Moviegoers not going to movies
p2p news / p2pnet: Hollywood, which last year reported eye-
popping, mind-bending, record-breaking revenues, says although
audiences spent more than $60 million on the latest version of King
Kong on its opening weekend, it’s seeing its third straight year of
decline in ticket sales.
Sales were down 12.6% from 2002 and,
"a growing number of analysts are wondering whether America’s
movie habits are changing permanently," says the
target="_blank">Christian Science Monitor, going in on to quote
Paul Dergarabedian, president of a firm that analyzes box-office
trends. As saying:
"The industry has to consider
whether or not American audiences are sending a message about the
quality of the movies they are getting – or just the way and the
place in which they get them. You can bet that producers, writers,
directors and studio heads are all huddling intensely to consider
what this means and change their behavior to keep it from
continuing."
Dergarabedian "and others"
wonder if consumers may be, "changing their movie-viewing habits
because of multiple complaints related to theatergoing: soaring
ticket costs, high parking and candy-concession prices, and, perhaps,
decreased enjoyment of the movie-house experience because of unruly
audiences and a growing number of on-screen ads," says the
story.
Nancy Snow, professor of communications
at California State University at Fullerton, believes, "People
have had it with all the annoyance and cost of going out when they
can be in so much better control of what they see at home — and
for cheaper. That means fewer and fewer want to put up with the
hassle unless they know the movie will be outstanding. So they have
higher standards and expectations."
Meanwhile, "One of the most telling
developments, analysts say, will be the impact of a new idea by film
director Steven Soderbergh and producer Mark Cuban," adds the
Christian Science Monitor. "The two have struck a deal to
release films in three formats — theater, DVD and television
— all on the same date."
The film was ‘Bubble,’ a $1.6 million
digital murder mystery movie involving a doll factory and,
"We’ll deliver most likely from sites like Movielink and
CinemaNow, and we’ll charge a price that’s more
expensive on release date and then come down in price in what would
be normal release windows," Cuban told p2pnet last year.
"We’re
target="_blank">delivery agnostic."
Bubble was shown in Venice, Toronto, and
New York in October and, "This is my response to certain trends
in the entertainment industry," said Soderbergh at the time.
"
target="_blank">Everything changes and evolves and we’ve got to
get with it, embrace it and find a way to make it work. The movies
are not the way they used to be when I grew up. It’s 30 years later!
"
Moreover, Robert Iger, ceo-elect of the
Walt Disney Co declared, "Consumers have a lot more authority
these days and they know that by using technology [read p2p
applications] they can gain access to content and they want to use
the power that they have. We can’t stand in the way and we can’t
allow tradition to stand in the way of where the consumer can go or
wants to go [read ‘We’d better shape up, or ship
out']."
So p2pnet asked Cuban if Bubble would be
released using p2p as a distribution vehicle.
"No," he replied flatly.
Oh well ….
Meanwhile, although the top 15 films of
2005 performed as well at the box office as the top 15 films of 2004;
"every film below the top 15 performed worse," says
target="_blank">IMDb, quoting Daily Variety on .a year-end
analysis of the top 100 films at the box office.
"The trade publication pegged the
total for the year at around $8.75 billion, down 5 percent from $9.2
billion a year ago, while admissions dropped 11 percent to 1.32
billion from 1.48 billion," says the story, adding:
"It marked the third consecutive
year of declining attendance.) Variety observed that only two
studios, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, posted higher box-office
earnings this year than last. It pointed out that Fox had received a
big boost from Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, which
earned $380 million, making it the year’s top grosser. It failed to
point out, however, that Lucasfilm, which fully funds its
productions, also takes all of the profits, paying the studio only a
flat distribution fee."
face="Courier New,Courier,Monaco">Also See:
target="_blank">Christian Science Monitor – No Happy Ending in
2005 For Hollywood, December 29, 2005
target="_blank">delivery agnostic – Cuban / Soderbergh p2p
move, May 1, 2005
target="_blank">Everything changes and evolves – Movie same-
time DVD releases, October 30, 2005
IMDb – 15 Blockbuster Films
Scored in 2005, December 30, 2005
January 2nd, 2006 at 9:12 pm
You know, when I was a kid, our parents would load us up and take us kids to the movies. Not just me but the other kids on the block that wanted to go were welcome bring thier money and jump on for the ride there and back. The Saturday Matinee was a regular event for us kids and we went every week. For a $1 we could get a coke and a popcorn and take in a movie. It’s been so long since I have been to the movies, I don’t know if the Saturday Matinee is still part of the usually doings anymore for theaters. Certainly it isn’t in the price range of those days and 10¢ isn’t going to get you a coke or a popcorn.
Every year or two, I would show up in this town on business and when I was on an overnighter, I would go take in a movie. The was a movie house in a city I shall not name. This movie house had been there for a long time and had a long term contract with those that delieved the movies to keep them coming at a very low price. It had been there so long it was called The Dollar Cinema. For three bucks, you could get your concessions and go watch a movie at a reasonable price. Know what happened to it?
Well since this was a fairly large city, the other cinemas in the malls and the like weren’t getting the lions share of movie goers. The Dollar Cinema was the place to go in that city to see a movie. The other higher priced movie houses weren’t getting the bucks. So they got together, made the owner an offer he couldn’t refuse and bought the place out. Raised prices and continued business? Not a chance. They closed the place down and bulldozed it over. Now those same people that used to go there have one game in town; the high priced cinemas.
There’s another victim of the high prices that is missing on the movie scene; The Movie Drive In. Along about the same time as the Saturday Night Matinee’s were popular so were drive in’s. Most had playgrounds for the kids right up front under the screen where people didn’t want to park their cars because they would be too close to the screen. The Drive In is another causality of times gone by. There are very few that exist today. On rare occasion I still see a screen in some backwoods place but for the most part they have go the way of the dodo.
Now if you see a movie it almost has to be in one of these high priced places. Like the mom and pop record store, the general publics viewing habits have changed. The businesses got greedy and one by one, the populace is deciding on their own that it isn’t an experience worth the money to go all the time to see.
Funny I haven’t even begun to address the quality, theme, viewer displeasure, or continual redundant remakes. Yet it seems once again, I have managed to fill this post with a rambling memory. Oh well, no one said that times gone past were better; only that they were different.
January 3rd, 2006 at 12:18 am
At least there are three good movies worth seeing that are out now: Memoirs of a Geisha, Syriana, and Munich. Hopefully, those will gross something. But the seriously. About 5-7 good movies out of the maybe one hundred that are released in a year? That’s a 10% success rate, at best. In school terms, that’s an F. Hollywood needs a LOT of work. Some tutoring maybe
?
Plus what’s with this insane $20 a pop for a movie? A student ticket at my local theater costs $8 (Regular is $9). Say you’re going on a date, that’s $16 right there. Add in popcorn, and your costs rise to ~$20. Say you want to hit a nice dinner afterwards. There goes another $20-30. A date costs $50 nowadays. Now you see why people are forgoing the movies.
January 3rd, 2006 at 6:18 am
I guess I am just a year or two older than you, but (and many will find this difficult to believe, but it is solid fact), we had two theatres in our town which had Saturday matinees with an admission price of nine cents. Yes. Nine cents. That extra penny would buy ten pieces of candy (not candy bars, mind you, but pieces of candy, like licorice or bubble gum or gum balls, etc.) With a quarter, a kid was in seventh heaven!
Now, get this: the matinee included: 3 (yes, three) âfull lengthâ features (cheap âBâ movies, to be sure, but plenty of Roy Rogers, Hoppalong Cassidy, Jungle Jim, Bomba the Jungle Boy, Edward G. Robinson, Randolph Scott, James Cagney, Bob Hope, and other famous stars); the features were usually varied, to include one Cowboy, or Cowboys and Indians, one Exotic location film (Tarzan, a Hope-Crosby âRoadâ show, or Turban Bey), and one mainstream regular feature. But wait, that wasnât all. We always had a Serial (Rocket Man or Flash Gordon, etc.), a newsreel (Pathe or Universal RKO), between three and five cartoons, selected short subjects, and previews of coming attractions.
Like the Dollar Movies, above, our nine-cent theatres bit the dust in the early 50s; but even when those two theatres closed, we had mainstream cinemas for a quarter, which had almost as much entertainment.
Seems like, back then, people werenât out get rich off the poor folks and their kids, and Hollywood made movies because they LIKED making movies. And funny enough, I donât remember any suspicious looking men hanging out in the balconies.
Ah, well, that was in a distant time, long before the RIAA and the MPAA. (Come to think of it, I wonder if that had anything to do with the emergence of those shadowy characters in the upper balconiesâ¦)
January 3rd, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Yeah, I’d like to see a graph showing average movie ticket prices vs. average national minimum wage over the last twenty years.
January 5th, 2006 at 6:46 am
I can tell you exactly what movies that I have seen in the theater right here and now:
The Black Hole
Gremlins
Ghostbusters
Poltergiest 3
Rambo 3
Double Dragon
Alien 3
Highlander 3
Bound by Honor
StarTrek: Generations
Meucury Rising
Godzilla
To give you an idea of my age, I was in the 6th grade when I saw Gremlins. Sorry, I don’t see going to the movies a big thing anyways. I know that other people do, and they critisize me for not going, but it’s my money and I will choose what I will do to entertain myself.
I have no desire to:
1) pay the exhorbant prices that theaters charge to see a movie.
2) pay the exhorbant prices for refreshments.
3) sit in seats that are too small.
4) put up with people’s cell phones going off.
5) put up with rude and obnoxious people in the theater.
6) put up with the litter, bubblegum, and whatever else is making me stick to the floor.
Furthermore:
7) You can’t rewind a movie if you want to see a part again.
You can’t pause a movie if you need to use the restroom.
9) You can only see it once. If you rent it, you can see it as many times as you like within the rental period.
10) If you own the Tape/Disc, you can see it as many times as you want as long as the media lasts.
11) You can use your own drinks, food, and restroom facilities at home.
12) My Sony home theater system works pretty good. I can control the volume, the sound field, the DSP profile, speaker placement, etc. Theaters are way too loud and when I get out I’m half deaf.
13) I don’t have any desire to watch something on the big screen. My 27″ Sony does just fine.
Who whould have thought that the movie rentals would eventually lead to the demise of the movie theaters. Now I can go and view a movie without going to the theater. Pay $5 and I have it for a week on DVD. The only downside to this is that you have to wait for it to come out on DVD so you can rent it.