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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.
It's all a bunch of teenagers kicking the back of your seat and smacking gum and talking on phones. I'll pass.
This being Slashdot, many of you don't want to go to theaters and see films. You want to view them at home, from your HTPC where you won't be bothered by other people, people you consider dumb, rude, loud, too young, always on their phones and generally needing to get off your lawn.
I remember this last time movie theaters came up. I was in the minority because I do consider going to the movies to be a social experience, especially when when seeing a suspenseful or funny movie.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
My understanding from how movie theatres work is that they barely make any money at all from the showing of movies. It is the production studios that take the greatest amount of profits from the movies shown at the theatre. Where theatre's make money is primarily from the extremely unhealthy food folks buy at the theatre. It's why we hear so much about movies from producers that flop because that represents a huge loss. Theatres are not so worried so long as folks still go to the theatre to see movies.
Gas stations use a similar model where most of their actual profits are from non-gas sales. They behave very much like a corner store. The gas that's sold isn't very profitable otherwise.
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.
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.
The studios are not allowed to own their own theaters, per the 1948 ruling in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.. The ruling is the same as making the claim that Matco can't make it's own tools and sell them from their own trucks or Apple can't sell iPhones from its own stores. Totally lame and arbitrary and definitely contributes to reduced investment, thus reduced innovation.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Well if you really want to see a movie on its release date there are not many legal options.
First off, you're exactly right. If you want to see something the minute it's released, that's the only way to go.
So I'd like to offer another thought. What's so great about that?
Seriously. What's so great about having something the minute it's available? We put a lot of importance on that for some reason. The 2017 Chevys are out early, the latest Star Wars film was just released, Apple just made a phone that is 2% faster than their last one.
Why do we care?
Perhaps that's the thing we should be examining. The theater isn't a barrier to seeing a movie, they're a barrier to seeing a just released movie. That movie you want to see will be the exact same movie a week or a month or a year from now. And you have plenty of legal avenues (and far cheaper ones, and far more pleasant ones) than going to a theater.
Maybe the real problem is instant gratification, and our dependence on it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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.