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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m going to throw this up for consideration because we seem to be focusing on the product as an answer to cinema-going woes. It’s something I’d posted elsewhere having to do with the question ‘Why are there so many remakes, rehashings and sequels?’
“Hollywood is a business. Show BUSINESS. It’s art, no doubt about it, but first and foremost, what you see on the screen is a commercial product. But more than that, a business like no other. The costs involved in bringing a film to the screen, from conception to development to distribution to marketing are mind-boggling. Astronomical. Depending on what source you cite, this number may be up to $100 million.
Think about it: you can put up several office buildings for this amount.
You could put your money into stocks, bonds, annuities for a more secure investment.
You could build and incorporate your own town!
Hollywood at any given time has the better part of ONE BILLION DOLLARS tied up in ‘development’. This means efforts to bring concepts, pitches and scripts to a point where they’re viable projects. The number of these projects that NEVER COME TO FRUITION would depress you. (I know it depresses me; I’m a screenwriter and so understand more intimately how the system works.)
So. Lots of money tied up, lots of money ‘wasted’, enormous risk, lots of failure…
Is it any wonder that Hollywood has a tendency to go with remakes, rehashes and ripoffs? Television tie-ins. Adaptations from the theatre? Video game, graphic novel connections?
It’s looking for ways to increase the odds of success.
(As a sidebar, the argument involving remakes of foreign films is a simple enough one to make: American audience by and large are not sufficiently interested in things-foreign. Now, before you get all red-faced and start screaming at me, a) I know there are exceptions. ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ is a recent example of how the US audience can embrace something from ‘out there’. And b) I know not everyone is myopic, that there are all kinds of people who support their local art house cinema, and that it is a generalization to say that the American audience is looking for…how shall I put it, less ‘refined faire’. But Hollywood runs its business on these generalizations. It’s how it projects its efforts. And can you blame them? When it costs as much as it does to take a stab at getting a film out there, of course they’re going to take the safe road. MOST of the time.)
And remember: where Hollywood is concerned, the only vote that matters is that of the dollar. If it sees more tickets being bought for a certain type of film, even a certain genre, then it’ll tend to put more money into making more of these films. So an effective way of ‘protesting the crap’ is going to see those movies you would prefer to be watching."
In fairness, the world has changed since the days of yore youlook back on. (And as a sidebar, most people don’t see movies in the same light as ‘us’. Just as many people are not passionate about good novels and many people (myself included, despite having a tremendous history of concert-going) are not live-music fans, many people do not consider going to the movies as ‘special’ as we here do. And that’s a very, very important point to keep in mind.) Even going back as recently as thirty years ago, movies had cachet. There simply wasn’t that much around to compete with them for the top tier of entertainment. (And when I say ‘entertainment’, I’m referring to anything that provides pleasure or distraction. Let’s not get highbrow or subjective here…) No DVDs. No Internet. (Therefore no online gambling, no porn, no blogging, no news services…) No MP3s. No video games. Go back fifty years and the movies had even more status. So we’re talking about being in love with these gorgeous churches, these cathedrals, when people have, to a large extent, moved on to home worship, or take in online broadcasts from their religious leaders, etc. (Sorry if the analogy doesn’t hold as well as I’d like.)
But Chris, you didn’t really answer your own question!
: )
You posed it, but then waxed nostalgic and bemoaned the current state of affairs. Which I believe is a very accurate summation of the status quo, and gets away from all other opinions and side-arguments: why should people continue to frequent cinemas at such high costs when they can invest in a home system that also allows them to see films they’d never see at their local nabe, palace or multiplex, as well as watching pay-per-view sports and concerts, cable, yadda, yadda, yadda, on the same system? This isn’t a battle won or lost in one fell swoop. It’s being won by degree.
Or to put it another way, for the cinema-going tradition, it’s ‘death by a thousand cuts’.
So to return to Chris' question, if you think product is so important a factor: ‘How do we get better product into the cinemas?’
The problem is that the ‘crap’ sells. So they book the screens for what sells.
In a great marketplace, serving a broad range of tastes, those 32 screens would show 32 different movies. But I don’t know of that marketplace.
Although… I’m looking at the movie guide for Toronto for next week…and there’s an absolute abbondanza of titles. Maybe I’m more fortunate than I realized.
Let’s take a look at that. What we’re addressing in this thread is a cinema chain trying to get people back into the cinemas as opposed to laying down big dinare for home theatres. But do you think that the people who are cocooning at home are then buying/renting more esoteric faire? Do you think that they’re passing over the kind of films you’re proposing is the problem and going with the sort of thing that should be made? Like ‘Sideways’ or ‘Eternal Sunshine’ or ‘Kinky Boots’?
I agree that there’s a lot to be ashamed of in terms of what Hollywood offers up. But no industry keeps making what it makes unless it’s selling. So somebody’s buying it. (I’m not defending it; I’m a screenwriter and I definitely don’t write the kind of MBA-driven schlock you’re referring to. But then executives in Tinseltown aren’t paid to ‘greenlight’ projects. They’re paid to protect the studio’s money and say ‘No.’)
So I guess the question, if you believe that product is part of the problem, is ‘How do we get better product into the cinemas?’
So here’s an informal ‘assignment’, seeing as it’s such a pain to wait for someone else to do a poll: ask ten people why they’re regular movie-goers. Or, if they’re not, why not? Think about it: if we had a hundred people on this site take ten minutes to do this, we’d have 1000 respondents. Not scientifically certifiable, but at least an indicator of Why Things Are The Way They Are in the world of movie-going. Especially if we get answers from all over the continent.
BTW: does anyone know how the official society of cinema owners and film exhibitors feels about the state of affairs in moviedom?
Great list. This is exactly what I think the industry needs to do. It’s one of the reasons the Festival group in Toronto is -seemingly- going under: a lack of focus on the market and not being proactive in making the cinema a cornerstone of the community. Cinemas have to take the lead themselves.
And as for the Commodore… It’s a fantastic place. To watch a film at your table while you eat…or simply munching popcorn in the balcony…is a superb experience. These guys are a model that should be examined by many cinemas in North America. It might not work for all, but it shows creativity, it shows initiative…the very aspects your list promotes. Kudos to them. (And I hope you get a chance to take in a show there, sometime.)
Point taken.
Check out: /theaters/1600/
And note the prices. Very reasonable. (And a terrific experience!)
But I don’t think that the average movie-goer is interested in shelling out more money. I hate to sound like a nay-sayer, but I think the perceived value of the ‘big screen experience’ has been reduced. And when something has been reduced, it’s very hard to get back the value. Which is why this ad campaign is a shot in the dark. But still admirable, if only to show that someone’s aware of the bigger picture.
I would love to see a round-table discussion with a) movie-goers, b) cinema owners and c) Hollywood represented. And talk about some of these issues.
Here are a couple of points that occurred to me after reading the previous posts:
-the irony of how avid movie-goers staying home because of a dearth of desired product will actually dilute revenues. (More of the total income from movies, regardless of source, will be from DVD sales.) So here we have people who are the bedrock of the industry (the equivalent of your local bar’s ‘regulars’) who would LOVE to see more movies…but they’re effectively being shunned because those in control don’t understand their audience.
-I don’t dispute ‘overscreening’ at all. It makes sense that it’s happened. My hometown lost two downtown single-screeners; they were replaced with a six-plex. All the other downtown cinemas have closed. They’ve been replaced by Godknowshowmany screens on the periphery of the city. So now, yes, I’d agree it’s overscreened. But this should come as no surprise to anyone; a business, any business, wants to have the lowest costs possible, hopefully resulting in the highest profits. If you’ve got eight kicks at the can instead of one, by hedging your bets, you’ve got a better chance of turning a profit.
-there’s little you can do about the product that’s being shown..other than to make sure you keep buying what you like. And you spread the word so that others go see these flicks. If something sells, studios make more like it. If it’s a niche champ, then maybe more will get made, maybe not. Again, sales rule. As far as what your local cinema shows, the owners don’t know anything other than ticket sales…unless you tell them. Teen flicks have ruled for the last thirty years, at least in the summer. Thank ‘Star Wars’ for that. This is another reason for home cinemas to be booming. You can access so much via DVD, and as DVD release dates become closer to theatrical ones, people won’t be bemoaning the lack of choice at the local cinema. (There actually is a lot of product out there for discriminating tastes, but unless you have a local nabe that is well-supported, generally these films don’t get a chance. I can think of two cinemas that are in touch with their audiences, and each community has various multiplexes as well, so it’s not like they’re anomalies: /theaters/2433/ /theaters/1762/
-As far as staff goes, I seldom come in contact with anyone in a cinema who has any sort of passion, who is excited about the fact they’re working in a business that provides people pleasure. I’m not old enough to remember the ‘good old days’, but jeez, you’d think that somebody somewhere in management would understand that they’re selling an experience to the customer. If cinema owners want people to be ‘regulars’, then they need to step back and understand their role. Blaming ‘product’ is a cop-out, an abrogation of their responsibilities. Shame on them. (Ironically, some of the best service I’ve received has been at multiplexes…the bane of many on this site…)
No, actually, in this particular case, it’s not a question of ‘product’.
This is the whole basis of this article, of this thread, of this discussion.
Let’s put it this way: You’re a retailer. You sell XYZ. You have for years. All of a sudden, there’s this newfangled way for people to purchase XYZ, called The Internet. They can buy XYZ cheaper than you can sell it. It’s not that they’re interested in another product. They simply prefer to purchase it online. They don’t have to schedule their time, they don’t have to pay for gas, they don’t have to worry about anything other than placing the order online.
This is an analogy that’s a parallel for the movies. It’s not that people are clamouring for different product, product that can’t be provided by cinemas. It’s the same product…only they’re not enjoying it in the theatres…they’re enjoying it in their homes.
Can you not see this?
This isn’t a question of box office receipts because I think you should be careful when you bring up these numbers in isolation. Firstly, Box Office Dollars do not equate to Tickets Bought. Take a look at the figures over the past ten years taking into consderation an ever-enlarging population as well as ticket price increases and then we can talk. Secondly, you need to look at how much ‘alternate’ revenues are increasing. If your revenue pie is growing (and nobody’s arguing that it isn’t), but a greater percentage of growth is being found in something other than ‘theatrical distribution revenue’, then you need to admit that the market is changing. And not in the same way it did with the advent of tv and people began staying away from nabes, when we saw a very dramatic, very sad closing of cinemas in the 50s. And not in the same way we did when we saw the advent of VCRs and the multiplex. This is a sea change…and we’re only at the very leading edge of it.
People have more choices these days. More choices in how to get their entertainment, how to see the movies they want to see. And the trend for home-viewing is increasing. Which is why a major cinema chain has decided to try to stem the tide and get people to see what they believe is the truth: that movies were never intended to be seen on small boxes.
But here’s the thing: movie theatre owners are at fault to a much greater extent for their woes than they’ve been willing to admit. They don’t control the product. But they do control the experience. And what people are telling them -by way of not going to the movies as much (and keep in mind here that you have to take into account the expanding population base, that ticket sales should actually be higher than they are, if longtime goers were still buying tickets at the same rate) as well as investing in home cinemas- is that it’s too expensive to go see movies at the cinema. And there are too many boors in the audience who talk and have phones that go off who aren’t dealt with. So people -generally a materialistic group in the first place- are choosing to buy something for their home rather than continually shell out $$$ for a potentially disappointing experience at a cinema. One of the few drawbacks for them is having to wait for the release. However…at the risk of flogging a dead horse…as the studios see more and more of the revenue pie coming from DVD sales, the lag-time between theatrical release and DVD release will be reduced. Until there will come a day (how soon this will be determined by the marketplace) when cinemas will no longer be the primary means of release. Opening Day/Weekend BO numbers will include DVD sales. More and more people will be choosing to view a new release in their home rather than go to a cinema. The landscape is changing, regardless of traditionalists such as yourself might want to believe.
What this will mean is a reduction in screen numbers.
Less cinemas.
And certainly less ‘cinema treasures’.
Until there comes a time when people crave that ‘big screen experience’ again.
But once you’ve closed a door, it’s very hard to get people thinking another way. Look at drive-ins.
Hollywood doesn’t care where it gets its revenue from. It’s not married to cinemas. It’s part of the tradition of film, yes. But it’s not dependent on movies being shown in a theatrical venue. It’s only dependent on making money. On bsns.
As for my ‘credentials’… Don’t think for a second that because you’ve spent your time in the biz that automatically gifts you with insight and knowledge. I’m reminded of two expressions: ‘Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees,’ and ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see.’
So; see you in fifteen years to sort out my proposed bet.
My point is ‘Which cinemas do you think are going to go under as a result of closings due to 'over-screening’? It surely won’t be the multiplexes. It’ll be just like it is in Toronto, with either four or five of the Festival chain going under a quartet of theatres listed right here on this site, great old nabes. That’s simple ‘bsns’ logic. The multiplexes, the creatures that everyone loves to slam, but actually by and large offer up the best experience for the customer (cleanliness, reliability, choice), are the ones that are positioned to survive. It’s going to be a simple question of ‘How do we do it? VOLUME!’
Quite frankly I find the mud you sling at multiplexes to be quite humourous; you seemingly believe in the marketplace sorting itself out , and yet the multiplex is a great example of this: it’s simply bsns evolution. (And no, I’m not ‘new to the bsns’. I’ve been going to movies for over forty years, and I grew up in a neighbourhood that had both a nabe and a drive-in within a five-minute walk. I’ve seen just about everything unfold over that time, having lived on two continents and in three countries, having seen many beloved cinemas close and revel in the Unlimited card in the UK as mentioned in a previous post, above.)
The bottom line is that it’ll primarily be more of the cinema treasures that you revere that go out of business, not your despised multiplexes as ‘over-screening’ is sorted out by the marketplace. Which is why I think we need to have greater discussion as to ‘Why?’, not more derisive comments aimed at an aspect of presentation that simply isn’t going to go away. It’s not like anyone is going to be building single-screen palaces again, are they…?
So if you feel this way, if you think that the US is ‘over-screened’, and won’t (apparently) cry when more cinemas close…what are you doing on this site? Or are your that famous superhero ‘Ultrapragmatic Guy’?!?
I think I’m gonna have a t-shirt made up: a picture of an old palace being demolished with the caption ‘The fact that theaters are closing is a good thing…’
Wowza.
And ‘back to showmanship’; care to explain that? I can’t tell you how much my curiosity’s been piqued…
“The digital movie era is only beginning. It is in some ways a replay of the first shake-out of movie theaters in the 1950s when TV and urban flight was the threat. But this shakeout will happen over a shorter period of time.”
I agree completely.
I also agree that what we will more than likely end up with is (until nostalgia rears its kind head and there’s some kind of ‘revival’ some tweny years after the full effects of this shakeup and we see ‘restoration’ efforts to bring back the old-style experience) a small assortment of multiplexes and the odd ‘cinema treasure’ palace in most cities throughout North America. I’m sorry if I’m a Negative Nancy here, but I fear that the landscape we’ve come to know (and love, on this site alone) is about to change in the next decade unlike any previously. And not because nobody’s interested in movies anymore, that there’s another alternative. People are just as interested in movies. Except they’re gonna want to see them in their homes. Not everyone, but it doesn’t take ‘everyone’ to change things. It all comes down to the mighty dollar.
So start buying your lottery tickets; there’s gonna be some bargains out there for those richies with the inclination to own a piece of the past.
And that’s wonderful news for all cinema owners out there…
But really, the true test of this campaign -and any other that tries to woo people back into proper moviegoing- is how those other than the choir respond to being preached to.
I’d be curious to post this thread on a general discussion forum to see how broad the responses are.
“I have a home theater with the seats ,screen and curtain but what that takes away is time from watching tv not going to the movies.”
You are the exception to the rule. You’re not a model for the movie-goer that this campaign -and this discussion- addresses. They’re -and I’m- focusing on those people who by-and-large have decided or are deciding to make home cinema their default. This is not about watching tv.
(If it’s any consolation, I’m not the model, either, because I don’t own a television, wouldn’t watch movies on one if you paid me, and I see about 200 films at the cinemas each year.)
Yes, theatres will be around long after we’re gone. People do crave the communal experience, no matter how much they love their home schtick. Concerts, the theatre, sporting events, beaches, even malls prove that people at their cores crave something ‘larger’. Very little has changed since the days of the Romans at the Coliseum or Shakespeare’s offerings at The Globe.
So yes, theatres will be around long after we’re gone.
But there’s gonna be far less of them.
And the listings on this site of ‘Closed’ or ‘Demolished’ will only increase.
Substantially.
I appreciate your optimism. I do. And I admire it. I was there when VCRs came on the scene. And I remember how the industry screamed about home-taping, yadda, yadda, yadda.
But seriously; if you really can’t see the landscape having changed markedly with the advent of the internet, with iPods, with DVDs and with home systems…changed sufficiently to be able to recognize that this time, things have been accellerated far more than when VCRs came onto the scene…
Tell you what; let’s make a point of getting together in fifteen years to talk about this. And if things haven’t unfolded pretty much as I’ve set out, then I’ll be more than happy to buy you an evening’s worth of entertainment at whichever movie palace you wish, wherever. Including extra butter on your popcorn.
I don’t mean to be rude, but you’ve posted two comments in a row that suggest you don’t get it. WalMart is a fixed business where they’re in competition with the same essential model. Movie houses are in competition with something else entirely. It’s like comparing apples with apple juice. ((The exception here is online retailing, but we’re not talking an homogenous market. That is, not everyone has internet access, not everyone feels safe ordering online and many people prefer to see what they buy, have an innate urge to maintain their connection to ‘commerce’. This is why where online grocery shopping is available, people still want to ‘squeeze the vegetables’, ‘smell the fruit’. The other difference is that WalMart sells merchandise that generally fits more under the ‘Need’ category. A movie is a ‘Want’. It’s a luxury.)
WalMart is selling merchandise out of a location. Its variables are merchandise selection and variety, price, saleshelp, hours of operation, location, etc. They’re all -to varying extents- variable controllables, things that all other competitors are dealing with, too.
Movie theatres are ‘selling’ a cinematic experience. The seeing of a movie within a communal auditorium, with comfortable seats and concession stand items. But the prime reason that anyone goes to see a movie…the movie itself…is not a particularly controllable variable. There’s only so many choices from the distributors. And here’s the kicker: the movie theatres don’t even see ticket sales as their real source of profit: concession stand sales account for this. The price of which is right up there at the top of movie-goers' List of Complaints, people who have entered into their own personal deliberations about whether or not they want to keep spending money going to the movies at cinemas.
In ‘competition’ with the movie theatres is home viewing. Where there’s convenience. View when you like, pause the film, watch half tonight, half tomorrow in the afternoon, you can have dinner while you watch, you can chat with someone online while you watch, you can make babies while you watch…
North American society has become a cocooning one. People are making their homes their refuges, their sanctuaries. For many of these people, the experience of watching a movie in a cinema simply does not match the price or commitment of time. (Points well-made by DFC)
Take a look at any city’s cinema figures since WWII. The numbers of cinemas, of screens are dropping. Even with multiplexes being built, the number is dropping. This runs totally contrary to what you’re suggesting, that this is just part of a normal business trend, that things will change back given time, the sky isn’t falling…
Actually, the sky is falling.
Here’s the bottom-line: the studios, Hollywood, The Movie Biz people, they don’t care how they get their money. If the yearly income they bring in were to stay the same from 1990-2020, say at $30 billion, or even increase, but the sources of that income changed from 95% theatrical takings to 5% theatrical takings, do you think they’d care? If over the course of this 30 years the advent of home viewing (by way of the ‘cinematic tv’ and online access) replaced theatrical distribution, do you really think they’d care? Why should they, if they’re recouping their investment as planned, and people are just as eager to ‘go to the movies’…except their destination is not a cinema, with all of its inherent costs and commitments, but the ‘movie room’ in their home…as they ever were?
So this is what’s happening: more and more people are investing in home cinemas. As a result, having made this investment, they’re not frequenting movie houses as much. Therefore, there’s less movie house ticket revenue to go around. Therefore, cinemas are closing. (Witness the Festival chain in Toronto.) So we continually lose more cinemas, especially single-screeners. And because the costs of exhibiting a movie generally go up, people are less and less inclined to pay more to see movies at the remaining movie theatres, so more stay home and more cinemas close…until?
Until?
How do you turn the tide? Well, I’m a pronounced cinema fan and I’m not sure you can. I think you can stem it, but to do so, you have to go back to ground zero and take an objective look at the realities of how the average movie-goer feels about what’s being sold. What their complaints are. Whether they can be addressed. The truth is that it’s expensive to go the movies. The cost of getting there. The tickets. The food and drink. The babysitter. If the movie theatres are not providing an experience that makes this expenditure worthwhile, and people are content with an alternative (ie: home viewing), regardless that at the present time, you have to wait a few months before you can see a film, then more people will make the choice to have their movie experience at home. (Of course, if Hollywood continually erodes this ‘delay’, to the point where there’s mere weeks…or days…or there’s a simultaneous release, both theatrical and DVD, then you can bet your bottom dollar that less and less people will be going to the movies…and less and less movie houses will exist.)
This is why I’d like to see some healthy discussion as to what can be done to stem the tide, take a good look at what needs to be done across the board and in specific markets to get people more interested in seeing films the way they were meant to be seen. On the big screen.
Famous Players Canadian Corporation was founded in 1920 when Paramount Pictures bought Nathan Nathanson’s Paramount Theatre chain that was established four years earlier. The Canadian Paramount Theatre chain was not affiliated with the American Paramount Theatres. The Famous Players Theatres chain was always strongly linked with Paramount Pictures and was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Paramount Communications by the time that firm was acquired by Viacom in 1994.
Canadian Odeon Theatres was started by former Famous Players executive Nathan Nathanson and his son Paul in 1941. It was not initially affiliated with the British Odeon Cinemas circuit but gained common ownership with that chain following a sale to the Rank Organisation in 1946.
On April 19, 1979, Garth Drabinsky opened the first Cineplex location, an 18-screen multiplex in the basement of the Toronto Eaton Centre. After successfully challenging the Famous Players / Canadian Odeon duopoly and their exclusive contracts with major studios, he proceeded to purchase Canadian Odeon, having brought on the Bronfman family as a major investor, forming Cineplex Odeon Corporation. There was once again a duopoly, albeit a much more competitive one.
In the 1980s, not content with having lept from one location to dozens across the country, Drabinsky began buying up regional circuits throughout the United States, which took the Cineplex Odeon Theatres name as well. Back in Canada, Drabinsky used his new position to aggressively challenge Famous Players Theatres , opening more, ultramodern multiplexes nationwide.
Most famously, Famous Players Theatres allowed the lease on a property containing the entrance of one of its flagship Toronto locations, the Imperial Six, to lapse in 1986. Cineplex immediately took over the lease, denying Famous Players Theatres access to the portion the latter chain already owned outright. Famous eventually sold its property to Cineplex Odeon Cinemas on the condition it never again be used to show filmed entertainment; it became the Pantages, now renamed the live-entertainment Canon Theatre.
Cineplex also established a distribution unit, Cineplex Odeon Films, during this period; its assets were largely sold to Alliance Atlantis in 1998.
Throughout the 1990s, Famous Players took the reins of expansion. Under chairman Tom McGrath, Famous Players re-built its entire infrastructure from 1997 to 2003 with new “megaplex” stadium-seated theaters and extensive innovative food court offerings. It was also believed to be the first exhibitor in the world to have automated box offices.
Also during this time, AMC Theatres entered the Canadian market, and most of the traditional ties between the existing chains and the major studios began to unwind, putting all three chains in full-on competition in several major markets.
By May 1998, Drabinsky had lost control of Cineplex to the Bronfmans' Seagram, which subsequently merged Cineplex Odeon Theatres with Sony’s Loews Cineplex Theatres. The resulting firm, Loews Cineplex Entertainment, subsequently suffered due to the economic recession of the early 2000s, leading to a buyout led by Onex.
Meanwhile, Galaxy Entertainment Inc. was created in 1999 by Ellis Jacob, a former COO of Cineplex, and Steven Brown, a former Cineplex CFO. With investments from Onex and Famous Players, the new company focused on smaller markets which were usually served by smaller theatres and old equipment, opening large, major chain-style locations under the Galaxy Cinemas banner.
In October 2003, Loews Cineplex Theatres merged its Canadian operations with Galaxy Cinemas , forming Cineplex Galaxy Cinemas. Mr. Jacob became the chief executive of Cineplex Galaxy Cinemas. Onex was the controllng shareholder of both Loews Cineplex Theatres and Galaxy Cinemas at the time of the merger, but sold its interest in Loews in June 2004. It maintained control of Cineplex Galaxy Cinemas.
In 2004, Famous Players Theatres locations in the Maritimes, none of which were branded-concept theatres, were sold to the region’s dominant exhibitor, Empire Theatres. Canadian Odeon locations in the region had been sold to Empire in the late 1970s or early 1980s, prior to the former’s acquisition by Cineplex Odeon Cinemas.
On June 13, 2005, Cineplex Galaxy Cinemas announced its acquisition of Famous Players Theatres from Viacom for $500 million or about US$397 million. This deal was completed July 22. To satisfy competition concerns, on August 22 the sale of 27 locations in Ontario and western Canada to Empire Theatres was announced.
On March 31, 2006, Cineplex Entertainment announced it sold 7 more theatres in Quebec to Chelsea based Fortune Cinemas Inc. The assets of Alliance Atlantis Cinemas are still on sale.
(Thanks to the happy drones at Wikipedia for this.)
And no, I don’t think this will have any impact at all on attendance. Sheeple think -Ha!– in terms of the movie, not the venue, so the downward spiral will continue, until, years down the road, there enter the scene renegade projectionists who show movies on the sides of buildings in the middle of the night, providing the sound by way of podcasts, only to be beaten down by the Home Theatre Alliance by way of their armed WIAH (“Watch It At Home') enforcers.
You’re right, it is ironic. But even before anything they opened in LA, Drabinsky (in whose company I used to hold stock) opened the now-gone Eaton Centre Cineplex in downtown Toronto, regarded as the first true multiplex. Over the years I’d seen films in all of the 21 ‘auditoriums’, the smallest hardly bigger than a typical home’s bathroom.
But you know, I’m struck by this fact: the same snobbery that keeps many people from cinemas and at home, watching movies on little(er) boxes, is found in comments about ‘smaller’ cinemas. And I don’t think I’d ever made the connection previously.
Don’t get me wrong: I love a HUGE screen in a HUGE auditorium. But maybe I’m a completely different creature than some/most on this site: I love going to the movies, I love walking through the front doors of any cinema because that’s where the magic is shown. What makes any movie house special is this fact. It’s not necessarily the history of a place, although I am in love with this aspect, hence my membership here. It’s not necessarily the grandeur and size of a place, although I’ve frequented some of the GTA’s largest cinemas and have always wanted to do a road tour of the biggest in the US. And it’s not even the technical aspects of a place, although I do appreciate when I’m being spoiled by the best. My grin begins with finding out about a new movie. It increases when I download (and save) the trailer. And is sustained when I’m finally on my way to the show, then I approach the theatre (regardless what type of place), when I can first smell the popcorn, when I choose my seat, when I settle in, even when I’m watching the ‘pre-show show’, until I’m nodding to myself when the show actually begins.
So maybe, maybe I’m actually not like a lot of people here. Yes, I love ‘cinema treasures’. I adore old movie houses. But perhaps it’s that I have these other parallel loves: film itself (I see roughly 200 films a year) and the ATTENDANCE of films. I suppose with three times as many reasons to want to pay my money to see a film, I’m a little apart from the ‘discriminating’ poster on this site who turns up their nose at the idea of smaller-screend multiplexes. Something for me to keep in mind when jabs are made at ‘shoebox theatres’.
Long live all movie houses! And more power to Cineplex. I hope that all chains take the torch and run with it, both reminding the public that movies were meant to be seen on a large screen…and hopefully doing something about their product, which is not the films they show, but the experience of seeing these films, a fact that many have forgotten.
And as a final note, take a look at this as a suggestion as to how to get more people into cinemas, therefore helping the prospect of stemming the tide of closures:
Fair enough. I’ve been having an ongoing discussion with a friend who simply does not frequent movie houses. He watches just about everything at home. Only a ways into our conversation did I find out that he has a ten-foot projection system with state-of-the-art sound. (He’s in the film biz in sound editing.) All fine and good, I can’t argue with a person’s preference. However… To me, watching a film on a 32" tv is like listening to a symphony by Mozart on a transistor radio. Add to this my feeling that if you can pause it, it has no value. (Which is why being at a game will always be a more intense experience than watching it at home, in a bar, etc. Now, give me the chance to watch a championship game in a cinema…)
The cinematic experience is singular to me. To a great extent, I don’t really care if it’s an old nabe, a multiplex, a grand single-screener I’m munching on my popcorn at… I love ‘worshipping’ in a cathedral of cinema, plain and simple. So I’m happy to see this ad campaign, which addresses something the film companies really haven’t done diddly about: getting people back into the theatres for the ‘BIG’ experience.
I’m tempted to ask the questions: ‘Why does someone go to see a film in a cinema? What makes avid filmgoers see the releases when they come out? Why do they make this choice and not the one to stay home and catch the film howevermanymonthsitis after theatrical release?’
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…
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?
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.
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.
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.
I’m going to throw this up for consideration because we seem to be focusing on the product as an answer to cinema-going woes. It’s something I’d posted elsewhere having to do with the question ‘Why are there so many remakes, rehashings and sequels?’
“Hollywood is a business. Show BUSINESS. It’s art, no doubt about it, but first and foremost, what you see on the screen is a commercial product. But more than that, a business like no other. The costs involved in bringing a film to the screen, from conception to development to distribution to marketing are mind-boggling. Astronomical. Depending on what source you cite, this number may be up to $100 million.
Think about it: you can put up several office buildings for this amount.
You could put your money into stocks, bonds, annuities for a more secure investment.
You could build and incorporate your own town!
Hollywood at any given time has the better part of ONE BILLION DOLLARS tied up in ‘development’. This means efforts to bring concepts, pitches and scripts to a point where they’re viable projects. The number of these projects that NEVER COME TO FRUITION would depress you. (I know it depresses me; I’m a screenwriter and so understand more intimately how the system works.)
So. Lots of money tied up, lots of money ‘wasted’, enormous risk, lots of failure…
Is it any wonder that Hollywood has a tendency to go with remakes, rehashes and ripoffs? Television tie-ins. Adaptations from the theatre? Video game, graphic novel connections?
It’s looking for ways to increase the odds of success.
(As a sidebar, the argument involving remakes of foreign films is a simple enough one to make: American audience by and large are not sufficiently interested in things-foreign. Now, before you get all red-faced and start screaming at me, a) I know there are exceptions. ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ is a recent example of how the US audience can embrace something from ‘out there’. And b) I know not everyone is myopic, that there are all kinds of people who support their local art house cinema, and that it is a generalization to say that the American audience is looking for…how shall I put it, less ‘refined faire’. But Hollywood runs its business on these generalizations. It’s how it projects its efforts. And can you blame them? When it costs as much as it does to take a stab at getting a film out there, of course they’re going to take the safe road. MOST of the time.)
Hence all the tv show remakes.
And the sequels.
And the adaptations from foreign originals.
Any chance of increasing the odds, of tapping into a built-in audience, Hollywood will go there. Trying new and dangerous and challenging things is not their forté.
And remember: where Hollywood is concerned, the only vote that matters is that of the dollar. If it sees more tickets being bought for a certain type of film, even a certain genre, then it’ll tend to put more money into making more of these films. So an effective way of ‘protesting the crap’ is going to see those movies you would prefer to be watching."
In fairness, the world has changed since the days of yore youlook back on. (And as a sidebar, most people don’t see movies in the same light as ‘us’. Just as many people are not passionate about good novels and many people (myself included, despite having a tremendous history of concert-going) are not live-music fans, many people do not consider going to the movies as ‘special’ as we here do. And that’s a very, very important point to keep in mind.) Even going back as recently as thirty years ago, movies had cachet. There simply wasn’t that much around to compete with them for the top tier of entertainment. (And when I say ‘entertainment’, I’m referring to anything that provides pleasure or distraction. Let’s not get highbrow or subjective here…) No DVDs. No Internet. (Therefore no online gambling, no porn, no blogging, no news services…) No MP3s. No video games. Go back fifty years and the movies had even more status. So we’re talking about being in love with these gorgeous churches, these cathedrals, when people have, to a large extent, moved on to home worship, or take in online broadcasts from their religious leaders, etc. (Sorry if the analogy doesn’t hold as well as I’d like.)
But Chris, you didn’t really answer your own question!
: )
You posed it, but then waxed nostalgic and bemoaned the current state of affairs. Which I believe is a very accurate summation of the status quo, and gets away from all other opinions and side-arguments: why should people continue to frequent cinemas at such high costs when they can invest in a home system that also allows them to see films they’d never see at their local nabe, palace or multiplex, as well as watching pay-per-view sports and concerts, cable, yadda, yadda, yadda, on the same system? This isn’t a battle won or lost in one fell swoop. It’s being won by degree.
Or to put it another way, for the cinema-going tradition, it’s ‘death by a thousand cuts’.
So to return to Chris' question, if you think product is so important a factor: ‘How do we get better product into the cinemas?’
Ron:
The problem is that the ‘crap’ sells. So they book the screens for what sells.
In a great marketplace, serving a broad range of tastes, those 32 screens would show 32 different movies. But I don’t know of that marketplace.
Although… I’m looking at the movie guide for Toronto for next week…and there’s an absolute abbondanza of titles. Maybe I’m more fortunate than I realized.
Mmm…
Let’s take a look at that. What we’re addressing in this thread is a cinema chain trying to get people back into the cinemas as opposed to laying down big dinare for home theatres. But do you think that the people who are cocooning at home are then buying/renting more esoteric faire? Do you think that they’re passing over the kind of films you’re proposing is the problem and going with the sort of thing that should be made? Like ‘Sideways’ or ‘Eternal Sunshine’ or ‘Kinky Boots’?
I agree that there’s a lot to be ashamed of in terms of what Hollywood offers up. But no industry keeps making what it makes unless it’s selling. So somebody’s buying it. (I’m not defending it; I’m a screenwriter and I definitely don’t write the kind of MBA-driven schlock you’re referring to. But then executives in Tinseltown aren’t paid to ‘greenlight’ projects. They’re paid to protect the studio’s money and say ‘No.’)
So I guess the question, if you believe that product is part of the problem, is ‘How do we get better product into the cinemas?’
So here’s an informal ‘assignment’, seeing as it’s such a pain to wait for someone else to do a poll: ask ten people why they’re regular movie-goers. Or, if they’re not, why not? Think about it: if we had a hundred people on this site take ten minutes to do this, we’d have 1000 respondents. Not scientifically certifiable, but at least an indicator of Why Things Are The Way They Are in the world of movie-going. Especially if we get answers from all over the continent.
BTW: does anyone know how the official society of cinema owners and film exhibitors feels about the state of affairs in moviedom?
longislandfilms:
Great list. This is exactly what I think the industry needs to do. It’s one of the reasons the Festival group in Toronto is -seemingly- going under: a lack of focus on the market and not being proactive in making the cinema a cornerstone of the community. Cinemas have to take the lead themselves.
And as for the Commodore… It’s a fantastic place. To watch a film at your table while you eat…or simply munching popcorn in the balcony…is a superb experience. These guys are a model that should be examined by many cinemas in North America. It might not work for all, but it shows creativity, it shows initiative…the very aspects your list promotes. Kudos to them. (And I hope you get a chance to take in a show there, sometime.)
DFC:
Point taken.
Check out: /theaters/1600/
And note the prices. Very reasonable. (And a terrific experience!)
But I don’t think that the average movie-goer is interested in shelling out more money. I hate to sound like a nay-sayer, but I think the perceived value of the ‘big screen experience’ has been reduced. And when something has been reduced, it’s very hard to get back the value. Which is why this ad campaign is a shot in the dark. But still admirable, if only to show that someone’s aware of the bigger picture.
I would love to see a round-table discussion with a) movie-goers, b) cinema owners and c) Hollywood represented. And talk about some of these issues.
Here are a couple of points that occurred to me after reading the previous posts:
-the irony of how avid movie-goers staying home because of a dearth of desired product will actually dilute revenues. (More of the total income from movies, regardless of source, will be from DVD sales.) So here we have people who are the bedrock of the industry (the equivalent of your local bar’s ‘regulars’) who would LOVE to see more movies…but they’re effectively being shunned because those in control don’t understand their audience.
-I don’t dispute ‘overscreening’ at all. It makes sense that it’s happened. My hometown lost two downtown single-screeners; they were replaced with a six-plex. All the other downtown cinemas have closed. They’ve been replaced by Godknowshowmany screens on the periphery of the city. So now, yes, I’d agree it’s overscreened. But this should come as no surprise to anyone; a business, any business, wants to have the lowest costs possible, hopefully resulting in the highest profits. If you’ve got eight kicks at the can instead of one, by hedging your bets, you’ve got a better chance of turning a profit.
-there’s little you can do about the product that’s being shown..other than to make sure you keep buying what you like. And you spread the word so that others go see these flicks. If something sells, studios make more like it. If it’s a niche champ, then maybe more will get made, maybe not. Again, sales rule. As far as what your local cinema shows, the owners don’t know anything other than ticket sales…unless you tell them. Teen flicks have ruled for the last thirty years, at least in the summer. Thank ‘Star Wars’ for that. This is another reason for home cinemas to be booming. You can access so much via DVD, and as DVD release dates become closer to theatrical ones, people won’t be bemoaning the lack of choice at the local cinema. (There actually is a lot of product out there for discriminating tastes, but unless you have a local nabe that is well-supported, generally these films don’t get a chance. I can think of two cinemas that are in touch with their audiences, and each community has various multiplexes as well, so it’s not like they’re anomalies:
/theaters/2433/
/theaters/1762/
-As far as staff goes, I seldom come in contact with anyone in a cinema who has any sort of passion, who is excited about the fact they’re working in a business that provides people pleasure. I’m not old enough to remember the ‘good old days’, but jeez, you’d think that somebody somewhere in management would understand that they’re selling an experience to the customer. If cinema owners want people to be ‘regulars’, then they need to step back and understand their role. Blaming ‘product’ is a cop-out, an abrogation of their responsibilities. Shame on them. (Ironically, some of the best service I’ve received has been at multiplexes…the bane of many on this site…)
No, actually, in this particular case, it’s not a question of ‘product’.
This is the whole basis of this article, of this thread, of this discussion.
Let’s put it this way: You’re a retailer. You sell XYZ. You have for years. All of a sudden, there’s this newfangled way for people to purchase XYZ, called The Internet. They can buy XYZ cheaper than you can sell it. It’s not that they’re interested in another product. They simply prefer to purchase it online. They don’t have to schedule their time, they don’t have to pay for gas, they don’t have to worry about anything other than placing the order online.
This is an analogy that’s a parallel for the movies. It’s not that people are clamouring for different product, product that can’t be provided by cinemas. It’s the same product…only they’re not enjoying it in the theatres…they’re enjoying it in their homes.
Can you not see this?
This isn’t a question of box office receipts because I think you should be careful when you bring up these numbers in isolation. Firstly, Box Office Dollars do not equate to Tickets Bought. Take a look at the figures over the past ten years taking into consderation an ever-enlarging population as well as ticket price increases and then we can talk. Secondly, you need to look at how much ‘alternate’ revenues are increasing. If your revenue pie is growing (and nobody’s arguing that it isn’t), but a greater percentage of growth is being found in something other than ‘theatrical distribution revenue’, then you need to admit that the market is changing. And not in the same way it did with the advent of tv and people began staying away from nabes, when we saw a very dramatic, very sad closing of cinemas in the 50s. And not in the same way we did when we saw the advent of VCRs and the multiplex. This is a sea change…and we’re only at the very leading edge of it.
People have more choices these days. More choices in how to get their entertainment, how to see the movies they want to see. And the trend for home-viewing is increasing. Which is why a major cinema chain has decided to try to stem the tide and get people to see what they believe is the truth: that movies were never intended to be seen on small boxes.
But here’s the thing: movie theatre owners are at fault to a much greater extent for their woes than they’ve been willing to admit. They don’t control the product. But they do control the experience. And what people are telling them -by way of not going to the movies as much (and keep in mind here that you have to take into account the expanding population base, that ticket sales should actually be higher than they are, if longtime goers were still buying tickets at the same rate) as well as investing in home cinemas- is that it’s too expensive to go see movies at the cinema. And there are too many boors in the audience who talk and have phones that go off who aren’t dealt with. So people -generally a materialistic group in the first place- are choosing to buy something for their home rather than continually shell out $$$ for a potentially disappointing experience at a cinema. One of the few drawbacks for them is having to wait for the release. However…at the risk of flogging a dead horse…as the studios see more and more of the revenue pie coming from DVD sales, the lag-time between theatrical release and DVD release will be reduced. Until there will come a day (how soon this will be determined by the marketplace) when cinemas will no longer be the primary means of release. Opening Day/Weekend BO numbers will include DVD sales. More and more people will be choosing to view a new release in their home rather than go to a cinema. The landscape is changing, regardless of traditionalists such as yourself might want to believe.
What this will mean is a reduction in screen numbers.
Less cinemas.
And certainly less ‘cinema treasures’.
Until there comes a time when people crave that ‘big screen experience’ again.
But once you’ve closed a door, it’s very hard to get people thinking another way. Look at drive-ins.
Hollywood doesn’t care where it gets its revenue from. It’s not married to cinemas. It’s part of the tradition of film, yes. But it’s not dependent on movies being shown in a theatrical venue. It’s only dependent on making money. On bsns.
As for my ‘credentials’… Don’t think for a second that because you’ve spent your time in the biz that automatically gifts you with insight and knowledge. I’m reminded of two expressions: ‘Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees,’ and ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see.’
So; see you in fifteen years to sort out my proposed bet.
My point is ‘Which cinemas do you think are going to go under as a result of closings due to 'over-screening’? It surely won’t be the multiplexes. It’ll be just like it is in Toronto, with either four or five of the Festival chain going under a quartet of theatres listed right here on this site, great old nabes. That’s simple ‘bsns’ logic. The multiplexes, the creatures that everyone loves to slam, but actually by and large offer up the best experience for the customer (cleanliness, reliability, choice), are the ones that are positioned to survive. It’s going to be a simple question of ‘How do we do it? VOLUME!’
Quite frankly I find the mud you sling at multiplexes to be quite humourous; you seemingly believe in the marketplace sorting itself out , and yet the multiplex is a great example of this: it’s simply bsns evolution. (And no, I’m not ‘new to the bsns’. I’ve been going to movies for over forty years, and I grew up in a neighbourhood that had both a nabe and a drive-in within a five-minute walk. I’ve seen just about everything unfold over that time, having lived on two continents and in three countries, having seen many beloved cinemas close and revel in the Unlimited card in the UK as mentioned in a previous post, above.)
The bottom line is that it’ll primarily be more of the cinema treasures that you revere that go out of business, not your despised multiplexes as ‘over-screening’ is sorted out by the marketplace. Which is why I think we need to have greater discussion as to ‘Why?’, not more derisive comments aimed at an aspect of presentation that simply isn’t going to go away. It’s not like anyone is going to be building single-screen palaces again, are they…?
longislandmovies:
So if you feel this way, if you think that the US is ‘over-screened’, and won’t (apparently) cry when more cinemas close…what are you doing on this site? Or are your that famous superhero ‘Ultrapragmatic Guy’?!?
I think I’m gonna have a t-shirt made up: a picture of an old palace being demolished with the caption ‘The fact that theaters are closing is a good thing…’
Wowza.
And ‘back to showmanship’; care to explain that? I can’t tell you how much my curiosity’s been piqued…
“The digital movie era is only beginning. It is in some ways a replay of the first shake-out of movie theaters in the 1950s when TV and urban flight was the threat. But this shakeout will happen over a shorter period of time.”
I agree completely.
I also agree that what we will more than likely end up with is (until nostalgia rears its kind head and there’s some kind of ‘revival’ some tweny years after the full effects of this shakeup and we see ‘restoration’ efforts to bring back the old-style experience) a small assortment of multiplexes and the odd ‘cinema treasure’ palace in most cities throughout North America. I’m sorry if I’m a Negative Nancy here, but I fear that the landscape we’ve come to know (and love, on this site alone) is about to change in the next decade unlike any previously. And not because nobody’s interested in movies anymore, that there’s another alternative. People are just as interested in movies. Except they’re gonna want to see them in their homes. Not everyone, but it doesn’t take ‘everyone’ to change things. It all comes down to the mighty dollar.
So start buying your lottery tickets; there’s gonna be some bargains out there for those richies with the inclination to own a piece of the past.
Chris:
And that’s wonderful news for all cinema owners out there…
But really, the true test of this campaign -and any other that tries to woo people back into proper moviegoing- is how those other than the choir respond to being preached to.
I’d be curious to post this thread on a general discussion forum to see how broad the responses are.
btw, longislandmovies:
“I have a home theater with the seats ,screen and curtain but what that takes away is time from watching tv not going to the movies.”
You are the exception to the rule. You’re not a model for the movie-goer that this campaign -and this discussion- addresses. They’re -and I’m- focusing on those people who by-and-large have decided or are deciding to make home cinema their default. This is not about watching tv.
(If it’s any consolation, I’m not the model, either, because I don’t own a television, wouldn’t watch movies on one if you paid me, and I see about 200 films at the cinemas each year.)
Yes, theatres will be around long after we’re gone. People do crave the communal experience, no matter how much they love their home schtick. Concerts, the theatre, sporting events, beaches, even malls prove that people at their cores crave something ‘larger’. Very little has changed since the days of the Romans at the Coliseum or Shakespeare’s offerings at The Globe.
So yes, theatres will be around long after we’re gone.
But there’s gonna be far less of them.
And the listings on this site of ‘Closed’ or ‘Demolished’ will only increase.
Substantially.
I appreciate your optimism. I do. And I admire it. I was there when VCRs came on the scene. And I remember how the industry screamed about home-taping, yadda, yadda, yadda.
But seriously; if you really can’t see the landscape having changed markedly with the advent of the internet, with iPods, with DVDs and with home systems…changed sufficiently to be able to recognize that this time, things have been accellerated far more than when VCRs came onto the scene…
Tell you what; let’s make a point of getting together in fifteen years to talk about this. And if things haven’t unfolded pretty much as I’ve set out, then I’ll be more than happy to buy you an evening’s worth of entertainment at whichever movie palace you wish, wherever. Including extra butter on your popcorn.
longislandmovies:
I don’t mean to be rude, but you’ve posted two comments in a row that suggest you don’t get it. WalMart is a fixed business where they’re in competition with the same essential model. Movie houses are in competition with something else entirely. It’s like comparing apples with apple juice. ((The exception here is online retailing, but we’re not talking an homogenous market. That is, not everyone has internet access, not everyone feels safe ordering online and many people prefer to see what they buy, have an innate urge to maintain their connection to ‘commerce’. This is why where online grocery shopping is available, people still want to ‘squeeze the vegetables’, ‘smell the fruit’. The other difference is that WalMart sells merchandise that generally fits more under the ‘Need’ category. A movie is a ‘Want’. It’s a luxury.)
WalMart is selling merchandise out of a location. Its variables are merchandise selection and variety, price, saleshelp, hours of operation, location, etc. They’re all -to varying extents- variable controllables, things that all other competitors are dealing with, too.
Movie theatres are ‘selling’ a cinematic experience. The seeing of a movie within a communal auditorium, with comfortable seats and concession stand items. But the prime reason that anyone goes to see a movie…the movie itself…is not a particularly controllable variable. There’s only so many choices from the distributors. And here’s the kicker: the movie theatres don’t even see ticket sales as their real source of profit: concession stand sales account for this. The price of which is right up there at the top of movie-goers' List of Complaints, people who have entered into their own personal deliberations about whether or not they want to keep spending money going to the movies at cinemas.
In ‘competition’ with the movie theatres is home viewing. Where there’s convenience. View when you like, pause the film, watch half tonight, half tomorrow in the afternoon, you can have dinner while you watch, you can chat with someone online while you watch, you can make babies while you watch…
North American society has become a cocooning one. People are making their homes their refuges, their sanctuaries. For many of these people, the experience of watching a movie in a cinema simply does not match the price or commitment of time. (Points well-made by DFC)
Take a look at any city’s cinema figures since WWII. The numbers of cinemas, of screens are dropping. Even with multiplexes being built, the number is dropping. This runs totally contrary to what you’re suggesting, that this is just part of a normal business trend, that things will change back given time, the sky isn’t falling…
Actually, the sky is falling.
Here’s the bottom-line: the studios, Hollywood, The Movie Biz people, they don’t care how they get their money. If the yearly income they bring in were to stay the same from 1990-2020, say at $30 billion, or even increase, but the sources of that income changed from 95% theatrical takings to 5% theatrical takings, do you think they’d care? If over the course of this 30 years the advent of home viewing (by way of the ‘cinematic tv’ and online access) replaced theatrical distribution, do you really think they’d care? Why should they, if they’re recouping their investment as planned, and people are just as eager to ‘go to the movies’…except their destination is not a cinema, with all of its inherent costs and commitments, but the ‘movie room’ in their home…as they ever were?
So this is what’s happening: more and more people are investing in home cinemas. As a result, having made this investment, they’re not frequenting movie houses as much. Therefore, there’s less movie house ticket revenue to go around. Therefore, cinemas are closing. (Witness the Festival chain in Toronto.) So we continually lose more cinemas, especially single-screeners. And because the costs of exhibiting a movie generally go up, people are less and less inclined to pay more to see movies at the remaining movie theatres, so more stay home and more cinemas close…until?
Until?
How do you turn the tide? Well, I’m a pronounced cinema fan and I’m not sure you can. I think you can stem it, but to do so, you have to go back to ground zero and take an objective look at the realities of how the average movie-goer feels about what’s being sold. What their complaints are. Whether they can be addressed. The truth is that it’s expensive to go the movies. The cost of getting there. The tickets. The food and drink. The babysitter. If the movie theatres are not providing an experience that makes this expenditure worthwhile, and people are content with an alternative (ie: home viewing), regardless that at the present time, you have to wait a few months before you can see a film, then more people will make the choice to have their movie experience at home. (Of course, if Hollywood continually erodes this ‘delay’, to the point where there’s mere weeks…or days…or there’s a simultaneous release, both theatrical and DVD, then you can bet your bottom dollar that less and less people will be going to the movies…and less and less movie houses will exist.)
This is why I’d like to see some healthy discussion as to what can be done to stem the tide, take a good look at what needs to be done across the board and in specific markets to get people more interested in seeing films the way they were meant to be seen. On the big screen.
And nobody bought it back then, either…
:P
I’d be curious to see a discussion about a) why people don’t frequent movie houses and b) what can be done to bring them back.
Oh, well. If we’re venturing down History Lane…
Famous Players Canadian Corporation was founded in 1920 when Paramount Pictures bought Nathan Nathanson’s Paramount Theatre chain that was established four years earlier. The Canadian Paramount Theatre chain was not affiliated with the American Paramount Theatres. The Famous Players Theatres chain was always strongly linked with Paramount Pictures and was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Paramount Communications by the time that firm was acquired by Viacom in 1994.
Canadian Odeon Theatres was started by former Famous Players executive Nathan Nathanson and his son Paul in 1941. It was not initially affiliated with the British Odeon Cinemas circuit but gained common ownership with that chain following a sale to the Rank Organisation in 1946.
On April 19, 1979, Garth Drabinsky opened the first Cineplex location, an 18-screen multiplex in the basement of the Toronto Eaton Centre. After successfully challenging the Famous Players / Canadian Odeon duopoly and their exclusive contracts with major studios, he proceeded to purchase Canadian Odeon, having brought on the Bronfman family as a major investor, forming Cineplex Odeon Corporation. There was once again a duopoly, albeit a much more competitive one.
In the 1980s, not content with having lept from one location to dozens across the country, Drabinsky began buying up regional circuits throughout the United States, which took the Cineplex Odeon Theatres name as well. Back in Canada, Drabinsky used his new position to aggressively challenge Famous Players Theatres , opening more, ultramodern multiplexes nationwide.
Most famously, Famous Players Theatres allowed the lease on a property containing the entrance of one of its flagship Toronto locations, the Imperial Six, to lapse in 1986. Cineplex immediately took over the lease, denying Famous Players Theatres access to the portion the latter chain already owned outright. Famous eventually sold its property to Cineplex Odeon Cinemas on the condition it never again be used to show filmed entertainment; it became the Pantages, now renamed the live-entertainment Canon Theatre.
Cineplex also established a distribution unit, Cineplex Odeon Films, during this period; its assets were largely sold to Alliance Atlantis in 1998.
Throughout the 1990s, Famous Players took the reins of expansion. Under chairman Tom McGrath, Famous Players re-built its entire infrastructure from 1997 to 2003 with new “megaplex” stadium-seated theaters and extensive innovative food court offerings. It was also believed to be the first exhibitor in the world to have automated box offices.
Also during this time, AMC Theatres entered the Canadian market, and most of the traditional ties between the existing chains and the major studios began to unwind, putting all three chains in full-on competition in several major markets.
By May 1998, Drabinsky had lost control of Cineplex to the Bronfmans' Seagram, which subsequently merged Cineplex Odeon Theatres with Sony’s Loews Cineplex Theatres. The resulting firm, Loews Cineplex Entertainment, subsequently suffered due to the economic recession of the early 2000s, leading to a buyout led by Onex.
Meanwhile, Galaxy Entertainment Inc. was created in 1999 by Ellis Jacob, a former COO of Cineplex, and Steven Brown, a former Cineplex CFO. With investments from Onex and Famous Players, the new company focused on smaller markets which were usually served by smaller theatres and old equipment, opening large, major chain-style locations under the Galaxy Cinemas banner.
In October 2003, Loews Cineplex Theatres merged its Canadian operations with Galaxy Cinemas , forming Cineplex Galaxy Cinemas. Mr. Jacob became the chief executive of Cineplex Galaxy Cinemas. Onex was the controllng shareholder of both Loews Cineplex Theatres and Galaxy Cinemas at the time of the merger, but sold its interest in Loews in June 2004. It maintained control of Cineplex Galaxy Cinemas.
In 2004, Famous Players Theatres locations in the Maritimes, none of which were branded-concept theatres, were sold to the region’s dominant exhibitor, Empire Theatres. Canadian Odeon locations in the region had been sold to Empire in the late 1970s or early 1980s, prior to the former’s acquisition by Cineplex Odeon Cinemas.
On June 13, 2005, Cineplex Galaxy Cinemas announced its acquisition of Famous Players Theatres from Viacom for $500 million or about US$397 million. This deal was completed July 22. To satisfy competition concerns, on August 22 the sale of 27 locations in Ontario and western Canada to Empire Theatres was announced.
On March 31, 2006, Cineplex Entertainment announced it sold 7 more theatres in Quebec to Chelsea based Fortune Cinemas Inc. The assets of Alliance Atlantis Cinemas are still on sale.
(Thanks to the happy drones at Wikipedia for this.)
And no, I don’t think this will have any impact at all on attendance. Sheeple think -Ha!– in terms of the movie, not the venue, so the downward spiral will continue, until, years down the road, there enter the scene renegade projectionists who show movies on the sides of buildings in the middle of the night, providing the sound by way of podcasts, only to be beaten down by the Home Theatre Alliance by way of their armed WIAH (“Watch It At Home') enforcers.
Hey; is there a screenplay in there…?
You’re right, it is ironic. But even before anything they opened in LA, Drabinsky (in whose company I used to hold stock) opened the now-gone Eaton Centre Cineplex in downtown Toronto, regarded as the first true multiplex. Over the years I’d seen films in all of the 21 ‘auditoriums’, the smallest hardly bigger than a typical home’s bathroom.
But you know, I’m struck by this fact: the same snobbery that keeps many people from cinemas and at home, watching movies on little(er) boxes, is found in comments about ‘smaller’ cinemas. And I don’t think I’d ever made the connection previously.
Don’t get me wrong: I love a HUGE screen in a HUGE auditorium. But maybe I’m a completely different creature than some/most on this site: I love going to the movies, I love walking through the front doors of any cinema because that’s where the magic is shown. What makes any movie house special is this fact. It’s not necessarily the history of a place, although I am in love with this aspect, hence my membership here. It’s not necessarily the grandeur and size of a place, although I’ve frequented some of the GTA’s largest cinemas and have always wanted to do a road tour of the biggest in the US. And it’s not even the technical aspects of a place, although I do appreciate when I’m being spoiled by the best. My grin begins with finding out about a new movie. It increases when I download (and save) the trailer. And is sustained when I’m finally on my way to the show, then I approach the theatre (regardless what type of place), when I can first smell the popcorn, when I choose my seat, when I settle in, even when I’m watching the ‘pre-show show’, until I’m nodding to myself when the show actually begins.
So maybe, maybe I’m actually not like a lot of people here. Yes, I love ‘cinema treasures’. I adore old movie houses. But perhaps it’s that I have these other parallel loves: film itself (I see roughly 200 films a year) and the ATTENDANCE of films. I suppose with three times as many reasons to want to pay my money to see a film, I’m a little apart from the ‘discriminating’ poster on this site who turns up their nose at the idea of smaller-screend multiplexes. Something for me to keep in mind when jabs are made at ‘shoebox theatres’.
Long live all movie houses! And more power to Cineplex. I hope that all chains take the torch and run with it, both reminding the public that movies were meant to be seen on a large screen…and hopefully doing something about their product, which is not the films they show, but the experience of seeing these films, a fact that many have forgotten.
And as a final note, take a look at this as a suggestion as to how to get more people into cinemas, therefore helping the prospect of stemming the tide of closures:
http://www.cineworld.co.uk/jahia/Jahia/pid/6
Wouldn’t you want to be able to see as many films as you want for just over $20 USD a month? I know I did, when I lived in the UK…
Fair enough. I’ve been having an ongoing discussion with a friend who simply does not frequent movie houses. He watches just about everything at home. Only a ways into our conversation did I find out that he has a ten-foot projection system with state-of-the-art sound. (He’s in the film biz in sound editing.) All fine and good, I can’t argue with a person’s preference. However… To me, watching a film on a 32" tv is like listening to a symphony by Mozart on a transistor radio. Add to this my feeling that if you can pause it, it has no value. (Which is why being at a game will always be a more intense experience than watching it at home, in a bar, etc. Now, give me the chance to watch a championship game in a cinema…)
The cinematic experience is singular to me. To a great extent, I don’t really care if it’s an old nabe, a multiplex, a grand single-screener I’m munching on my popcorn at… I love ‘worshipping’ in a cathedral of cinema, plain and simple. So I’m happy to see this ad campaign, which addresses something the film companies really haven’t done diddly about: getting people back into the theatres for the ‘BIG’ experience.
I’m tempted to ask the questions: ‘Why does someone go to see a film in a cinema? What makes avid filmgoers see the releases when they come out? Why do they make this choice and not the one to stay home and catch the film howevermanymonthsitis after theatrical release?’