I went to see ‘Pirates 2’ the other night. While I was in line for tickets, a family was purchasing theirs. Two adults, three kids = $38 CDN. Later, as I was munching on my popcorn, I saw them heading for their seats. They’d purchased two ‘jumbo combos’. So the grand total for the evening, not including parking (this was at a downtown multiplex) was about $60 CDN. I think when I did the math I actually stopped eating.
This was my third of four movies this week. So I don’t need to be convinced of the ‘cachet’ of cinema-going. But I had to ask myself if I’d do the same thing. Take my family to movies like this. I mean, as much as I’m anti home theatre, I tried to put myself in their place, in any family’s place and imagine a different mindset. Where seeing the film in a cinema wasn’t the benchmark. And it was interesting, looking at things from a different perspective.
Afterwards, as everyone was filing out, I approached the family and asked the parents how often they took their kids to a movie, splashed out the fifty or sixty bucks. The answer was ‘Not often. Just for the really big films. The special ones. Maybe three, four times a year. The rest of the time, we rent."
A few of my friends are in film production. And I certainly spend enough time reading newsletters and blogs concerning various elements of the biz. One consistent theme is the changing landscape of production. The gradual reduction of time given a shoot. It’s not uncommon to hear of mainstream releases shot in under three weeks. There’s an enormous compression going on. Why? Because of the changing landscape of entertainment. For example, last night I downloaded from iTunes the season premiere of ‘Psych’, the USA network show. It was free. Given the ever-expanding menu of shows available for online download, even though I don’t get the USA channel, I could still watch it regularly at $1.99 a pop. There’s a ton of product available online either for free, or for a subscriber’s fee or a once-off purchase. My point here is that there’s a wealth of ‘filmmakers’ out there, who can bring something to the public for very little money. No, these films are not the Hollywood blockbusters. And maybe this leads to a possible further truth: that in the future, what will be distributed theatrically will be the ‘Superman Returns’. The ‘Pirates 2’. The ‘Cars’. The next ‘James Bond’ flick. And the rest of the menu will ‘primarily’ be offered in another way. I can think of dozens of films over the past few years that didn’t receive general release, that deserve to be watched, but in a world where Hollywood (and the cinemas) need films that pack ‘em in, end up being seen as rentals, if at all. To me, the future of film is as healthy as it’s ever been. But I do suspect that the context of viewing and the default choice will be changing as rapidly as our options change.
This may seem heretical talk on a ‘cinema treasures’ site, but it doesn’t take away from the love all of us feel for the myriad filmic cathedrals featured here…and none of us can stop the inevitable changes from occuring, anyway: inexorably, the ‘default’ for movie viewing is shifting from going to the cinema (as was really the only choice when I was growing up), to home-viewing, either on your wide-screen tv or on your iMac or on your iPod. After all, if you had a family, which would you generally choose: one movie at a cinema, or 12-20 rentals? Hmm…? At the risk of repeating myself, in the end, Hollywood isn’t going to give a toss how it generates its revenue, either from theatrical distribution or online/in-store purchasing and rentals. Money is money is money. The only ones left sniffing will be the cinema owners, the die-hard movie-goers…and members of sites such as this.
They said the same things when Tv started , when dvd came out ,on an on ………..Theaters have been going out of bsns for 40 year.TECHNOLGY WILL KEEP THEATERS ON THE CUTTING EDGE ALSO NOT JUST KIDS I PODS.
Here’s some comments from a film industry insider:
“There are two ways that I look at cinema in the future.
One is to look at technology’s effect on people and the other is to look at peoples effect
on technology. I can’t say which effects the other more but i can say that they will have a
huge impact on the way cinema evolves. When I scan across a few generations or demographics
the trends that are evolving become really evident to me. My 13 year old niece seems to have
no issues with downloading a show (legally) onto her phone and watching it that way, and she
does the same with her music, whereas my father still can’t even understand his outdated VCR's
settings. I see a day when my niece and hoards of people like her will find it absurd to actually
have to “go” to a theatre and “wait” for someone else to hit play. It’s this highly wired attention
deficit/hyper active disorder plagued demographic that will really accelerate the changes. I fear
that they will see going to traditional movie theatres as some “slow food” kind of movement for those resistant to current social trends. My greater fear is the effect that this will have on actual content, and i’m already seeing evidence of the changes. The other day at the office I watched a DVD with a series of 6 highly polished beautiful looking movies produced by BMW. They were directed by Hollywood heavyweights and were totally padded with prominent actors. They were very well done and very slick, and very entertaining. The longest was about 13 minutes. They are for download only and will also be installed onto BMW’s new in-car navigational and entertainment system. Short slick and download friendly. Is this the future? Content is defined by society’s gadgets? Movies
and shows packaged in neat little down load friendly offerings perfect for a generation with no attention span and content to watch “Matrix prt20” in handy little bit streams they download wirelessly while blogging in the park.
You and I think it absurd, but tell that to my niece and it’s utopia. One possible benefit is that perhaps some producers will take an online direct marketing approach and sell their movies directly to the enduser and avoid the distribution monopolies altogether. Kind of like what some inde bands are doing now with their music. In this case perhaps one could then buy a licensing fee to show the movie in an independently owned and operated theatre for those who prefer the traditional style viewing. See where I’m going with this… Perhaps the traditional movie house may find a new and better life for itself.
So in a nutshell here is my 15 year prognosis. Megaplexes will continue to dwindle, perhaps to the level that IMAX exists currently. We’ll always have large format movie theatres, but it won’t be the norm. If downloading changes the distribution policies we now have, than there exists the opportunity for inde movie houses to re-emerge. Content will change and continue to evolve. Movies will still be shot, but released in multiple ways. A theatrical version will be created,
a chopped up version will be created for download, and a video game version will be created, all released simultaneously. Pick your poison. The DVD will die because eventually you won’t rent, you’ll plug in and download into your personal Crackberry phone/computer/viewer/GPS/music/media gadget. Potentially. some good things can happen, but I really see the large format theatres evaporating. People will still have a need to interact but the younger demographic will just partake in some kind of a well wired, multimedia type of globally connected rave where music and images and people are connected simultaneously. Of course none of this could happen and i could be completely full of crap, i often am, but I can’t ignore todays youth, they are so damn wired it’s tough to ignore the influence and changes they are going to make."
I have no earthly idea how to get Hollywood to make better movies. The fact that folks are (foolishly) propelling crap like “Scary Movie 4” to an $80 million box office gross makes my argument a moot point anyway. On the one hand – it IS crap (and, deep down, all of you know it!). On the other hand – folks still head to the theatres to see it. Who are the studios gonna listen to: my lone voice in the wilderness calling this crap “crap” – or the accountants who count that $80 million?
I guess I should just prepare for the days where I take my grandchildren to the movie theatre and they stare at the place in the same disdain as teenagers who stare at their parent’s 8-track tapes and vinyl 45’s.
….Meanwhile, back at the ranch… On a more modest level empiretheatres.com who recently increased their visibility across Canada by purchasing some of the Cineplex cast-offs are trying to lure more people into their theatres with a campaign of mail box stuffers. The ‘stuffer’ consists of a bag which can be filled with free popcorn (after purchasing a soft drink, however) along with a voucher entitling the holder to a chance at 28 other prizes, including a grand prize of a year’s free attendance at any of their theatres for two people for any movie, as well as vouchers for free soft drinks and popcorn. According to their website they have other promotions ongoing currently.
32 screens should show 32 movies —Ron that would be great the problem is auditoriums are much smaller than in the old days so when you get a hit you need 2or 3 screens per pic.
No offence, lim, but I don’t think you get it.
You’re stuck.
The future is coming, things are about to go through a sea change and you’re standing there giggling about product being the prime factor.
People are changing their viewing habits.
When you take into account the total number of film viewings, less people are going to the cinema to get theirs…and this is only increasing.
Kids are growing up not going to the movies.
What do you think is going to happen whey they have kids?
I’ve enjoyed this thread, but really, dialogues with brick walls can be a bit frustrating.
Or, as an employee of mine once said, ‘You need to find something softer to bang your head against.’
you have to look at amount of screens as the country,not by a select area ..There are exceptions to every rule….OUR own CINEMA TREASURES book has pages on over screening.
Ah, but this returns us to the original conundrum: the revenue pie is growing. More and more of this total revenue is coming from DVD sales, less (as a percentage of this pie) from cinema ticket sales. This is why Cineplex is advertising as it is.
LOOK AT THESE # SO FAR 1. CARS 78 MIL 2. BREAK-UP 81 MILLION 3.XMEN-207 MIL 4.OMEN -41 MIL 5.OVER THE HEDGE 134 MIL 6.DA VINCI 193 MIL 7, MI3-129 MIL ……THIS SUMMER JUST A FEW PICS …
So if people aren’t going to see those films (because the weather’s too good, or they’re busy or they’ve already given up on cinema-going), then really, all is lost.
Meanwhile, there’s still a bunch of popcorn-movies in that list; something for just about everyone.
This is a list of pics playing in the atlanta market this week 1.cel prophecy 2.da vinci code 3.friends w/ money 4.a prairie home 5.proposition 6.x-men 7.thank u 4 smoking 8.break up 9.mi3 10.cars 11.poseidon 12. art school confidential 13. wah-wah 14.water 15.inconvenient truth 16.omen 17.keeping up wiyh the steins 18.akeelah and the bee 19.see no evil 20.over the hedge 21.united 93 22.district b13. ALL IN A 6 MILE RANGE……There are a lot of art films for the summer this year.
I think it’s actually quite comical: on the one hand you’ve got the studios, who win no matter what (unless they put out stinkers across the board, and invariably, that doesn’t happen), they either get the cinema ticket sales or the DVD sales. On the other hand, you’ve got those people who have simply become disenchanted by movie-going, whether because of the expense, the fact that multiplexes aren’t as regal as they remember from their youths (and don’t forget we’ve got an entire generation for whom DVDs and multiplexes are the norm; they’re not hearkening back to any ‘good old days’!) Throw into the mix the electronic manufacturers, who love the fact that people are migrating to home theatre set-ups… Let’s see, who’s not happy: the cinema owners…and those of us ‘snobs’ who miss the old palaces.
As others have mentioned the studios are now in a bind regarding DVD release dates. Stinker movies (think ‘Gigli’) always went pretty quick to DVD. But now even good films like ‘Capote’ go to DVD in within a relatively short release window, much shorter than in the VHS days. More and more people aren’t going to the movies because they know the DVD will be out in a few months. The studios make money either way but theaters suffer. Can the studios afford to return to a longer release window? Would they want to? These same studios are pressuring the theaters to go digital. I’m glad I’m not in the movie theater business. Maybe these problems began way way back when the US government forced the studios to divest themselves of their theaters.
Excellent point. Cinema owners are in the business of putting bums in the seats. (And selling tons of popcorn.) The point is not that crap shouldn’t be made or shouldn’t be shown. It’s that crap shouldn’t be the only option. But if people don’t go to see the ‘other’ stuff, then crap’s what’ll be booked each and every time. Nobody has the luxury of being a snob. Not if you’re in the cinema business.
Love to go back to these old posts ….now 2007… the biggest summer ever….
still the cheapest form of ent. BOWLING NOW $8.00 A GAME /Prices are in line with inflation/Product is the key not price….
I went to see ‘Pirates 2’ the other night. While I was in line for tickets, a family was purchasing theirs. Two adults, three kids = $38 CDN. Later, as I was munching on my popcorn, I saw them heading for their seats. They’d purchased two ‘jumbo combos’. So the grand total for the evening, not including parking (this was at a downtown multiplex) was about $60 CDN. I think when I did the math I actually stopped eating.
This was my third of four movies this week. So I don’t need to be convinced of the ‘cachet’ of cinema-going. But I had to ask myself if I’d do the same thing. Take my family to movies like this. I mean, as much as I’m anti home theatre, I tried to put myself in their place, in any family’s place and imagine a different mindset. Where seeing the film in a cinema wasn’t the benchmark. And it was interesting, looking at things from a different perspective.
Afterwards, as everyone was filing out, I approached the family and asked the parents how often they took their kids to a movie, splashed out the fifty or sixty bucks. The answer was ‘Not often. Just for the really big films. The special ones. Maybe three, four times a year. The rest of the time, we rent."
A few of my friends are in film production. And I certainly spend enough time reading newsletters and blogs concerning various elements of the biz. One consistent theme is the changing landscape of production. The gradual reduction of time given a shoot. It’s not uncommon to hear of mainstream releases shot in under three weeks. There’s an enormous compression going on. Why? Because of the changing landscape of entertainment. For example, last night I downloaded from iTunes the season premiere of ‘Psych’, the USA network show. It was free. Given the ever-expanding menu of shows available for online download, even though I don’t get the USA channel, I could still watch it regularly at $1.99 a pop. There’s a ton of product available online either for free, or for a subscriber’s fee or a once-off purchase. My point here is that there’s a wealth of ‘filmmakers’ out there, who can bring something to the public for very little money. No, these films are not the Hollywood blockbusters. And maybe this leads to a possible further truth: that in the future, what will be distributed theatrically will be the ‘Superman Returns’. The ‘Pirates 2’. The ‘Cars’. The next ‘James Bond’ flick. And the rest of the menu will ‘primarily’ be offered in another way. I can think of dozens of films over the past few years that didn’t receive general release, that deserve to be watched, but in a world where Hollywood (and the cinemas) need films that pack ‘em in, end up being seen as rentals, if at all. To me, the future of film is as healthy as it’s ever been. But I do suspect that the context of viewing and the default choice will be changing as rapidly as our options change.
This may seem heretical talk on a ‘cinema treasures’ site, but it doesn’t take away from the love all of us feel for the myriad filmic cathedrals featured here…and none of us can stop the inevitable changes from occuring, anyway: inexorably, the ‘default’ for movie viewing is shifting from going to the cinema (as was really the only choice when I was growing up), to home-viewing, either on your wide-screen tv or on your iMac or on your iPod. After all, if you had a family, which would you generally choose: one movie at a cinema, or 12-20 rentals? Hmm…? At the risk of repeating myself, in the end, Hollywood isn’t going to give a toss how it generates its revenue, either from theatrical distribution or online/in-store purchasing and rentals. Money is money is money. The only ones left sniffing will be the cinema owners, the die-hard movie-goers…and members of sites such as this.
BSNS UP AGAIN 4th of July weekend up 7 % over last year!
They said the same things when Tv started , when dvd came out ,on an on ………..Theaters have been going out of bsns for 40 year.TECHNOLGY WILL KEEP THEATERS ON THE CUTTING EDGE ALSO NOT JUST KIDS I PODS.
Here’s some comments from a film industry insider:
“There are two ways that I look at cinema in the future.
One is to look at technology’s effect on people and the other is to look at peoples effect
on technology. I can’t say which effects the other more but i can say that they will have a
huge impact on the way cinema evolves. When I scan across a few generations or demographics
the trends that are evolving become really evident to me. My 13 year old niece seems to have
no issues with downloading a show (legally) onto her phone and watching it that way, and she
does the same with her music, whereas my father still can’t even understand his outdated VCR's
settings. I see a day when my niece and hoards of people like her will find it absurd to actually
have to “go” to a theatre and “wait” for someone else to hit play. It’s this highly wired attention
deficit/hyper active disorder plagued demographic that will really accelerate the changes. I fear
that they will see going to traditional movie theatres as some “slow food” kind of movement for those resistant to current social trends. My greater fear is the effect that this will have on actual content, and i’m already seeing evidence of the changes. The other day at the office I watched a DVD with a series of 6 highly polished beautiful looking movies produced by BMW. They were directed by Hollywood heavyweights and were totally padded with prominent actors. They were very well done and very slick, and very entertaining. The longest was about 13 minutes. They are for download only and will also be installed onto BMW’s new in-car navigational and entertainment system. Short slick and download friendly. Is this the future? Content is defined by society’s gadgets? Movies
and shows packaged in neat little down load friendly offerings perfect for a generation with no attention span and content to watch “Matrix prt20” in handy little bit streams they download wirelessly while blogging in the park.
You and I think it absurd, but tell that to my niece and it’s utopia. One possible benefit is that perhaps some producers will take an online direct marketing approach and sell their movies directly to the enduser and avoid the distribution monopolies altogether. Kind of like what some inde bands are doing now with their music. In this case perhaps one could then buy a licensing fee to show the movie in an independently owned and operated theatre for those who prefer the traditional style viewing. See where I’m going with this… Perhaps the traditional movie house may find a new and better life for itself.
So in a nutshell here is my 15 year prognosis. Megaplexes will continue to dwindle, perhaps to the level that IMAX exists currently. We’ll always have large format movie theatres, but it won’t be the norm. If downloading changes the distribution policies we now have, than there exists the opportunity for inde movie houses to re-emerge. Content will change and continue to evolve. Movies will still be shot, but released in multiple ways. A theatrical version will be created,
a chopped up version will be created for download, and a video game version will be created, all released simultaneously. Pick your poison. The DVD will die because eventually you won’t rent, you’ll plug in and download into your personal Crackberry phone/computer/viewer/GPS/music/media gadget. Potentially. some good things can happen, but I really see the large format theatres evaporating. People will still have a need to interact but the younger demographic will just partake in some kind of a well wired, multimedia type of globally connected rave where music and images and people are connected simultaneously. Of course none of this could happen and i could be completely full of crap, i often am, but I can’t ignore todays youth, they are so damn wired it’s tough to ignore the influence and changes they are going to make."
Kids are the ones still going to the movies …….the drop off is with over 50 adults….
To answer THE question of product:
I have no earthly idea how to get Hollywood to make better movies. The fact that folks are (foolishly) propelling crap like “Scary Movie 4” to an $80 million box office gross makes my argument a moot point anyway. On the one hand – it IS crap (and, deep down, all of you know it!). On the other hand – folks still head to the theatres to see it. Who are the studios gonna listen to: my lone voice in the wilderness calling this crap “crap” – or the accountants who count that $80 million?
I guess I should just prepare for the days where I take my grandchildren to the movie theatre and they stare at the place in the same disdain as teenagers who stare at their parent’s 8-track tapes and vinyl 45’s.
….Meanwhile, back at the ranch… On a more modest level empiretheatres.com who recently increased their visibility across Canada by purchasing some of the Cineplex cast-offs are trying to lure more people into their theatres with a campaign of mail box stuffers. The ‘stuffer’ consists of a bag which can be filled with free popcorn (after purchasing a soft drink, however) along with a voucher entitling the holder to a chance at 28 other prizes, including a grand prize of a year’s free attendance at any of their theatres for two people for any movie, as well as vouchers for free soft drinks and popcorn. According to their website they have other promotions ongoing currently.
i agree….. Dont think you have a clue…..but its been fun….
32 screens should show 32 movies —Ron that would be great the problem is auditoriums are much smaller than in the old days so when you get a hit you need 2or 3 screens per pic.
No offence, lim, but I don’t think you get it.
You’re stuck.
The future is coming, things are about to go through a sea change and you’re standing there giggling about product being the prime factor.
People are changing their viewing habits.
When you take into account the total number of film viewings, less people are going to the cinema to get theirs…and this is only increasing.
Kids are growing up not going to the movies.
What do you think is going to happen whey they have kids?
I’ve enjoyed this thread, but really, dialogues with brick walls can be a bit frustrating.
Or, as an employee of mine once said, ‘You need to find something softer to bang your head against.’
See you at the movies…
you have to look at amount of screens as the country,not by a select area ..There are exceptions to every rule….OUR own CINEMA TREASURES book has pages on over screening.
There aren’t too many screens. There are too many unimaginatively-programmed screens. (See my earlier post about Boston 1975 vs Boston 2006.)
LOL…YOU DONT GET IT…… WHEN THERE IS PRODUCT THEY WILL COME….THERE ARE TOO MANY SCREENS…..
Ah, but this returns us to the original conundrum: the revenue pie is growing. More and more of this total revenue is coming from DVD sales, less (as a percentage of this pie) from cinema ticket sales. This is why Cineplex is advertising as it is.
What else is to be done?
LOOK AT THESE # SO FAR 1. CARS 78 MIL 2. BREAK-UP 81 MILLION 3.XMEN-207 MIL 4.OMEN -41 MIL 5.OVER THE HEDGE 134 MIL 6.DA VINCI 193 MIL 7, MI3-129 MIL ……THIS SUMMER JUST A FEW PICS …
Click Here: Check out “Daily Box Office for Friday, June 9, 2006”
My point is they are going because there is PRODUCT…………….
So if people aren’t going to see those films (because the weather’s too good, or they’re busy or they’ve already given up on cinema-going), then really, all is lost.
Meanwhile, there’s still a bunch of popcorn-movies in that list; something for just about everyone.
This is a list of pics playing in the atlanta market this week 1.cel prophecy 2.da vinci code 3.friends w/ money 4.a prairie home 5.proposition 6.x-men 7.thank u 4 smoking 8.break up 9.mi3 10.cars 11.poseidon 12. art school confidential 13. wah-wah 14.water 15.inconvenient truth 16.omen 17.keeping up wiyh the steins 18.akeelah and the bee 19.see no evil 20.over the hedge 21.united 93 22.district b13. ALL IN A 6 MILE RANGE……There are a lot of art films for the summer this year.
I think it’s actually quite comical: on the one hand you’ve got the studios, who win no matter what (unless they put out stinkers across the board, and invariably, that doesn’t happen), they either get the cinema ticket sales or the DVD sales. On the other hand, you’ve got those people who have simply become disenchanted by movie-going, whether because of the expense, the fact that multiplexes aren’t as regal as they remember from their youths (and don’t forget we’ve got an entire generation for whom DVDs and multiplexes are the norm; they’re not hearkening back to any ‘good old days’!) Throw into the mix the electronic manufacturers, who love the fact that people are migrating to home theatre set-ups… Let’s see, who’s not happy: the cinema owners…and those of us ‘snobs’ who miss the old palaces.
OK. Maybe it’s not so funny afterall.
As others have mentioned the studios are now in a bind regarding DVD release dates. Stinker movies (think ‘Gigli’) always went pretty quick to DVD. But now even good films like ‘Capote’ go to DVD in within a relatively short release window, much shorter than in the VHS days. More and more people aren’t going to the movies because they know the DVD will be out in a few months. The studios make money either way but theaters suffer. Can the studios afford to return to a longer release window? Would they want to? These same studios are pressuring the theaters to go digital. I’m glad I’m not in the movie theater business. Maybe these problems began way way back when the US government forced the studios to divest themselves of their theaters.
longislandmovies:
Excellent point. Cinema owners are in the business of putting bums in the seats. (And selling tons of popcorn.) The point is not that crap shouldn’t be made or shouldn’t be shown. It’s that crap shouldn’t be the only option. But if people don’t go to see the ‘other’ stuff, then crap’s what’ll be booked each and every time. Nobody has the luxury of being a snob. Not if you’re in the cinema business.
THE PRODUCT IS THERE……….sometimes good as this summer ,sometimes bad as in last year. ( When i say good i mean people are spending money to see them))