell You Why Movie Revenue Is Dropping
schwit1 writes in with a link to Roger Ebert's webpage where he gives his opinion on the decline of movie industry revenues."According to Ebert movie piracy isn't the problem. He contends that the industry needs to lower prices on tickets and popcorn, keep people off their cell phones, show a wider variety of films, and understand that movie streaming is here to stay. From the article: 'The message I get is that Americans love the movies as much as ever. It's the theaters that are losing their charm.
Proof: theaters thrive that police their audiences, show a variety of titles and emphasize value-added features. The rest of the industry can't depend forever on blockbusters to bail it out.'"
It's all sequels, prequels, and superhero movies. I have a 60 inch HDTV and just watch what I want in my own home theatre now... and my popcorn has real butter on it too!
How about some couches and beer? It doesn't even have to be that classy; movie theaters have gotten bad enough that the classiness level of a brewpub would be a big improvement.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
ok, I like kids.
But parents need to stop using movie theaters as a way to keep their kids entertained for an afternoon. You come to a movie to see a movie, not to fucking socialize.
and to that idiot with the laser pointer, be happy I'm an old fuck and have too much to lose to shove it down your pie-hole - sideways.
The Alamo Drafthouse theaters, mostly in Texas but slowly spreading out (1 in Colorado and one in Virginia now) are superb models of successful customer-friendly theater experiences. Good equipment and seating, first-run movies, a clear and well-enforced no talking/texting policy, and oh yeah, good (yes, actually pretty good) food and *beer*. Not to mention great local events, a variety of special showings and unusual feature runs, and no crappy ads for cars and stuff before the show (instead a series of usually topical shorts or Youtube vids, usually hilarious). They are awesome and I hope they continue to spread.
- Oshyan
Beat me to it. There must be a bazillion scripts out there that show some originality. While it's true that there are a limited number of plot lines known and catalogued (many from Shakespeare), that's no excuse for slapping CGI and some new actors on a 20 year old script.
Show us something we haven't seen, with actors we haven't seen. Actually put some effort into finding some new stories. You'll have some bombs, but you won't spend that much to make them with fresh faces and writers, and you'll have some pleasant surprises too.
On: http://www.powned.tv/nieuws/binnenland/2011/12/bioscopen_draaiden_goed_jaar.html (dutch!!)
The main message translates to something like this:
"in 2011 the ten most visited movies have net resulted in EUR 73 milion. This is higher than the previous year when the top ten only grossed EUR 64,47 milion"
So what is the problem? About 10% increase doesn't look too bad to me?
And ditch 3D. Yes, 50% of the audience likes it. But they're going to come anyway, 3D or 2D. Nobody ever refused to go to the cinema because a movie was 2D. The people you need to be concerned about are the 50% who no longer go to the cinema because they hate it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Wikipedia has a pretty good primer on "Hollywood accounting."
Movies have always been mostly dumb, mindless crap. Pick a movie from 30 years ago at random, and I'll bet you $100 it's terrible to mediocre.
People would think that is better to watch a movie at home because you can drink a beer or two. Or three, it does not matter.
What is really a 'plus' regarding watching movies at home is that you can actually PAUSE the move to take a pee!
that sounds like a translation of Ecclesiastes 1:9 - I suppose it's fitting that the source for that phrase is a book written over 2000 years ago.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
No, that's not the problem. Ideas aren't worth much. Jack London sold plots for $5. It's not the ideas, it's the implementations.
He bought plots for $5, from Sinclair Lewis. He didn't sell them...
There's a limited number of plot lines known, but given the number of Hollywood scriptwriters out there looking for new plot lines, it's hard to say that the problem is with the number of (good) plot lines possible.
However, I absolutely agree that the key problems are with regurgitated scripts, half-dead actors, a passion for not thinking, and a chronic paranoia towards originality.
Cinemas are partly to blame - there are occasionally good independent movies. Hell, there are occasionally documentary box-office hits (March of the Penguins out-sold The Fantastic Four first on limited release and then nationally in the multiplexes). The cinemas are quite capable of mixing in all kinds of stuff that might not appeal "to the masses" but which could certainly stuff one seating area full for more than enough showings to make a very healthy profit.
Also, box-office hits don't remain hits forever. A local cinema, back in the 70s, got Star Wars and retained it in month blocks until the audience numbers fell off. The last month it was retained, the cinema nearly went out of business. It was an expensive film to hold with near-zero audiences at that point. Modern cinemas have obviously far more screens and book in more rational blocks of time, but even so they must be wasting vast sums on holding onto too many copies for too long. Diversifying would not only increase the number of people actually going to the cinema, it would also reduce wastage from excessive rights.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Just because you don't like 3D doesn't mean it should be "ditched".
I don't go to many movies, but when I do, I look for good movies that are in 3D.
If a movie has no plot, it doesn't matter if it's in 2D or 3D.
Actually on paper most films never make a profit. The costs are structured so that various parental entities (production houses, etc.) charge huge fees so the actual film loses money but everybody who matters walks away with lots of cash. That's why smart and lucky actors always try to get a percentage of the gross, not the net. Many blockbuster films and TV shows have never made a profit, even after 30 years of syndication.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Funny enough I'm the IT guy for a small chain of arthouse theatres and there is no dropping of revenue going on there. Rather the other way round, this year was again better than the last.
And yes, tickets are rather cheap, concession (drinks, popcorn, etc.) too, there are about 30 different movies on monthly and hardly any of these are Hollywood movies. Still, people love that. They could buy the DVD instead, but they prefer to come into a friendly place, have a talk before and after the movie, drink a nice (and not too expensive) beer from a healthy selection, munch some very cheap and tasty popcorn and generally have a jolly good time. Many come at least once a week. Once you start to realize that there are literally thousands of great movies you've never heard of in the news there's a whole new world to explore. And once you realize that this is not just an "industry" you may even find some nice theatre you really like to go to.
I would totally agree that you can't rely only on blockbusters. Or on selling expensive beverages.
Hollywood is terrified to making movies with original ideas. Every movie is created by committee in order to appeal to the most demographics. Which translates into a plot that you've seen a million times before. The idea of making a movie that doesn't spend $50 million on special effects and another $50 milllion on big name actors, but instead invests in plot and acting is something only independents do.
And ditch 3D. Yes, 50% of the audience likes it. But they're going to come anyway, 3D or 2D. Nobody ever refused to go to the cinema because a movie was 2D. The people you need to be concerned about are the 50% who no longer go to the cinema because they hate it.
Also ditch the audio. Talkies are a fad.
3D is an overpriced and overrated variation that is taking far to much valuable real estate that would be better used attracting a wider audience.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Don't ditch stereographic 3D outright. Instead, either do it properly or don't do it at all (I agree that at the moment, the two are functionally equivalent, though). This can be done by following two relatively simply rules:
1) No stereo upconverts. You don't shoot a film in B&W then colourise it (unless you want it to look like ass, especially when colour film is right there), so don't shoot a film in 2D then try and guesstimate some stereo separation. You retard.
2) Hire a stereographer who will hit you in the back of the head every time you suggest something fly out of the screen. Hard. And repeatedly. Until you learn how the human visual cortex recieves stereo cues and how to work with it to trick the viewer rather than grabbing the optic nerve and yanking it about. *
The only film I can think of where stereo 3D was done properly has been Avatar. Regardless of what you think about plot originality or hamfisted delivery, it was an excellent use of stereo 3D.
*I was going to give another analogy of shooting a film in colour and only using BRIGHT BLUE SKY and BRIGHT ORANGE DESERT broad-brush colour grading, but then I remembered the Orange and Teal effect. On second thought, let's just fire the entire movie industry into the sun and start again.
I have been known to spend many hours in libraries reading such things as the congressional record from the 19th century, old trademark and patent gazettes, other very old periodicals and publications, and there are untold thousands of true stories that would make incredible films.
In the senate testimony during the period after the civil war and reconstruction, during hearings about the KKK, you could create several movies just from the eyewitness testimonies of southern people affected.
One particularly vivid example was testimony I came across where a community was terrorized - blacks and also whites who were viewed as sympathetic either to blacks or to the union.
The KKK rode through these places terrorizing the people while wearing blood-red hoods (white hoods came later I guess.)
Coincidentally some babies were stillborn with deformities that in the eyes of these frightened people looked reminiscent of these red hoods, and the whole community was thrown further into hysteria, referring to them as "ku klux babies" if I remember correctly.
Now tell me that it's not possible that some decent writer could read through the testimony of these hearings (which were the big national furor of the time) and come up with a very dramatic film? "Based on a true story" etc.
Wouldn't even have to pay royalties to some comic book company or whatever.
History and the present is filled with these stories everywhere you look, if you just look. And that's just the non-fiction.
It's even possible someone could imagine up some mystical humanoids in a fairy-tale like land that aren't even hobbits.
This space available.
Every movie is created by committee in order to appeal to the most demographics.
Nowadays that includes foreign audiences because roughly half of the revenue from big-budget movies comes from overseas. So they deliberately limit the scripts to what translates easily to any culture, and that leaves pretty much nothing other than famous faces, pretty girls and big explosions.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And with 3D it was "Dances with Giant Smurfs: 3D" plus a headache.
So don't go to 3D movies... problem solved.
You do realize you are posting in a thread about - why people are not going to the movies...
3D is just one trend I don't like and will not pay for (yes I've seen a few 3D movies).
When you say "problem solved", well not for the studios - that IS the problem!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Except these days we can't even steal. The industry has creative monopoly forever! Copyright extension done fucked the system is what. It is the cause of the constant stream of shit from this media industry system.
Balderdash!
Ah, but you forget the context: to steal is to make your own. The full context from T.S. Eliot:
One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
Your real estate comment doesn't make sense. The same digital projectors are used for 3D and 2D. Most multiplexes have many more houses than they can fill anyway so no "real estate" is waisted by showing 3D. How does not showing 3D attract a wider audience? Almost all multiplexes will show both 2D and 3D versions and YOU get to choose which one you want to pay for. 3D is an additional option that DOES attract wider audiences by providing an additional choice.
One room of my house has been converted into a mini-theater/game room. We have two projectors (the little one I though would be good enough... but wasn't and a much better one which cost me less than $1000 and is REALLY great). It allows us to play multi-player games together, but more importantly, we have a 120" movie screen with surround sound, two couches, bean bag chairs, a popcorn machine, a drink dispenser and a mini-fridge. And no... we're not fat :)
I built this room up when 3D movies came out. It's too damn hard to find a movie theater anymore where I don't have to wear a shitty pair of plastic glasses that give me head aches from the 3D or the unfamiliar pressure on my temples (sadly I lied about being fat... I have a really fat head... hopefully it means I have room for a bigger brain but more likely is a deformity). Last time I took the family to the theater, it cost me $18 a ticket (I'm in Norway), that's $72 just for tickets. Then two medium buckets of popcorn, 4 drinks and a pack of candy for each of us ran about another $50. That's $122 to go to the movies. Oh... and I had to pay for parking as well. That was another $20. So $142 for a movie. Sometimes we even had to pay for the cheap ass glasses... that adds up to another $20. So, now we're up to $162.
I can go online and purchase a film from iTunes, it costs $10-$20. If I rent, it's $2-$5. Popcorn costs us about $0.50 a bucket. Drinks cost $1 each. Candy costs $3 a pack (as we tend to purchase over priced, imported reeses peanut butter cups). Worst cast, $39, but more often closer to $29.
The movie room altogether cost probably about $2000 and since the kids and I spend probably 1/4 of our recreation time in there, it is paid off QUICKLY. Even if we did a movie night every other week, it still would have paid for itself in less than a year.
We stopped going to the theater for many reasons, but 3D (stupid glasses to see crappy picture quality) is the biggest one. Ticket prices was #2. Parking #3. Overpriced junk food #4.
OH!!!!! One more thing. Last time I went to the movies, they actually played 40 minutes of advertisements before starting the film. NO SHIT!!! 40 Minutes!!!! I clocked it. After gouging me for a fortune in tickets and junk food... they then forced me to watch 40 minutes of advertisements before seeing the 92 minute film!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!!?!? The kids were already out of drinks before the f-ing advertisements were over.
For a good laugh... I can buy round trip tickets to London for $100 a person (after taxes and transportation to and from the airport as well as parking), for a total of $400 between us. Then pay about $120 for a motel room for us. Even eating out every meal, we'd save about $10 per meal, or $60 in total. So, $460 for a weekend trip to London for the whole family. $162 times 3 is $486. So it actually costs me less to go to London with the whole family for a weekend than to go to three movies.
I hate it when I look past the summary for insightful commentary on what Ebert said, and all I see for the next 1000 comments is old people complaining how movies were much better when they were in their childhood and possibly early 20's.
Of course, what decade that was totally depends on just HOW old the person commenting is. People never seem to realize that one universal constant - while you're growing up, you watch a bunch of stuff (and listen to a bunch of music), and some of it you think is pretty awesome. Then you get old, and you complain EVERYTHING now sucks. It's been true for decades, if not centuries.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
I'm a projectionist at a 24-screen theater that's about half 35mm, half digital. What I'm about to say, I know first-hand to be factual:
The industry's push for 3D is the ONLY reason you have the choice of 2D digital projection at all. Digital projectors are orders of magnitude more expensive, less reliable, and more labor-intensive to operate and maintain than 35mm projectors--even in areas where a single theater chain's monopoly means they don't have to be replaced with newer models every few years. But the studios love them because it is cheaper to ship 5-pound USB hard drives than 50-pound 35mm prints to theaters.
So, the MPAA announced about seven or eight years ago that they were going to start making a lot of 3D films, meaning theaters had to install digital projectors capable of playing them. For the first few years, until approximately 2007, most theaters only had one or two digital projectors, so 3D films were only released at a rate of one every four to six months. The rest of the time, those few digital projectors showed 2D movies. Once it was clear that audiences would actually pay for 3D, the MPAA started ramping up production and speeding up the release cycle to force theaters to convert more and more auditoriums to digital. Today, there are always at least two or three different 3D movies in wide release at a time. So if the theaters near you don't have very many digital screens, most of them will be taken up by 3D films most of the time. I'm sure this is the source of your misconception--a higher percentage of digital showtimes were 2D in the early days of digital, so it's perfectly reasonable to guess that 2D digital is being displaced by the 3D fad. But the phenomenon is really nothing more than an accidental side-effect of theaters trying to stay a step ahead of audience and studio demand for 3D.
In ten years or so, digital will be dominant enough that studios will be able to stop 35mm distribution entirely. No longer needing 3D to be a Trojan horse for cheap digital distribution, the fad will simply die down with no fanfare or public explanation, and you'll have your ubiquitous digital 2D. But make no mistake--if not for the 3D push, digital projectors would be a novelty item, only in huge, popular multiplexes in NYC and LA, and even there only on one or two screens.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
I hate it when I look past the summary for insightful commentary on what Ebert said, and all I see for the next 1000 comments is old people complaining how movies were much better when they were in their childhood and possibly early 20's.
Of course, what decade that was totally depends on just HOW old the person commenting is. People never seem to realize that one universal constant - while you're growing up, you watch a bunch of stuff (and listen to a bunch of music), and some of it you think is pretty awesome. Then you get old, and you complain EVERYTHING now sucks. It's been true for decades, if not centuries.
I would just like to share that me (36) and my children (16 and 12) agree that about 75% of movies made after 2000 are absolute garbage compared to films from previous years. While there are standouts that are well scripted, well acted, and well filmed, they are few and far between.
My problem stems not from nostalgia for the good old days, mostly, but rather from the lack of characterization in modern films. Take, for example, the film Aliens. I can remember the characters, rattle off their names and personality quirks, and remember exactly how each one died.
Now take Battle: Los Angeles. I watched it. I can't remember a damned thing about it or any of the characters, except that the butt-chin guy who played Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight was in it. His little squad of characters may as well have been named Disposable Latin Guy, Disposable Black Guy, Disposable White Guy. Completely unmemorable.
Many films come across this way to me now. It's all in the effects and the action, nothing to make the characters stand out at all. And if I don't care about the characters, then why care about the story?
And as I said, my kids agree with me on this - a rare occurance at best with my boys. Believe it or not, they came to their own conclusions on this, no brainwashing required.