(no subject)
nearly three-fourths of americans polled would rather watch a movie at home than in the theater. boy do i understand this. first off, going to the movies is expensive. really expensive. ticket prices have doubled in the past ten-fifteen years. to say nothing of the prices of snacks and sodas, which everyone knows is ridiculous. right now, for the same amount of cash, i could go to the movies with my sweetie and buy popcorn, soda, and candy, or i could buy a dvd and a humongous pizza. for a lot of people that is no contest. the couch is more comfortable than theater seats, you can pause a dvd if you need to go to the bathroom, and no strangers are going to interrupt your home viewing experience. plus you don't need to sit through pre-show advertisements and five or six trailers to movies you're not going to see anyway.
the studios are having more trouble because their movies are sucking, hard. almost half of people polled said they think movies are getting worse. this makes people really not want to go to the theater, because most people won't ask for their money back if a movie is bad, but will sit through it to the end so they can complain about how movies are clearly getting worse. and spending almost $10 a ticket to see a crappy movie can make you really mad, like you got swindled. especially if a movie looks like it will be good, but then sucks, which happens a lot.
thus begins a vicious cycle that quite possibly will lead to the closure of movie houses across america. as box office receipts fall, ticket prices will go up to make up for lost revenue. at the same time dvd sales will rise, lowering prices on home entertainment. imagine if in five-ten years dvds cost $7.99-$9.99, while evening movie tickets cost $11.50-$14.50 or more, with even more ads before the feature. since film production and film exhibition are both controlled by giant media companies that also control dvd production, they're not going to care where the money comes from, and will close any theater that's not drawing a crowd. i'm guessing this will be theaters in poorer, urban areas first, where audiences will be greatly turned off by rising ticket prices, but also have other entertainment options available. theaters in malls and suburbs will continue for a time, but eventually these theaters too will see drop offs in attendence as the affluent pick up their own home theater systems, with sound and picture quality that meet or exceed that of a commercial venue.
maybe we will end up going back to the old, gigantic movie palace type theaters, which will only play huge, star-studded, incredibly hyped-up expensive blockbusters, mostly as a media event to get people to buy more dvds and film merchandise but also as a way to sell people an experience different than that of viewing at home. exhibitors will start wondering why they have fourteen tiny screens showing eight crappy movies no one wants to see and one or two with enough draw to sell tickets. so they'll build IMAX size screens to get people to go see Star Wars: Episode VIII or whatever epic special-effects laden extravaganza they can get their hands on. maybe they'll bring back the old movie gimmicks of the 1950s like 3-D.
one thing we will definitely see is a continuation of movies aimed squarely at teenagers. the studios have known for a long time that parents will give their teenage kids money to go to the movies, just to get them out of the house. and teenagers will gladly take that money to go see anything, as long as they can get away from their parents. thus we are set for an uninterrupted flow of cheaply made teen comedies and horror films, a mill which will be supplied by up-and-coming young actors who will be sucked dry and cast aside before they start asking for a real movie star salary. so some things will stay the same in hollywood.
boy, that was more than i had planned on writing. i better put this behind a cut.