AP: "Poll finds film fans opt to stay home"

[Ken Tanaka]

An interesting AP poll, as reported in the Chicago Tribune today.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...i-business-hed

[Richard Alvarez]

Yup, doesn't surprise me. And then there's this

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050617/...film_adults_dc

About how Hollywood is ignoring "adults" at their own peril. Can you say 'cutting off your nose to spite your face?'

[Yi Fong Yu]

the secret is trying to find out why audiences (including all demographics) would say to themselves, "i have to see this in the cinema". star wars, have to see it in cinema at least once. lord of the rings, spiderman, titanic, why? once the studios find answers to this question, they will once again flourish in money, otherwise... lucas says it right, he's right on the coat tail end of showcasing films in cinema.

[Steven White]

I still like going to the theatre to watch a flick over renting... but the reason for me is that there's not much of a difference in price. I go with a bunch of pals, and we all buy our own tickets. Total cost = $10 - and no more than that, since I don't buy food.

However - as soon as you've got to pay for more than one, it becomes ridiculous! Last time I was at a theatre (this weekend), I saw a mom with 3 kids paying $40 to get in to see a flick. Holy smokes! $40 for 2 hours of entertainment or less? Not exactly a bargain. This vs. a $5 DVD rental that the kids can watch 10 times before it's returned to the store? It's a no-brainer. Going to the movies just isn't affordable entertainment.

If you want a lot of attendance, going to the movies isn't supposed to be a "special thing". You want your audience to be scanning for movie ads, finding out what the flick for "this Friday" is going to be... not going: "Hm... anything good coming out? Hm... not really. I can wait for the video... if that." And when HD-DVDs come out - it will get worse.

-Steve

[Yi Fong Yu]

i think the biggest thing will be homeowners who have room to install a front projector. with prices so low that even a poor schmoo like me have one! =). if you have the big screen, big sound and big seats, why goto cinema? that's where 3D comes in =). gimmicks.

[Aaron Koolen]

Yeah it's all about the experience. If the theatre was $1, I'd probably go to a lot more movies. But it's not, it's $14 here in NZ. So you have to weigh up what you're getting. I never thought I'd be the 'Wait til DVD' sort of guy. I used to go to a lot of movies. Too many of them were crap and as the prices rose I decided - 'Nup, no more' -I couldn't justify the price for the cinema 'experience' so now I wait for DVD for most films. I think the reason a lot of us go to the cinema now, is for action flicks. I won't necessarily go to the cinema to see something like "Life as a house", but I will go to it to see Lord of the Rings, or another movie where the size of the screen and overall sensory experience is heightened by a cinema. Music, CGi, Action, Massive Surround Sound etc.

And Yi Fong Yu hit it also. Projectors and home theatre. If you get a projector and have mates who like movies, it pays for itself in no time.

Aaron

[Ken Tanaka]

Another article, this one by the Chicago Tribune's writers:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...i-business-hed

Also today AMC and Loews announced their intended merger, with the new organization to be under the "AMC Entertainment" flag.

"Hollywood" and the feature film business will never be the same as they were just a decade or so ago. While the current attendance slump may temporarily ease the general long-term theater-going flight path is unmistakably coming in for a landing. The technical and societal factors that made theaters so popular in the 20th century are history. One of the more significant, but often overlooked, factors that started the decline was the advent of widespread home air conditioning. Movie theaters were cool refuges from hot summer nights for nearly 30 years and drew repeat attendance even for screen stinkers in cities and small towns.

Times have changed, no small credit due to the film industry itself offering a better private viewing experience than public.

[Stephen Finton]

Stay in your homes!

Only official business shall be attended to on the outside! Turn up your stereo, if the sounds of tanks and jets make you nervous!

Any attempt at entertainment outside of your domicile will be punishable by law!

Seriously though, I think going to the theater is only good for 2 reasons.
1.) If you absolutely cannot wait to see it on DVD.
2.) If you want to impress someone by wasting money on them.

[Evan Strobel]

I've seen 3 movies this summer.

Star Wars
Batman Begins
Land of the Dead

I found all three to be worth their price, of $6.00 which is matinee, I don't understand how hollywood expects to generate any cash by leaving a film in theatres for a month or two. Word of mouth in my opinon is the biggest sell for a film, and it really seperates the good films from the bad films.
I'll agree that $10.00 is a pretty big amount to see a film, when they're still offering just a little bit better than the average home viewer, but it's like watching a baseball game on TV. You don't get the crack of the bat, the smell of popcorn, and hotdogs ... and crazy drunken people. It's the same with the movies. It's the darkness of the room, all the way down to the annoying people fighting their bag to eat popcorn.
IMO, Hollywood needs to start making everything in HD. Than use it as a marketing ploy, but I think theatre owners are to cheap to upgrade their theatres. They just don't offer anything different.
But my main most problem is, if you want them to stop making crap like XXX 2 don't go watch it. I don't personally know how much that made, but they're making a third one to my knowledge. I guess I just don't understand my peers, if that's whose seeing this crap.
Anyway, I agree with whoever said they need to find out why people want to see films like Titanic, and Star Wars, at the theatre.

What makes an event? Marketing? Word of Mouth?

[Imran Zaidi]

I don't think it's really Hollywood making the decision on pulling films from the theater after a couple of months. It's the theaters. As we demand more from theaters (bigger seats, stadium arrangement, better sound and picture), I think most of them are sweating to keep their profit margins going. If they see tickets not selling then they yank the film as soon as they can.

I think we can all agree from a lot of the surveys being done lately, the biggest part of the theater ticket slump is not the movie selection - it's the ticket prices mixed with the cost of snacks and beverages. I very rarely buy snacks and beverages at the theater but I did the other day and was stunned at how much the cost has gone up over just the last couple of years. And some theaters in this town pretty much raise ticket prices by about 25 cents every season.

Nevertheless, I go see movies in the theater as much as I can, as long as the movie isn't just schlock. I refuse to support schlock. Schlock being movies that have lots of whizz and bang but little else. I don't think people should go see movies in the theater just to see the special effects and hear the sound in the theater. It just supports hollywood's schlockish behavior. At some point we have to smack Hollywood on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and say "No no! No Hollywood. Bad Hollywood."

On a side note, as a fan of indie film, the failures of large films seems to be a great thing. More and more of the big studios are funding small pictures through their indie divisions (i.e. Fox Searchlight, Sony Picture Classics, etc.) since it can be pretty easy to make a 5 million dollar picture turn a profit. Small profit sure, but easy profit nonetheless. Which ultimately ends up meaning better stories and less special effects. I love it.

[John C. Lyons]

snacks and beverages are the ONLY way that the theaters themselves make any money any more, so that's why those costs high skyrocketed.

hey, look on the bright side to all this. the backlash has begun, and that has to mean good things for low budget independent filmmakers like us!