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Box Office 2014: Moviegoing Hits Two-Decade Low
mrspoonsi writes The number of people going to the movies in 2014 in North America slipped to its lowest level in two decades. According to preliminary estimates, roughly 1.26 billion consumers purchased cinema tickets between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31. That's the lowest number since 1.21 billion in 1995. Year-over-year, attendance looks to be off 6 percent from 2013, when admissions clocked in at 1.34 billion. Admissions have fluctuated dramatically over the years, and particularly since the advent of modern-day 3D, which can skew the average ticket price. Movie going in North America hit an all-time high in 2002, when 1.57 billion consumers lined up, thanks in part to Spider-Man, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
less than $30 i can buy a blu ray with a digital copy redeemable on itunes or ultraviolet
vs
$30 to see a movie once in a crowded theater and with crappy 3D unless i'm lucky enough to get a middle seat and then it's a big PITA to go to the bathroom after drinking a gallon of coke in the first hour
When you keep releasing a slew of poorly written movies, yet continue to demand unreasonable fees, this is the result. People aren't willing to shell out the bucks to see a B grade movie. It's just not worth it anymore.
I'm not some movie-snob either. Most of the movies released have no replay-ability or just left a bad taste in ones mouth (Ender's Game).
I can't really speak for the US but I imagine we get most of their movies in the UK too and I haven't seen much worth going to see in the last 12 months. Cinema tickets are expensive and with modern big-ass TVs and pretty decent home surround-sound systems I see little point in going out to watch a movie.
So movie attendance was at its peak at the height of easy money and is in a local 20-year valley at the bottom of a 60-year workforce participation chart.
Therefore, it must be the Pirate Bay's fault. Q.E.D.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't go out to movies because of noise.
I'm sick of hearing people yelling at the TV, parents who won't take the screaming kid out, etc. No thanks, I'll watch it at home on my 60 inch TV with 7.1 sound.
Make better movies. That's all you have to do.
No, it can't be. It can't be that going to the movies has become some endeavor you have to financially plan before setting out on it (with parking, food and all you'd be lucky to get out below 20 bucks per person). Let alone that people have less money in a depression as well and movies is one of the FIRST things to cut back at (seriously, if your choice is to eat tomorrow or to see a movie tonight...). It can't be that we don't want to "enjoy" our movie in the presence of people who grew up in a barn. It can't be that we get headaches from the "invisible" flickering and whatnot introduced to keep us from using our cellphones to record the movie. It can't be that the script of the average movie fits on a legal page and the renarration of the content fits easily on a post-it.
It must be due to sharing platforms. Yeah, that's why.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1. Stop producing part 4,5,6 movies. How about something ORIGINAL 2. CGI & special effects won't negate a POOR SCRIPT. 3. Why would I want to pay that much in a theater (or theatre) for something I can watch on Netflix, Hulu, Redbox a month or two later for almost nothing. 4. With the advent of home theaters (or theatres), I can download/buy/torrent/rent the movie, pop my own popcorn, drink whatever I want, not have to drive to see it. Maybe if the movie "industry" would try to fix 1 & 2, more people would go to see what they produce.
That Hollywood is afraid to take a risk. And remakes just don't fly.
I stopped going to the cinema because of people talking to their mates (usually in any language but English) either because they were bored or couldn't understand what was going on. The second reason was people checking Facebook or something on their phone and causing a distraction.
That said, some movies simply don't work as well on the small screen. I watched Guardians Of The Galaxy a couple of days ago and wished I'd watched it in the cinema instead. The climatic battle at the end didn't feel as epic as it should have.
Provided it gets good reviews, I'll watch the new Star Wars film in the cinema, but as for everything else, I'll rent it off whatever streaming service hosts it.
Summation 2
No I think it has to do more with the shitty overpriced movies.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
In the various documentaries I have seen regarding the First Great Depression, the movies were regarded as an inexpensive form of entertainment. Admission for a nickel ($.05). Granted, those were the days before television, so if you wanted to watch something, you had to go to the theaters. During the Second Great Depression, folks can stay at home to get a similar level of entertainment.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Hopefully this might convince them to make more movies that are actually worth watching, rather than 'CGI! Then EXPLOSION! LENS FLARE!'
...for me to want to pay to sit in the theatre. With the advent of larger TVs, the "movie theater experience" no longer has a lot going for it -- certainly not enough to justify the price.
Don't forget the rude people in the crowd who can't pull themselves away from their smartphones or keep their mouth shut.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I must be the only person here who still enjoys going to the theater. There's still something enjoyable about watching a movie with a larger audience in a dark room. I was thinking about this the other night when I went and saw the Theory of Everything. I'd say the theater improved my experience of the movie. However, given technological advancements and your home theater system with 7.1 sound, I guess theaters will go the way of the dodo as well. Maybe the downturn is just due to economic forces?
These last few of years I was signed up for Lovefilm (DVD Delivery) and then Netflix. After a while the convenience was beat by the limited offering and the annoyance of Netflix UK trying quite hard to hide away what's available and what films will be on in the future. Last month, for the first time in years I watched 3 movies at the cinema and this year I'll sign up for a Cineworld £16/month subscription. There's a couple of months in 2015 that won't have very appealing releases but from the list I saw so far, there will be 2 worthwhile films every month, plus those that I will watch now and wouldn't if I had to pay extra. Yes, there will be road traffic to get there and noise from others eating popcorn but I'll be watching current films.
only prequels, sequels and so on left. no quality material anymore. too expensive. hollywood is to blame.
A loaf of bread cost 5-10 cents during the depression, so 5 cents for a movie ticket was inexpensive. If movie tickets still cost the same as a loaf of bread today, theater attendance rates would be much better.
I assume you didn't read the article? it doesn't mention sharing but does say this year's movies basically sucked (transformers, spiderman 2) or underperformed (mockingjay) and the only beacon of light was Guardians of the Galaxy.
Why would I go to the theater?
Gee, let's see ... I can go to a place where my feet stick to the floor, where I have limited leg room, and the annoying teenager in front of me is texting the whole time.
Or I can buy the Blu Ray, watch it in the comfort of my own basement, which has a reasonable size screen, surround sound, recliners, and the availability of beer.
The home theater experience is now much better in a lot of ways. I used to only go to watch the really big block buster films ... now I just wait 3-4 months until I can buy it and watch it at home. By the time you buy the tickets and the over-priced concession food ... it's not even cost effective any more.
Watching a movie in the cinema these days is no longer an enjoyable experience. Precisely because it isn't as comfortable and under my control as in my own home.
Nobody should be surprised at this ... because in the last 10 years almost everybody has a big screen TV and surround sound. Precisely because the cinema experience is expensive and can be annoying.
I haven't watched a movie in the cinema in several years now, and that's unlikely to change soon.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How is that POSSIBLE????
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I am frequent movie-goer, and I am not happy with a quality of service your typical movie theater offers. First, there are endless commercials - easily 15 minutes of my time wasted by pure advertising and pointless splash screens. If you add previews, this can easily end up with 40 minutes wasted. Second, food is hugely expensive and massively unhealthy. On top of that, alcohol is generally not available. Third, seats seems to be suffering from the airlines syndrome - uncomfortable and cramped.
About the only exception to this is Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Sadly, they are not available outside of Texas.
I read somewhere that if the games industry had developed with the same protectionism as films then we wouldn't be able to buy games to play at home before they had had a 6 month exclusivity in the arcades...
People still want to see films, but forcing all films through the cinema is just backwards. The infrastructure currrently exists to release all films for home rental immediately! Big films that benefit from it will still play in cinema, but we simply don't need to push every single film through a centralised viewing venue anymore. Cinemas will still exist but they will be fewer, and for special occasions rather than the only route.
Once you've bought into the idea of watching recordings, it doesn't matter so much whether you watch them on an enormous screen in a theater or on a computer screen at home. Price and convenience then favor the computer screen.
If you want to put the "human" back in humanities, try live theater. I never used to like live theater because the only options I thought I had were productions in high schools (which are sometimes pretty good but often not as good as films) and fancy travelling productions with hundred-dollar tickets in intimidatingly fancy theaters (which are good, but hardly as casual as a movie). Then I discovered the Shakespeare Tavern in Midtown Atlanta, which is a professional group that has cheap ($20!) tickets on Thursdays. Atlanta isn't an especially cultured city overall; if we have something like this, I suspect most other cities will, too.
I've seen six distinct plays at the local theater (and rewatched all of them at least once) and films in movie theaters are no longer the same. Sure, I enjoyed Interstellar---that movie's attitude towards science would go over well on Slashdot---but it tends to use dramatic [manipulative!] music to make you care about the characters. But when you're watching a live production, you care about the characters because they're people---live people. not a hundred feet away! The exchange works both ways; the actors are more animated because they're presenting to a live audience instead of a camera. I tried watching three film versions of Twelfth Night after repeatedly watching it live; none of the film versions even came close to the live one. (Of minor note is that the theater in *my* town doesn't alter or remove anything from the original Shakespeare scripts; your town's troupe may do things differently.)
This post isn't meant as an endorsement of Shakespeare in particular so much as live theater in general. Don't assume that live theater is either too expensive or poorly-done; in Atlanta, at least, you can watch professional actors for the price of two movie tickets. I would encourage everyone to take a look at what their cities have to offer.
Don't forget the rude people in the crowd who can't pull themselves away from their smartphones or keep their mouth shut.
Nah....Movie attendance is down because the theatres won't let us wear our "Google Glass" glasses. /sarcasm
Seriously, I can't stand people that have to comment on every scene, respond to every text message they get, or feel they need to update their Facebook status during a movie. What is so important about updating Facebook or tweeting how great/bad the movie is while actually watching?
The last time I went to see a movie, I spent considerably more for my regular movie ticket, a popcorn, and a coke than I did for a 5th-row seat on Metallica's "And Justice For All" tour 25 years ago. There is something very wrong with that (aside from the fact that Metallica has since went to shit).
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
With a 50inch screen at home, anything I want to eat or drink plus sitting there in my boxers why the fuck would I go to a movie theater?
To listen to noisy children? To listen to other peoples cell phone calls? To over pay for nasty popcorn or candy? Or maybe the sticky seats and floors.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
MPAA will say it's piracy truth is perhaps Hollywood churning out mediocre remakes and CGI filled crap.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
That was right about the time the name Cliff Burton passed out of their collective minds. After that, being a really wretched form of pop was just fine.
That's not entirely fair, they were chasing the Nirvana money - Nevermind had just come out and I am sure everyone saw dollar signs.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
1. A lot of the movies that are showing are crap (and that is being kind).
2. The cost of my going to a movie and wife along with some munchies, well, I can buy the DVD in a few months for less money.
3. We can pause the movie at any time and take a break or grab some munchies (and not the over-priced crap in the theatre).
4. Did I mention most of the movies are crap?
5. We can skip the various 'ads' at the start of the movie. I want to see the movie, not pay to see advertising.
6. I don't have to put up with people talking about the 'good stuff' coming up and spoiling it for me.
7. I don't have to put up with the cell phones going off.
8. Did I mention most of the movies are crap?
We have very comfortable chairs at home and there is no line up to get food, drinks or when we go to the bathroom.
I wait a few months until the DVDs or Blue Ray versions come out. I then wait until friends and family give their feedback and then I may buy a copy, but, I usually wait a few more months and the video store discounts the movie. I have hundreds of videos, but, over 95% I have not paid more than $10 for. There are exceptions, but, they are for movies in a series that I (or my wife) love and want to see the next one quickly.
Again, did I mention most of the movies are crap?
Panic now, beat the rush!
To build off of that, from what I have read, the 2 main factors are:
1. Quality of the movies – or lack there off. If there are 10 quality movies in a year, people will go out and see 10 movies. If there are 2 quality movies, people will go out and see 2. Entertainment dollars are flexible.
2. Improved quality of home theaters, Video On Demand, and TV / cable shows. Why spend $10 to watch a romcom on the big screen when you can spend less to watch it at home. Some films demand to be seen on the big screen. Others not so much. Plus some long format TV shows are doing things that film can't do. Game of Thrones is a popular example.
For myself, I go to 2 or 3 full price films each year – and only because I think the film benefits from seeing it in IMAX, 3D, so something along those lines. I will see another 5 to 10 films at the local cheap seats theater, where my wife and I can see a movie and have pop and popcorn for under $10. And that is more of an excuse to get out of the house rather than anything else. Everything else is on the home theater.
Depends on what movies you are after, surely?
I enjoyed the final Hobbit film, but aside from that both the Alan Turing and the Stephen Hawking films were ones I would recommend to friends.
But how did the price for the recent Metallica movie compare? I'm sure it was much cheaper than a ticket to once of their recent concerts (not to mention they sounded much better in the movie recording than in most of their recent live concerts).
People seem to forget the other angle. In fighting for our entertainment time, TV has gotten much much better in the last 10 years. Instead of just dumb sitcoms there are now amazing shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and many many others that are as good or better than anything hollywood has been doing with movies. So now we have a choice of watching amazing TV shows for free/marginal cost or the huge cost of going to a theater with all the detractors that have been listed time and time again on here. How many get a Netflix subscription for watching movies? I almost exclusively use it for TV shows (House of Cards is another amazing example).
Nothing i have to say is worth saying.
I find it funny that Episode II is the only thing that's not italicized in the summery (although the article had it italicized).
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
IMHO, ticket sales are tanking due to the cost of tickets and the movie going experience. I'd pretty much stopped going to see movies in the theater because I was sick of paying a lot of money for a terrible experience at my local Regal. Starting with the supposed show time, you'd get about 15-20 minutes of commercials, the MPAA PSA that accuses you of being a thief, a couple of trailers, and finally, a half hour after it was supposed to start, the movie. Then, during the movie, half the audience would be jabbering away, cell phones going off all the time, and even people shining laser pointers at the screen. And the theater wouldn't do anything to try to stop it.
Now that I have an Alamo, I'm starting to go to movies again because it's completely different. Tickets for regular showings are cheaper than the matinee showings were at Regal and the experience is FAR better. Add to that good food and drink, and it's wins all around.
End of line..
less than $30 i can buy a blu ray with a digital copy redeemable on itunes or ultraviolet
But you have to wait several months and avoid spoilers in the meantime. For example, the film Hop took nearly a year after North American theatrical release to be published on DVD and BD in North America. And most people's audio systems are likely not up to par with that of a theater.
Hollywood doesn't seem to be able to come up with new stuffs
I keep hearing it over and over again, but it's just not true - It's that people don't want to go watch 'new stuffs.'
Go to http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ and look at new movies movies & new DVDs that were 'certified fresh' for 2014. Tons and tons of new stuff, all rated as good.
What? Don't you eat Organic, Chemical-Free, Gluten-Free, Taste-free bread imported from [3rd world nation]?
Lol
It still fits, especially when you consider that, instead of putting the blame where it rightly belongs (mostly folks watching movies at home via PPV/Netflix/iTMS/etc), you just know the fsckers are going to shout the "P" word and demand that BitTorrent be made illegal or somesuch.
Personally, I think it has to do with a lot of factors, even outside of the Netflix effect; chief among them is that most movies sucked pretty hard this year, with very few good ones coming out. The same old formulaic bullshit just isn't going to pull in the ducats, you know?
To top that off, I noticed something else: There are some damned good (and compelling) shows coming out of television these days. It used to be that TV had crappy SFX and production values, while the movies had the best-of-breed in SFX, acting, production, etc. Nowadays, you can rarely tell the difference in many cases - when you have masterful series coming out of the networks which have nearly the same cinematic and production quality of the studios, then why bother with whatever the studios have to offer? There's still the adverts in most cases (outside of HBO/Cinemax/etc), but there are a zillion technologies which can neatly get around that, so...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
we know that if we wait two months we'll be able to rent it at Red Box for a dollar.
Not all movies reach Redbox that quickly. Hop took 51 weeks to get to DVD, and then 4 more weeks to get to Redbox.
I can buy a Blu-Ray PLAYER and the disc for less than it costs my family of 4 to see a 3D movie with pop-corn and drinks.
The two rules for success are:
1) Never tell them everything you know.
It costs me about $60 to take my family to the movies. That's a bit steep. It's certainly enough to beg the question: is it worth it? I'm finding that the answer is usually a big no.
In the various documentaries I have seen regarding the First Great Depression, the movies were regarded as an inexpensive form of entertainment. Admission for a nickel ($.05). Granted, those were the days before television, so if you wanted to watch something, you had to go to the theaters. During the Second Great Depression, folks can stay at home to get a similar level of entertainment.
Agreed. Back then, only the middle-class or better had radios, and TV didn't exist. Also consider that with no competition and even in good times, going to the movies used to be a massive social event. Folks would dress up in their best for a Friday-night premiere showing, much like the upper crust did when they went to the opera, ballet, etc. Also consider that back then, going to the movies was very similar to what their grandparents did when they in turn went to a vaudeville show. You went to see and be seen, as much as you went to the movie itself. It was just as important to BS in the lobby with friends and neighbors while smoking during intermission (...don't know what those were? Rent an old cinematic-length movie sometime, e.g. Dr Zhivago) as it was to see the latest bit of entertainment.
Society has changed in more ways than that now: increased societal isolation, coupled with a massive network of entertainment in all conceivable varieties being funneled into individual homes (or with the smartphone, in your pocket). Yeah, why bother going to a big, dark room with a bunch of half-mannered strangers you don't know or care about?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
My experience on actual movie theaters, ignoring the question of the film itself be good or not:
- The picture quality is ridiculously bad , I have seen only one movie theater years ago where the image was reasonably good;
- Popcorn is ridiculously expensive and bad;
- The sound is always too high and always exaggerates in the bass (ohhh explosions!);
These days I can buy a big quality TV at an affordable price, a home theater and so I can watch the movie I want whenever I want and with hot, quality popcorn. Why in hell I would go to the theather?
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
I don't do the cinema. I can count on my fingers how many times I've been in my life.
I'm not going to pay to sit next to a bunch of talking, chomping idiots who have no idea what the films about and ask stupid questions, then get up to use the loo at the critical point of the film, in a dirty, sticky seat with half-hour of trailers before I can watch a (usually substandard but not always) movie, having paid what could have bought me the DVD over and over and over and over again just to get in and buy a drink.
I don't actually get why people do, to be honest.
That said, the last time I went to see The Imitation Game, I really enjoyed it. A movie I wanted to see, that wasn't the usual Hollywood fare, in a cinema that was near-empty, at a half-decent time, without many of the above (but certainly quite a lot of things), and we smuggled our own food in.
When you take into account the tripe that's normally showing, I do not understand how they make money. But then, I wouldn't let myself be PAID to watch most of the junk that's out.
That would mean movies would cost like a buck or two?
Even I'd go for that price.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not in all that hate for the movies. But my problem is with 3D. Every movie I can enjoy with the family is 3D. My wife has headache with 3D. And I have 2 small kids under 6 (not recommended 3D for kids below 6). Not to mention the popcorn prices in theaters. We even have (here in Brazil) some humor sketches when the couple is talking about get kids out of the school to pay for a popcorn in a movie.
In fact Alamo a few years back threw out a seemingly drunk individual for texting and turned it into a pre-movie PSA.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Actually, $0.05 in 1930 would be $0.70 today.
Even calculating from 1985 when prices were around $4/ticket inflation should have only brought them to $8.78 - the last movie ticket I bought was $19.99 to watch the Hobbit on New Years (horribly disappointing). Funny thing about it though - the audience was smaller than the $6 tickets to see It's a Wonderful Life which was nearly sold out.
"That's not entirely fair, they were chasing the Nirvana money - Nevermind had just come out and I am sure everyone saw dollar signs."
I can see that and besides Master of Puppets and And Justice for All were the very peak of the genre. How can you out heavy metal either of those 2 albums? There was no where else to go except a different direction and the tides were turning with grunge anyway.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
My wife and I stopped going to the cinemas a year or so ago because every movie we wanted to see, there was no option within a 45 minute drive to see these movies in anything but 3D.
I'm not sure what it is and maybe it's not the same everywhere else, but on both our Cineplex Odeon and Landmark Cinemas screens at three theatres, the action on a 3D movie is blurry and not at all as enjoyably clear as the normal version. It took weeks for Guardians of the Galaxy to have a non-3D release at our closest (15 away) location and by that point all the excitement was minimized to the point where we figured we'd just wait to watch it at home since it was downgraded to a smaller cinema room with no 3D and lesser quality audio. If we have 60" TV at home and 5.1 audio, why watch the movie at the higher price for a lesser experience when I could buy the blu ray for the cost of 2 tickets?
We also have AVX options from time to time and I actually prefer this and prefer the option to pick a preferential seat but this higher cost option may not be on par with what people want to experience.
So in summary, if you want more people heading to the movies, drop all the gimmicky BS and just give people the movies or at the very least, get rid of 2 x 3D screenings and have 1 x 3D and 1 x normal big screen with good audio.
Make better movies. Yep, that's it. Imagine. Better movies. I was standing in the cold in front of a Redbox just yesterday. I've not seen a movie in months & there was still nothing that I wanted to see. Just crap movies. They even had sequels of crap movies!
Good thing there are still writers writing new good books to read. Kina makes me wonder why we still have good writers & good actors, but they can't seem to make good movies.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
That would mean movies would cost like a buck or two? Even I'd go for that price.
I wouldn't. Remember "dollar theaters" from the 1990s? They were built on that exact premise. It turned out the audience was primarily a bunch of noisy kids who could afford to go at that rate, so they went to the theater to socialize instead of watching the movie. They had all the manners and polish of a herd of goats.
Even though the dollar theaters had much higher attendance numbers than the first-run theaters, the local ones went out of business. I think it's due to the amount of cleaning staff they had to run through the auditorium after each show, mopping up spilled drinks, clearing pathways paved with popcorn and litter, and chiseling used chewing gum off of every surface. We tried the dollar theater a few times, but it was so disgusting we chose to continue to pay full price for the few movies we did attend. The higher prices set a bar where the people in the theater actually want to see the show.
Something else that the dollar theaters can't compete with is cable. When we are in a theater watching the previews, my wife and I will critique each: "that looks good, we'll have to go see it"; "that looks like your kind of movie"; "let's wait for it to come out on cable"; or it looks so ridiculously awful or inappropriate that all we can do is laugh or cringe. But "wait for cable" is pretty much the stock answer for everything of interest. When we were at the theater yesterday, I don't recall seeing a single preview for any movie we really wanted to catch in the theater.
John
Clearly, it's all North Korea's fault. The FBI even said so.
Theater owners should look beyond movies, to some other technology.
The technology should be sufficiently expensive that it's not practical for home use. And, of course, it should be fun for people to do in crowds.
-kgj
There are plenty of crappy movies, but there are plenty of good ones.
[Citation needed]
No, really. If you know about plenty of good movies which were released in the last year, why not share them with the rest of us? Perhaps we're all complaining about the lack of good movies because we actually didn't see any.
I think another major factor is that people no longer consume content according to the strict and narrow release windows that content producers prefer.
DVD, DVR, on-demand streaming, binge watching, etc have immunized us against the hype industry that got people to line up for the midnight showings of new blockbuster releases.
As soon as we got comfortable with "we'll see it... whenever", well, game over.
Log in or piss off.
Can't say I didn't do my part. I looked over the Box Office top 100 for 2014 and I saw 23 of them in the theater. Number is partly inflated by my having to take my kids to lots of kids films.
I suspect we'll continue to see the decline as home systems get better and better and more affordable than ever.
If no one pays for movies, they won't get made
That's one way to end piracy
Not all movies shown in American theaters are made by "hollywood".
Subject to opinion, but a lot of people feel like the quality (in terms of story) of content has gone down so they lose interest.
Ticket prices have skyrocketed and who really likes paying "movie prices" for things like soda and popcorn after getting reamed on the admission cost?
It's much more convenient to purchase VOD titles and watch on your own schedule.
Home theater displays and audio gear has become significantly cheaper so it's possible to get a very good viewing experience at home.
I think piracy has little to do with it. The people who are going to steal, are going to do it anyway. I doubt the population of those people is growing significantly. It's the number of non-pirates that's not bothering to consume movies in the cinema that's the "problem."
In short: The industry is actively chasing away consumers and technology is making it "worse" by creating an environment where people can get similar experiences on their own schedule at home using VOD. Do I want to deal with the hassle of going to the cinema or do I want to wait a little while and then watch on a large high def display in the comfort of my own home.
Never said "unique consumers"
Man and wife go to 10 movies together, that's 20 tickets sold for just 2 people...
It is a though – but I am not sure if that is true. I am still turning this over in my head.
For a contra viewpoint read move review James Berardinelli's thoughts on "Once and Done". It is a 3 part essay, and I am linking only to the first part. Pop culture shelf life – movies in particular - seems to have gotten shorter. Everybody wants to see the latest thing now, know all of the spoilers before going in, have a huge box office weekend, and fad fast.
http://www.reelviews.net/reelt...
Only the fanatics who would give up their first born to be the first inline to see the new Star Wars/Star Trek/Fast and Furious/etc movie....
Where I live there are 3 choices for movies: 1: Market Square. This is a 2nd run movie theater, with tickets that cost $2.50 - $3.00 per person. I typically see films here if I missed them in the first run theaters, or if I don't think the movie isn't worth full ticket price. My standards are a lot lower when I'm only spending $3. 2: Main theaters. First run. Tickets are ~ $10 per person. Your typical modern movie hell. Lots of ads, crowds, etc. It's rare that I make it to one of these theaters. I think the last time was for a special Rifftrax showing of Godzilla. 3: Sundance. First run arthouse, with a few mainstream releases. Tickets are ~ $12, but seats are reserved, and there are no ads. Also the concession stand sells good beer. Movies actually start when advertised. If I'm going to spend the money to see a movie, this is where I go. The gist of this is if you want me to go to a movie, either make the tickets much cheaper, or make the experience much better.
- My floor is NOT sticky
You must not be watching the right movies...
The only time my wife and I go to the movies anymore is to the drive-in. Seven bucks a head, and we get to see two or even three movies (usually one new release, and one that is between one and three weeks old). Bring your own snacks, and the movie theater snack bar is cheap as well (I think the highest priced item on the menu is a patty melt (hamburger with cheese and onions) which is like $4.50.
The downside is they're only open in the summer.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Agreed. I was talking to two couples a while back (an older couple and a younger couple who happened to be one of the children of the older). The older couple remarked that when their children were growing up they didn't go to the movie theater for almost 10 years on a date. So they didn't see many movies. It was a big deal to get a babysitter for a movie night, etc. The younger couple who have a child too said time commitments meant they didn't go to the movie theater much. The difference was the younger couple still watched movies while raising a child while the older did not. Streaming, Red Box rentals, Digital and physical purchases meant that they didn't miss out on any movies the younger couple wanted to watch; they could do it on their own time schedule.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
...Aaand, we've found the culprit.
> The same old formulaic bullshit just isn't going to pull in the ducats, you know?
It is going to get worse. Hollywood makes more money from overseas sales than they do domestic sales. The problem with that is sophisticated concepts are very hard to translate into another languages, especially the ones that depend on cultural literacy in the original cultural. So Hollywood has, by and large, taken the easy way out - they've dumbed it down. The result is that the money goes into stupid movies that are stories built around "boobs and bombs" -- e.g. practically everything that Michael Bay has ever made -- because that language is universal.
These box-office results won't be enough to make Hollywood realize the error of their ways. They are so fucking risk-averse that instead of changing, they will double down. They will see these numbers as proof that they need to make their movies even more translation-friendly so as to chase even more foreign sales and the result will be even stupider scripts. It is a feedback loop.
The best we can hope for is that eventually they start making entirely foreign productions - a movie made in Mandarin can be dubbed in Cantonese and have a potential audience of nearly a billion without having to be dumbed down.
We often can't see the "good stuff" because its not showing at the massive multiplexes. They dedicate six screens to the hobbit in every theatre complex, but films like Wild that have generated a bit of buzz are only playing on two screens in the entire city. Sure, there are a handful of awkward-to-reach art cinemas in the city centre, but films tend to run there for a very short time, or they squeeze out the North American films in favor of foreign film weeks.
The studios have perfected their blockbuster sales approach -- show a handful of heavily promoted films *everywhere* to ensure that they rake in hundreds of millions over the course of a handful of weeks. Bonus points if you can sell dolls or action figures on the side. It's the McFilm approach to cinema.
This exactly. There simply wasn't a very deep field of movies this year that I wanted to see. Certainly not many that I wanted to see more than once. Looking at the top ten highest grossing films of the year I note that I paid to see 9 out of those 10 movies in the theater (I missed Interstellar, couldn't get the wife interested in seeing it and thus never got around to it) BUT I don't see a single one I paid to see more than once. Also I only genuinely liked 4 of them a great deal. The other 5 on the list I ranged from "It was OK" to "Fuck Peter Jackson. Fuck him in his stupid ass". Next year is going to be off the charts with blockbusters but this year the big tent-pole movies just didn't really pan out like they expected.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Also, the quality of your home theater is pretty damn good these days. When I was a kid we had a 24-inch low-def tube with two front-facing speakers. There's a huge difference in the experience between watching that little thing and seeing Jurassic Park in the theater. But today? Everybody's got a 50-inch HD flat panel and 5.1 (or better) surround. Nobody can argue the 24-inch tube was a "better experience" than the theater. But today...eh. For an awful lot of things I'd prefer to watch it at home anyway. Plus my couch is more comfortable than the theater seats, I can pause it when I need to use the bathroom, rewind if I missed something, have a beer, and popcorn costs $0.25 instead of $8.
And it's not like you have to wait that long. Used to be you had to wait a year or more after it left theaters for something to show up at Blockbuster. But these days? Biggest movie of the year was Guardians of the Galaxy. Theater release: August 21. Digital download available November 18th. Blu-ray December 9th. There isn't that feeling that, "hmmm, I'd like to see this movie, and if I don't go to the theater it's going to be a year before I can..." Today, if you miss it in theaters you'll see it at home in 3 months.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Depends on the theater. If it's part of a big corporate chain, odds are good that you're gonna get Hollywood-style and nothing else. If it's an independent theater, then you'd be right, but how many of those are there? Even here in PDX there simply are not a whole lot of them about.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The problem is that movie theaters don't show any technological progress.
For instance, where is my holodeck?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
The production cost for a blockbuster has grown to the extent that there is no other model that would work. It's the same reason for the lack of innovative storytelling - when the budget for a film is in the hundreds of millions, you can't risk gambling it all on something new that consumers might reject. You have to stick to the tried-and-tested cliches.
They dedicate six screens to the hobbit in every theatre complex, but films like Wild that have generated a bit of buzz are only playing on two screens in the entire city
It's a Catch-22. When they do dedicate a screen in the multiplex to "Wild" the theater sits empty. People would rather watch The Hobbit. At that's what happens in my town...
Hollywood has spewed forth a bunch of pre-digested vomitus, and re-re-recycled stories at a time when the cost of a trip to the cinema has reached epic proportions. Meanwhile Netflix, HBO and others are producing high quality ORIGINAL works with intriguing stories that we can consume at our own convenience, without waiting in lineups, and putting up with a bunch of drunk teenagers running back and forth chatting and texting. Top this off with the proliferation of Apple TVs and set-top boxes that have shifted on-line viewing to the living-room screen. Sprinkle with a dash of unemployment and a growing social trend towards cocooning, and this really should come as no surprise.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
Nice theory but I very much doubt it's true at all. Hollywood was never known for sophisticated concepts and certainly never made lots of money from them. You probably say that only because you're not acquainted with cinema in other countries very well. My personal theory is that US movie makers have simply become dumber and the only good movies left are made by a few bright author/directors.
Be that as it may, it seems that the art has also declined with the rise of CGI effects and increased greed of movie studios. Hollywood movies nowadays are cut too fast while being too long (!), have lousy scripts focusing on cheap jokes and thrill, one movie is split into three (e.g. the Hobbit), and virtually any blockbuster title ends in a 20-30 minutes orgy of pointless CGI violence. There are severe problems with the plot development, most plots of contemporary thriller/action/sci-fi/spy/detective movies are simply not on a par with similar movies from the 70s. Interesting plots twists are sacrificed for endless action sequences. They want to maximize bucks more often than making good movies, and this used to be different.
This friend speaks my words. I found very little worthwhile to go to, with the exception of some very specialized documentaries such as 'We Were There', which is a documentary on AIDS in San Francisco in the 1980's.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
... you might live outside the service footprint of Netflix and Hulu. These include places that can't get cable or DSL, such as rural areas
You forgot satellite.
I left out satellite because its typical 10 GB per month quota is not conducive to routine use of Netflix, Hulu, or any other streaming service.
I'm retired and pirated movies are not worth the time it takes to download them. If I had downloaded pirated movies, the last one would have been a few years ago when something came out before it was released in theatres but with only mocked up special effects so that would have been very interesting.
But shakey cam with poor sound vs $4.25 for a comfortable seat in a mostly empty theatre on a monday night is no comparison. And certainly no match for a packed excited audience of similarly minded people for particular films (can't duplicate the emotions of the crowd).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
No mosh pit at the particular venue they played. Much preferred the pit too, if available.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The musicals of the 1950's through the 1970's.
I long for another 'Sound of Music', 'Evita', 'Jesus Christ Superstar', or 'West Side Story'.
Those were movies that I long for and I often watch from DVD's (For those of you here in Portland, Oregon; Movie Madness is a very wonderful resource).
Hollywood has seems to have lost that art as well.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
when talking about broad market performance, any one individual doesn't matter. What matters is how the movies line up with comparable movies in previous, better years.
Usually movie attendance is not driven by biopics. It is driven by large scale blockbusters like Avengers, Iron Man, etc, etc. So when I say this year's movies sucked, I am talking specifically about the movies that were expected to drive attendance but instead fell flat. Add to that several that didn't fall flat but underperformed, and you get a bad year.
what I found amazing is they said the average ticket price was about 8 dollars. I haven't been able to find a theater that cheap since I was in rural Florida growing up.
I loved going to theaters back when tickets were the cost of a loaf of bread. I had one growing up.
Back in Fargo, ND in the mid-to-late 1990's, there was a business owner who built the Fargo Cinema Grill. Tickets were $1.50. You went in, sat down, ordered food before movie started (or after if you arrived late), got it about 15-30 minutes into the show, and enjoyed a great meal with your movie. They served all your standard bar & grill food...pizza, burgers, fries, wings, popcorn...plus tall sodas and beer. There was plenty of space to eat, sit and relax. The community loved it, and, for a while, it was a viable business. Unfortunately, the local commercial theaters in town that were owned by CEC Theaters had some kind of monopoly rights on movie showings with the big studios and wouldn't let the CG show a film until after CEC dropped it in their theaters. CG couldn't get enough customers to watch movies in their theater when the movies were already out on DVD. They closed up shop in '99.
While they were open, we always had a reason to want to go to the theater. It was a restaurant and theater in one. In fact, when you think of it as a restaurant instead of a theater, people go out to eat all the time, so why not enjoy a movie while you eat? I wish the idea caught would have caught on with CEC, but they said once in a newspaper article, "That's just not our business model."
Volume in theatre's is way up. I go to rock concerts and dont' need earplugs but have needed earplugs several times at theatres because it was so unpleasant.
Noise from the theatres sharing a wall is distracting.
A friend of mine who I used to see movies with became unable to go (even with earplugs) several years ago. Only gun headsets work for her but then she gets a headache before the movie is over.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Hold on! Are you sure? I just got back from seeing that last night here in Portland at the Bagdad on Hawthorne. Nine dollars.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
In fact, one of the so called dollar houses, the Avalon on Belmont, had a better sound system and better sound isolation between the auditoriums than the first run Lloyd on Multnomah.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
The kids went to the Saturday Matene, which was another big event.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
.. and the experience not horrific (bad theater plus rowdy chumps in the audience) I might go more.
As it stand with my big screen plasma and home setup I enjoy that a lot more and don't mind having to wait for the movie I want to see to come out of disk.
Peace, or Not?
Saw the new Hobbit movie last night over at Edgefield. Beer, Burger, polite audience, and a great sound system made that the best movie experience I've had for years. Certainly going to go back for future movies!
Easy: Since Metalica started suing their fans back in the Napster days I haven't been able to stand them. Back then I might have brought a ticket. Today I wouldn't even download them for free.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
All that plus, when you watch at home, you see it on your schedule without waiting in line, you don't have to listen to other people talking to each other, you don't have to be disturbed by someone else's cell phone, you don't have to listen to crying babies or whining kids, you don't have to have the quiet parts in your movie interrupted by thunderous booms from the theater next door, you aren't going to get stuck behind a tall person blocking your view, no parking problems, the floor isn't all sticky.
I haven't gone to a movie in several years because the experience is so awful in every respect while at home, it is about as comfortable as can be. About the only thing that would make me want to go to a theater, would be to travel back in time to my teenager-living-at-home self who didn't really have any good make-out options. Barring that sort of technology, theaters probably ought to think of ways to make the experience of going out to the movies better than staying home, because things that are expensive and worse than the alternatives, don't have great longevity.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
...the rest of us know that its because of the endless remakes, reboots, prequels and general lack of any new ideas coming out of LA. I mean how many times can you reboot Superman/Spiderman?
Don't get me started on movies made entirely to sell toys and themepark rides like Transformers and fucking Frozen.
#include <sig.h>
Will they open one in Portland, Oregon?
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
There certainly have evolved some rather sad trends. Average shot length in Hollywood films has plunged to the point that some films seem more like a jumble of barely coherent vignettes. I watch a Hitchcock film from the 1950s or a Sergio Leone film, and you see these incredibly long takes. I'm thinking specifically of the final standoff at the graveyard in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or the even more drawn out opening railway station scene from Once Upon A Time In The West. Men like Hitchcock and Leone were bold directors who made highly commercial films that challenged the viewer, and they weren't the only ones. Can you imagine The Godfather, or even moreso The Godfather II being made today?
You're right. Filmmakers, from the writers to the directors to the cinematographers to the editors and other post-production teams have become incredibly lazy, despite having budgets in some cases that would made the great filmmakers of past generations spin. A movie like Psycho, for instance, was made with Hitchcock's TV crew, and not his usual movie team. The awful remake probably cost, in adjusted dollars, ten times as much, and, apart from any other flaws, the actual quality of the filmwork was dreadful.
Good movies are still being made, some on budgets so low that a shoestring would be an improvement, but mainstream Hollywood is just turning into one homogeneous steaming pile of dreck.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I watched Seven Brides For Seven Brothers recently. What a wonderful film; the technicolor cinematography so warm, the dancing sequences, particularly the fight at the barnraising, just absolutely astonishing. No CGI needed there, just lots of rehearsal and some stunning choreography.
Is it just me or did some of those Technicolor musicals just some of the most beautiful films ever made? Even if you don't like the songs and dancing, just the look of the films is extraordinary.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They're only shaky cam when they come out before / around the same time as cinemas. After that, they're normally high quality rips that offer a better user experience than the official products (http://craphound.com/images/ifurapirate.jpeg)
There would be if people wanted to see the movies they played. The local independent theatre is always struggling because the vast majority of people want to go to a blockbuster film that's not too intellectually challenging.
I can't really blame them. Several of us at work take turns hosting movie nights. Old, independent, art and foreign films seem to work better at home with a dinner party and drinks. The last advantages of theatres are a big audience, big sound (us apartment dwellers can't crank it up to building shaking) and a big screen. Blockbusters with lots of effects play to those strengths.
There were more "blockbusters" this year than ever before. Hollywoodland is spending more money on fewer low-risk movies. The "old" formula was more cheaper movies. There's little made for $200M that couldn't be made for $50M. But rather than pushing for four cheaper movies, we get the more expensive movies, and fewer of them.
Learn to love Alaska
And that is a promotional issue. If a film like Wild got even a quarter the advertising budget The Hobbit did, you would see a lot more asses in those seats.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We went to see Interstallar in IMAX a month+ ago. $60 for the three of us, and that was *just* the tickets. All of that goes for the theatre and the producers - they still pay the staff on receipts from the popcorn. Tell me why it cost as much as some live concerts.... and then, think about the 50% of the population's weekly income.
Can't *imagine* why they wouldn't want to go tot he movies.... rather, than, say, paying their rent or putting food on the table.
mark
That's pretty much the premise of the article.
It's hard to put my finger on it, but something seems to be missing from that argument.
I think if you replace "Everybody" with "The people who still care to see movies in theatres", it clarifies the problem. Yes, there does appear to be an interesting trend in that demographic which concentrates opening earnings to a much narrower time window.
But... I dunno. It's like the article (and the industry as a whole) can't look much outside that narrow time window of box office revenues.
Log in or piss off.
Oh for 99.9999% of movies and tv shows I have no interest in storing/owning them. One viewing is enough for a lifetime.
And even at that, I can't keep up. More good content comes out every day than I can watch.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
A friend and I watch movies from the 1940s. They often have more content in 70 minutes than modern movies do in 150 minutes.
The feel is different as a result.
Modern movies like to show you something cool looking and then give you 30 seconds to react to it and play stereotypical musical chords to falsely evoke emotions and tell you how to feel. There's a lot more reaction shots and shots of people acting emotionally but not saying anything. And, of course, long pointless action scenes that might have taken 30 seconds to portray in the older movies.
The problem is-- CGI scenes don't evoke the same emotions as real scenes. I'm not impressed by a CGI version of a guy leaping 50 feet over a 1000' deep canyon while I might be very impressed with a 25' jump by Jackie Chan over a 30' drop between two buildings.
So CGI should serve the story- not try to impress you because you know it's fake so you are not impressed.
It's the difference between being impressed that a real human did something really impressive and a computer model of a real person was rendered doing something that looks impressive.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
There is actually a lot of technology in the movie industry.
You will notice the quality of special effects as soon as they make a movie worth watching.
While what you are saying is true, and I think it answers the question of why movie revenues are falling, but I don't think that is the full answer. I still think culture is become more homogeneous which a shorter lifespan.
In retail, there is the 20/80 rule – that 20% of your items will result in 80% of your sales. This rule is recursive. This has been true for a very long time.
Then in 2004 Chris Anderson came out with the "Long Tail" theory that he later wrote up in a book. His argument was that the 20/80 rule existed because shops had physical limits on their inventory. The internet would remove that limit and niche products would grow.
The actually experience is different. Amazon reports that as they have grown bigger with more diverse offerings, the top drivers of revenue are shrinking. This is true if one is looking at a category (i.e. books) or as a whole. It looks like everybody has to buy the Harry Potter books, everybody will be buying a ticket to the next Star Wars film, etc.
Cirque starts with something like this in Vegas at the beginning of Ka. Some "guy" is talking on the phone and the cast deals with him hilariously. Coincidentally it's also a great show if you haven't seen it.
It's still something I think about when someone can't find the off button on their tech during a movie.
--- Need web hosting?
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I often want to see a new movie at the cinema. But then I think of the car and bank commercials, trivia games, and other assorted pre-movie corporate crap that has become part of the standard cinema experience, and I decide to wait for the DVD release. I gotta wonder how many other people are staying away for the same reasons.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
With 1.26 billion movie sold, that translates to an average of 4 movies per American, which is more than I see at a theater. I’d really like to know where I can see a movie for an average of $8.15 like the article states; I don’t believe there aren’t any theaters in the Seattle area that are that cheap even for a matinée. If my wife and I are going to go to a movie we usually like to go to the Cinerama in downtown Seattle, which costs $16.50 per ticket. Parking is usually around $25 and we usually get a large popcorn. That’s over $65 for the two of us to see a movie in the theater. In those rare occasions when we do go to the theater we opt for 3D and HFR whenever available since that experience isn’t easily replicated at home. Otherwise we could wait to buy the Blu-ray for $20 and enjoy the movie in the comfort of our own home. Our local libraries even have huge selections of movies and TV shows and get new releases weekly, so I can often check out the latest Blu-rays and DVDs for free long before they’re available on Netflix or RedBox.
The wife and I haven't been inside a movie theater in nearly 10 years.. We splurged on a nice big screen tv a few years ago, and now, when a movie comes out that we want to see, we wait till it comes out on DVD at Redbox, I go rent it, slap it in the pc, rip it to my Plex media server, then that night, she makes a big bowl of popcorn, and thanks to the cute little Roku box under the tv and its Plex plugin we can watch the movie at OUR leasure.. pause for a nature-break or a drink refill... Since there has been soooo very few movies that we want to see, I've not had to upgrade the RAID array on the server above the 2 1TB drives it has now.. With the clunkers that Hollyweird puts out, I don't expect to need to upgrade anytime soon....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I don't care for comic book recaps.. Give us characters that are believable, that tell something compelling abou the human condition; something that makes us think..Like "A Face in the Crowd" , "Night Of The Hunter" , "High Noon", "Bridge On The River Kwai", "A Dog Day Afternoon", "Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf", "Bad Day at Blackrock", "Kramer vs Kramer", "Silkwood" .. There was a time when the public seemed to have a larger variety of movies to choose from.
Too much material seems to be regurgitated, and not enough screenwriters seem to read literature and science fiction . There are plenty of compelling stories that have never been told..
We are witnessing an extreme aversion to anything that is not tried and true, and it has cost them. The 70ies marked a time when movies were not so formulaic and deviated away from the old studio system. They took a risk, and it paid off with the Godfather, etc.
First of all, the article just mentions "preliminary estimates". Well, good, but estimates by whom? If it was preliminary estimates from some guy who drives by movie theaters and notices whether or not there are long lines, it doesn't mean anything. Is it estimates from the big theater chains? From the projectionists' union? From the guy who has to scrape the gum off of seats after the last show?
And, this has little to do with piracy. It has to do with the fact that theaters have priced themselves out of a market and 2014 was a very bad year for movies. There were only a handful of new movies that I found worth seeing in a theater. However, I actually spent more going to indie revival house theaters than first-run megamultiplexes. I saw more movies projected onto the big screen in 2014 than I did in 2013. They just weren't mostly in big theater chains where my attendance would show up in these statistics.
So it's not that I didn't want to go out to see movies, it's that I didn't want to go out and see the sequelized garbage that the movie industry has been peddling.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Saw the final Hobbit film here in the UK a couple of days ago (in 2D) for the equivalent of $13. Some films I'd always choose to go see in the cinema first off, because I still feel the "big screen" experience is likely to serve them best. The rest I'll wait for and watch at home.
I have to say that, seen from the standpoint here in the UK of a non-US national, I've viewed the vast bulk of what comes out of the US studios as almost entirely formulaic dross for, literally, decades. And it's getting worse. If two releases a year actually tempt me to the theatre now, it's been a good year. The problem seems to me to be that US studio execs would mostly clearly rather die than take a risk that might cost the studio money (and them their jobs). Sadly, that's precisely where all the good stuff would have come from. So almost all we get now are (1) the same old hackneyed stories and genres, with (literally) formulaic structure and pacing (see http://entertainment-beta.slas... if you don't know what I'm talking about), and (2) "grab the money" sequels to (or rip-off copies of) anything that did even remotely well at the box office (here's a hint, guys - if, say, 1 movie in 10 was an unexpected hit, experience suggests to me that the likelihood that any sequel will even be half as good, is not much better than 1 in 10 as well - probably worse, actually, as clueless studio execs try desperately to get the production team to repeat whatever "magic" made it sufficiently different as to be successful, and destroy it completely in the process).
Who *buys* DVDs?? That goofy looking little "redbox" you see EVERYwhere has said DVDs for a buck twenty a night... When a movie that meets our standards comes out, I wait for it to arrive at Redbox, then I rent it, and rip it to my Plex media server and then the wife and I can watch it on our 50 inch tv via the attached Roku box.. I've just put "Interstellar" into my "wish list" so I'll get a email from Redbox when its available..... Thats pretty much the only current movie worth it to us to see...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
just went to see "The Hobbit" yesterday, $20 for a ticket, $18 for a coke (bottle), choc top and m&m's ... assigned seating which i hate .. small screen, geeze from the distance it looks like a 60inch tv
The cost of a ticket is a big negative for me and everyone i know... imagine taking a family, gonna cost you like $100.
They dont realise increasing ticket prices doesnt increase sales.. in fact reducing it to say $5-$9 would increase their sales 10 fold
and i know the licensing fees tak up a majority of the profits (thats why i refuse to go to opening screenings and wait a month, so the cinemas get more $$$)
refer to http://gizmodo.com/the-u-s-cou...
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
every trip to the theatre with my daughter or my girlfriend is a $50-$60 expense, even if we go to a matinee. fuck it, i'll just stream on the home flat screen.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Movie, and concessions, cost is no big deal to me - unless the entire experience is ruined by some jackass who sits behind me and won't shut his mouth for ten seconds.
Other - less important - reasons:
- watching at home is cheaper
- watching at home is more comfortable
- watching at home is less hassle - no worries about start time, do not have to drive anyway, or park. Can stop the movie.
- home theaters are really good
- it does not take long for feature movies to be available to download on Amazon, or whatever
- TV shows, like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Walking Dead; are better than most feature movies.
- more variety: I can watch a movie that has not been in theaters in years.
When I was a kid we had a 24-inch low-def tube with two front-facing speakers.
Dagnabbit spoiled whippersnappers. Criminy, I can remember when back in good ol days when 21" and ONE speaker was the standard, and we liked it by gum. Now get off my lawn.
It wasn't that long ago that 27" was the standard with 32-36 being the deluxe size. I've joked that the housing bubble was caused by people buying houses larger than they could afford just to have a living room large enough for their oversized TV.
The musicals of
Stop right there. Musicals don't appeal to the 15-25 year old male demographic. While women will watch movies made for that demographic, the reverse isn't as true now.
It's part of the dudebro-ization of American culture, and musicals have been partitioned into "things for women and the gays"....by Madison Avenue no less. While that tendency has always existed to a certain extent, it's being encouraged more these days. The Tony's once had viewership of 20 million...back in 1974. Now it's around 6 - 8 million. I'm old enough to remember when TV in general made a big deal about Andrea McArdle being cast as Annie in the Broadway musical.
It's even affected PBS. No more Classical music, not even the "Flying dutchman", Shakespeare, or I Claudius, or Nutcracker production at Christmas...it's Red Green, and Dr. Who.
The only time my wife and I go to the movies anymore is to the drive-in.
What is this "drive-in" you speak of?
All kidding aside, I live in a town that once had one...decades back. Horrible horrible sound though, even compared to crappy small town theatres.
On New Years, one of my digital sub channels had a Cary Grant day. No action or violence, no CGI, no gratuitous nudity, just a story - and they were wonderful and funny.
I think he himself said he was a comedic actor trapped in a leading man's body. Pair him with some competent co-stars, like Kate Hepburn in her rapid-fire delivery prime and watch magic happen.
Not ranked in any importance but heres the list...
$11.50 to see a 2D matinee on a Saturday/Sunday afternoon. Other days its at least 2 dollars above matinee price. 3D movies are at least 2 dollars above those costs. At these costs, I can just wait 6 months to a year and buy the Blu-ray and enjoy it at home as many times as I want.
I do not want to see a 3D movie because I'm not interested in sitting there with the 3D glasses on, and the extra costs are just not worth it to me. I'm also not sure how I will react to 3D, I have heard some people have had bad reactions.
Can't watch the movie when I want to. I have to go when they have the times set. This is a minor argument cause it doesn't bother me too much unless I have to wait late in the afternoon to actually go see the movie, some of them have not had the first showing till 2:00 or 2:30pm.
Can't cause if I need to use the washroom. This is one reason why I never drink anything for at least a few hours before the movie and go to the can before hand.
Not really related to why I don't go to the theater but a big grip none the less, food prices are crazy high. I always hit the dollar store before hand. Why pay 2.50 cents for a 600ml bottle of pop, when I can pick up one for a buck. Other food is just too expensive I don't even bother looking at the prices, thought I know the small nachos with cheese were more then 6 bucks. For 2 bucks, I could get a full bag of party mix.
What could they change to get me back into the theaters and buying their food? Drop the price by at least 50%. That would get me back into theaters and buying at least the nachos with cheese I love.
I also do not have a choice when it comes to theaters, as far as I can tell, there is only 1 owner of all the theaters in my area so there is no competition which would help keep prices lower.
Could it be this one? http://www.99w.com/
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
The actually experience is different. Amazon reports that as they have grown bigger with more diverse offerings, the top drivers of revenue are shrinking. This is true if one is looking at a category (i.e. books) or as a whole. It looks like everybody has to buy the Harry Potter books, everybody will be buying a ticket to the next Star Wars film, etc.
From my observation, part of the reason for fewer items driving a greater percentage of the revenue is this: given three options for shampoo, I can try each of them and then reliably purchase my favorite. In a large population, we probably differ on what our favorite is. Given a hundred shampoos, once I find one that works decently, I'll stick with it; it's not worth it to me to try 90+ other shampoos. Replace shampoo with movie genre or book author, add in reviewer ratings so that we buy products that are reviewed more than untested and unreviewed products, and that's your Amazon experience.
Yeah, I could see that getting me back to seeing a movie. Watching am movie over a good dinner seems quite like something I would enjoy.
It needn't even be some kind of current blockbuster, fine dining with some movie entertainment as a side event would certainly be something I could see me doing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's a very easy solution to this: Kick the fuckers out if they can't behave like human beings. If cleaning up after them costs more than the dollar they bring in, while at the same time chasing away customers that would bring that dollar without costing 5 to clean up behind them, they cost you money instead of making you any.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, the article didn't talk about it. But rest assured that this is what we'll get to hear pretty soon now, along with a demand for stricter laws and more leeway for the studios to screw us over and invade our privacy in the quest for the all-holy protection of their content crap.
I'm honestly waiting for them to install TSA-like goons in theaters who do a wholesale cavity search just in case you hide your camera THERE. Followed of course by a completely bewildered reaction to an analysis that shows how people react by not even wanting to go see a movie if they got paid. Which, again, will OF COURSE not be due to not wanting to be anal probed just to watch a stupid little flick but of course it has to be filesharing.
Right now I just wonder whether the studios wake up before or after they're bankrupt. Part of me hopes for after.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
it's just you
Wow, I'd probably never go at $20 per ticket, we see the most films at the local drive-in where the carload gets in for $22 with a bring your own food and drink pass, there's nothing better than watching a double feature with a few cold adult beverages on a warm summer evening. Other than that we tend to go to matinee showings on the weekend for around $6.50.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I know a guy who sold a script to a studio. Basically they took a clean script and in a series of six rewrites jammed in everything a movie "needs" to make money. Certain types of characters, a certain type of pacing, and merchandising. They stripped out any cultural references non-American moviegoers might not understand. In the end if it were soup it would be lukewarm and tasteless. He didn't care because he knows the business and he new better than to get attached (and they pay well), but they might have made a good movie out of the original. Nobody would bother with the rewrite (not that they actually made the movie).
So falling domestic numbers really aren't much of a surprise. The studios have a formula for making money on a world audience, so it's no surprise so many movies come out to be mostly the same.
There are only 1 or 2 movies a year which I feel are worth a trip to the cinema. Anything else can wait to be watched on my home system which, like most these days, delivers a very nice viewing experience. I still feel like most of what I watch is crap though and wouldn't cry if there were less of it.
Sometimes I feel we are all "fiddling" while "Rome" burns. And while I know I'm getting old, watching people do horrible things to each other is not as fun as it used to be... it's just more explicit. Extreme violence seems to be the lowest common denominator in TV & cinema.
Some movie theatres have been experimenting with streaming.
I went to see the Monty Python reunion live broadcast ... and in a packed theatre, it's a much different experience than watching it from home, even if you have a group of friends over. The company doing it was also advertising that they had operas.
The tickets were more expensive than regular movie tickets, but they were nothing compared to when I saw The Book of Mormon (as it sold out so fast we had to get more expensive tickets). They were more on-par with when I saw Avenue Q at The Red Branch Theatre. (and they're going to be doing it again this summer)
I admit, it's not as cheap as the improv group when I was in college (which many of us went to see every Friday at midnight), but you get some really funny stuff that'd never get made by a big movie studio. I remember seeing signs in DC for a place doing a Harry Potter spoof/synopsis a couple years back. I saw a play in the mid 1990s about lesbian vegetarian cattle rustlers. (I want to say it was named "Steak")
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
And millions like him, in his age group. The movies are different; the thing that stays the same is that old people have always, and will always, say that "it was better back in my day!" or even the days before they were kids.
You can call this point of view flamebait or trolling if you want, as some old mod did earlier today, but the fact is this: the stalest cliche on the planet is that old people don't like what young people are listening to or watching on a screen, whatever the size of that screen happens to be, and they can't remember that when they were young, the old people of that time didn't like what THEY were enjoying.
PS, there was plenty of crap in movies back when you were a kid too. You just don't remember it as well as you remember the good movies - because the crap was crap, and you didn't bother watching it more than once.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Not that one. This one is the closest to me now:
http://www.harvestmoondrivein....
The majority of movies published is of no interest to me and the few I might find interesting are not interesting enough to defend the insanely high ticket prices. Movies used to be cheap entertainment for a family of four, now it clocks in at 100 bucks with all the fixins like popcorn and soda included. At least around here.
Right now TV is arguably in its greatest era, and there has been a glut of really mediocre films, so I'm not at all surprised. You can go to the theaters and pay a fortune for movies that can't crack 7.5 on IMDB, or you can sit at home with your gigantic TV screen and watch Walking Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Hannibal, True Detective, Game of Thrones, and that's a fraction of what's available at home in the US, and I haven't even hinted at British and European television. Plus, if you get started on any TV show and it's not grabbing you, you can just switch to something else. The movie industry really has to step up its game.
Yes, yes they are. Nowadays, the spectacle is created mostly with gigantic stories and the special effects to back them up. Gigantic stories, not necessarily good ones, but back in the day the musicals were the best way to create an inspiring and exciting spectacle. Of course, those wonderful films are as inspiring and exciting as always, but popular music has been dumbed down too much for it to be a vehicle for a movie ("From Justin to Kelly" notwithstanding).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Maybe it's time that Metallica got rebooted? We could have Michael Bay do the directing.
WTF do they expect? Once upon a time movies were 6 bucks. Popcorn and a drink maybe another 6 bucks. And you could sit and chat with your friends before the show, and then watch about 10 minutes of previews, tops. Then tickets went $10, and $15 for a drink and popcorn. then they started cramming commercials down your throat before the movie, and previews that run over 20 minutes?? The cinema has died from the same old idiotic rapaciousness that sent people to steal music off Napster when CDs went to $18 and 3/4 of their songs sucked.
Hold on! Are you sure? I just got back from seeing that last night here in Portland at the Bagdad on Hawthorne. Nine dollars.
Actually, I double checked... $23.99+tax
Format General(14-64) Child(3-13) Senior(65+)
General $12.99 $8.99 $9.50
3D $15.99 $11.99 $12.50
UltraAVX 3D $17.99 $13.99 $14.50
IMAX $19.99 $12.99 $13.50
D-BOX UltraAVX 3D $23.99 $19.99 $20.50
Normally I don't go to theatres at all due to the price and poor service. We got some gift cards for xmas so we figured why not do the final Hobbit movie right. Regular fare is still almost 50% higher than it ought to be at that location. Other locations in the area it's as high as $13.75 for regular fare.
Good movies are still being made, some on budgets so low that a shoestring would be an improvement, but mainstream Hollywood is just turning into one homogeneous steaming pile of dreck.
There's a reason for that.
Hollywood has too much money.
Seriously. If you want art, you practically have to have starving artists. Fat and happy artists get lazy. Worse, in the case of Hollywood, there's so much money the art is buried in parasites. It's gotten so the bloated bloodsuckers are bigger than the host, and because they control the money, they think they deserve to have a say in the art. When that's about the worst possible outcome.
Abolish copyright. For the good of art and the subsequent benefit of humanity.
Sound quality is great these days... They've replaced the telephone wire systems with low power FM transmitters with a range of about a mile or so., so the sound is as good as your car or boom box can produce, and there's a fringe benefit if you live locally of being able to listen to the movie.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
While blue-ray and home theaters might be hurting movies, one friend posited last weekend that the reason they are having such issues is because another great golden age of TV is upon us. It seems that everybody has half a dozen series that they like and want to watch and by time they finish them, there are either new seasons or new series to add. Home theater and streaming works even better for them because we're not even tied to the original air times unless we just really, really want to see them as soon as possible. Why worry about a few two or three hour long shows when there are series that offer better stories, more development, and equal technical production values?
Maybe if you made good movies these days, that would be a big help. Maybe even people would decide that watching the movie was more interestng and shut their phones off. Otherwise - Do Not Want!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.