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Netflix CEO: Movie Theaters Are 'Strangling the Movie Business'' (businessinsider.com)
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings thinks the state of film is a "real tragedy" and that movie theaters are "strangling the movie business," he said at The New Yorker's Tech Fest on Friday. From a Business Insider report:On Friday, Hastings came down hard on these theater owners, saying there had been no innovation in the movie theater business in recent years, even as TV has been shaped by the rise of cable and internet networks. "Money" and "innovation" has flooded to the TV industry, Hastings said. Not so with film. The movie theater business has seen flatline revenue, Hastings said. Part of the problem is that small movies, such as many Netflix has snagged from places like Sundance, would be better distributed both at home and in theaters. That's a convenient position for Netflix to take, but Hastings said the movie studios feel the same way. Each movie studio would like to "break the oligopoly" of the theaters, but "they don't know how," he continued. If they collude to face the theaters, it's anti-trust, but if they are the ones to take the first step, their films will get killed. That means they just go along with the status quo.
I seldom go to theaters any more.
The food mediocre and overpriced.
There are no intermissions or breaks on 3 hour long movies. Old movies had intermissions. Live theater has intermissions. When do I get rid of all this soda that has made its way to my bladder? I can pause a movie at home any time I want.
I go to movies too. Probably 8 times a year or so. There are some loud and rude people. But most of the folks aren't. I've had to give a shout and a death stare to one ass that kept kicking my chair. But normally it is pretty much OK. I still think movies should be available "day and date" (on streaming and theaters in the same day). I don't care if they tier the pricing over time. On day one, rental streaming $25, theaters their normal too high price. 30 days in, $8.99 for streaming and it goes to the bargain theaters. 90 days in and it goes to Netflix and others (free streaming with paid monthly account). Something like that. Work out the prices and set them to something that makes sense - that was just a broad strokes idea or pricing. There should also be global release and no region locking. It is proven that if you make access available people pay for it. Sure, there are you inveterate, never going to pay for anything people. But they aren't and won't ever be your customers. Make it available everywhere at the same time and you will get customers.
So are buggy whips.
You can put up as big a screen at home as you have room for, and money to spend. It's not even that expensive, especially as compared to the cumulative costs of a movie theater habit.
Once you have a system at home, you no longer have to put up with sitting by strangers breathing various horrors in your general direction; crying babies; talking people; missing sections of the movie because you needed to hit the head; incredibly expensive and limited "snacks"; spilled sodas running over your feet from behind; seating not specifically chosen by you (and frankly, unlikely to be comfortable); lack of privacy; interference from people using cellphones (or conversely, your inability to use one if you need to); being tied to the theater's schedule; being deluged with ads from every business with an ad budget and no way to mute the obnoxiousness; waiting in line; dealing with the weather; being unable to re-cue the movie to see something you didn't quite catch; dealing with a watch-once-per-huge-cost experience.
If you put some (not a lot of) effort into it, you can have much better theater seating than you're going to get out of 99.9999% of commercial theaters (reclining, soft, blanketed, your SO snuggled up right next to you with out an armrest in someone's soft parts, perfect viewing position every time.) Great sound is easy too. "Largeness" is primarily about resolution and seating distance, so it's really more tricky to get right if you want to please a larger number of viewers. If you are most concerned about you and your SO, for instance, you can set thing s up very easily so the same amount of your visual field is covered, you have excellent resolution, and fabu sound. Going bigger is always awesome, but it's important to understand that the main benefit is the ability to seat and similarly gift a larger number of viewers with equivalent high resolution.
Theaters, near as I can tell, offer only the following:
o a place to take a date that's public, so they have a safety net re you climbing all over them in an unwanted fashion
o an action that is expensive, which can make a date feel like you consider them worthy of same (raise prostitution arguments here, I won't argue.)
o a largish screen, presuming you don't beat them at that game (which takes foresight and money in terms of home spaces)
o about 90 days (at present) one-upsmanship on home viewing timing; that, of course, is wholly artificial -- but quite real.
o higher resolution in some theaters, however this is almost always hugely compromised by non-sharp imagery. Some CGI does show this off, presuming you are seated at the correct distance to the screen, which isn't by any means a given. Even seating at optimum distance with just 1080p isn't all that easy to get right -- there's pretty much just a few feet, depth-wise, where normal visual acuity and that kind of resolution meet and derive full benefit. Likewise, there's only a small set of rows / seats in a commercial theater where you'll actually get the benefit of even higher resolution, presuming the movie actually uses such resolution.
...If those points aren't valuable to you (they aren't to me, at all) then the theater is now effectively a buggy whip. I haven't been to a movie theater in almost ten years (pretty much since projection systems dropped into a range where I decided they were doable.) And you know what? Although my system is moderately expensive, to the point where it blows most people's minds, based on the number of movies we own and have watched, many multiple times, I have saved a huge amount of money, which I then get to put into other things.
I understand the theater business owners' desire to preserve their business model. But I think the writing is on the wall. And I really think that a society that attempts to artificially protect someone's particular business model is making a mistake at any le
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
But according to TFA (the friendly article), . . .
> Each movie studio would like to "break the oligopoly" of the theaters,
Yeah, right. If that were true, then the studios would EMBRACE online streaming instead of trying to hold it back in every conceivable way.
Hey dinosaur studios, here's an innovative idea: Try releasing one of your good films to online streaming FIRST -- even with a rental price, like on Amazon. And maybe several of you do the same. Then let's see if the theater owners come begging to you to show at their theaters first. Choosing where to release your movies first is not anti-trust, it's just good business. Getting with the modern age. Advancing into the 1990's, etc.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
It seems to me that the real problem is the low quality output of the Hollywood studios, combined with their monopoly on the US market.
In Europe you often see films from many different countries/cultures, in the US, its ALL Hollywood monoculture output only.
Everything Hollywood make is totally formulaic and predictable, and the plot has become irrelevant to the eye-candy. Go back to the black and white movies of the 40's/50's. Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Gone With The Wind etc. Amazing, engaging, intelligent stories.
Now all we get is just endless hybrids of one of 7 or so standard moralized storylines,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
and a bunch of CGI effects. The result is entirely predictable, unimaginative and only truly engaging to people with an IQ of about 80 at most.
Presumably because that's what the studios now believe is the lowest cost/least effort approach needed in order to make something that will probably be profitable, rather than actually good.
Its gotten so bad that a high percentage of American masses seriously think Hollywood Physics is how things actually work in real life.
http://www.informationweek.com...?
Movie theaters had their reason to exist when they offered an added value over what you could have at home. That ceased to exist. Big screen? Have it. Dolby 7.1? Have it. 3D? Glad I don't have it. What else is there?
I know that this is slashdot and that we like to focus on features, but for me the value proposition of movie theaters resides in their selection. This is probably irrelevant for you if you just want to watch the latest blockbuster but if you are interested in independent movies, having an independent theater whose owner has a vision of what makes movies interesting beyond $$ is priceless.It's like going to an independent record shop where the owner will have a selection of the new records he likes, and not proposing just the mainstream music.Some of the movies may challenge at first, but they will expend your vision of what movies can be and what kind of stories can be told.
So basically, I let the owner of the theater do the selection for me, not based on my preferences, not based on my previous viewing history, not (entirely) based on what she thinks will make him earn the more money, but based on her cinematographic sensitivity and their extensive knowledge of movies. And I pester about the selection sometimes, and sometimes I will feel I have wasted my money on a movie, but I know that those people have brought me great movies I would not have seen otherwise and ultimately it's worth it.