Happy Thursday War & Peaceniks! Let’s all go to The Movies (not)!
“There is no way back home to the pre-lockdown business for movie theaters. Movie theaters will continue the slide/trend they were on for a decade before the pandemic: Fewer tickets at higher prices, every year.”
“If Theatrical Exhibitionists ever hope to win millions of us back to their sticky-floored movie houses, they’re gonna have to make the experience far more like home.”
“The world’s second-biggest cinema chain has filed for bankruptcy protection as it seeks to restructure after facing continuing low audience numbers.
‘Traveling to a movie theatre for three hours, spending $25, is just not attractive for many, especially young people.’”
The Movie Theater business has been a shell game for more than a decade. Fewer tickets sold every year, masked by ever increasing prices, every year.
Meanwhile the experience of “going to the movies,” with exceptions for high-end theaters in rich neighborhoods, sucks more and more every season; while the experience of seeing movies at home gets better and better.
I know cinephiles who read me hate when I do this, but…
The movie theater experience has become the exclusive realm of superheroes and sequels, with the exceptions of small artisanal art houses.
This WILL NOT change, until and unless someone takes the real estate agents (aka NATO) out of the equation and focuses on theatrical exhibition as an ACTUAL EXPERIENCE commensurate with the costs; and/or packages the movie-going experience with other elements of a lifestyle bundle.
The folks running movie theater chains think in “dollars per square foot,” not “surprise and delight.” They were slowly strangling the movie-going business to death for more than a decade - BEFORE THE PANDEMIC. Covid simply sped up the process.
Now Movie Theaters have two viable paths forward:
Improve and enhance every aspect of the theater experience, including sound, picture, comfort, FOOD, and atmosphere; and charge substantially more for each ticket.
Sell to major media companies who can package movie-going into a larger lifestyle bundle (Disney will be packaging theme park tickets with streaming soon; Amazon already bundles Whole Foods into Prime), to create a set of economics with multiple layers of revenue for each ticket.
Either way, the “movie business” will have far fewer movie theaters and more direct-to-consumer streamed films like The Gray Man and Coda; with theaters saved for EVENT FILMS like The Avengers and James Bond; with shorter and shorter timeframes for second and third windows.
It’s time to stop lamenting the death of movie theaters. They’ve been zombies for some time. If you truly love movie theaters, or what they once were, then get busy reinventing them.
Next Wednesday, September 14, at 1p PT/4p ET, I’ll be holding a webinar about the new economics of the new media economy - including what happens next for “The Movies.” All the info is below. If you see the info, you’re already a Premium Peacenik - thanks! If not, consider taking the FREE TRIAL and joining us!
Enjoy the weekend - perhaps at the movies, but likely… not.
ESHAP
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