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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.
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).
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=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't go out to movies because of noise.
I'm sick of hearing people yelling at the TV, parents who won't take the screaming kid out, etc. No thanks, I'll watch it at home on my 60 inch TV with 7.1 sound.
No, it can't be. It can't be that going to the movies has become some endeavor you have to financially plan before setting out on it (with parking, food and all you'd be lucky to get out below 20 bucks per person). Let alone that people have less money in a depression as well and movies is one of the FIRST things to cut back at (seriously, if your choice is to eat tomorrow or to see a movie tonight...). It can't be that we don't want to "enjoy" our movie in the presence of people who grew up in a barn. It can't be that we get headaches from the "invisible" flickering and whatnot introduced to keep us from using our cellphones to record the movie. It can't be that the script of the average movie fits on a legal page and the renarration of the content fits easily on a post-it.
It must be due to sharing platforms. Yeah, that's why.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In the various documentaries I have seen regarding the First Great Depression, the movies were regarded as an inexpensive form of entertainment. Admission for a nickel ($.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.
Yup, thats my problem with movie theaters lately. They stopped enforcing common decency a long time ago, but overall people would be somewhat decent. There was always the ONE dick who wouldn't shut up, but now its the norm more than the exception. And all those people who just can't stop texting continually (if they're not downright talking on the phone). And if you complain, you're the one who "needs to deal with it".
So as everything else in our society, you just have to isolate yourself (because even if you try to just group up with like minded individuals, someone will slip in just to troll you). And then we wonder why there's such big gaps between various groups in the US...
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.
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.
Going to a movie.
You really should go with someone. Sure you can see a movie alone, it feels really weird.
Movie Tickets cost about $9 - $15 bucks Being that you bring someone you will need to double that.
Even if you are able to cheap out and not get raped by the concession stand. The person you are going with may want something. So that adds $5 - $10 to it.
So you have spend $40 for 2 hours of entertainment, if you don't like the movie then that is a lot of money wasted.
For that money you can get 3-4 months of streaming movies. Where you can watch as much as you want.
If theaters want to improve movie going. They will need to treat their customers as guests.
Cheaper prices concession food. Don't nitpick about people who bring in their own food.
Put restrooms in quick distance from the theater.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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?
What, you mean you don't want to see "Iron Man vs. Ant Man vs. The Fantastic Four While Spiderman Wacks Off In a Corner 2: Rise of the Who-Gives-A-Fuck"?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It's not just cost, it's also how far home theaters have come.
20 - 30 years ago, a really nice sounds system and really nice TV couldn't match the quality of a movie. I'm talking about big ass projection TVs that cost thousands of dollars for crappy picture quality, when movie theaters showed movies on actual FILM.
Now, with flat screen HD Tvs under a grand, and amazing surround system also for relatively cheap, we've changed the formula.
Before, I was paying for an experience I couldn't duplicate. Amazing sound, amazing picture quality, on a really big screen.
Now, I can duplicate the experience at home for cheaper. And there are a ton of incentives.
Besides cost:
1. I can drink whatever I want (including beer, wine, and scotch) with unlimited refills.
2. There's never an obnoxious pair of people who won't shut up next to me.
3. If the movie is really thought provoking, and as a group we discuss it, we won't be annoying anyone else.
4. Movies show whenever I want -- I can decide to sit down for a Matrix Marathon at 3am if I want.
5. Every movie I buy, I keep forever. I won't rewatch every movie I buy, but some I find myself going back to time and again. And in the off chance someone ends up stuck at my place (I've had friends need a place to crash because there was construction in their place, or maybe their block lost power in a storm), I can just give them my Apple TV remote and tell them to entertain themselves.
Theaters need to sell a unique experience if they want to get people. (Just look at how many people go for IMAX releases of things like Avatar). But recently there's been no innovation, just a constant increasing of costs for consumers: ticket prices, cost of food, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.