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Author Topic: Interesting NYT article on How Will Movies Survive...
Mark Gulbrandsen
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Not only is showing movies a tough business, but existing digital projectors will need replacing starting in five to seven years and there will be no VPF's this time... How will theaters survive?

How Will Movies Survive The Next Ten Yearsf

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Helmut Maripuu
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I prefer my home theater and I hate cinemas?
No! I hate popcorn, candy, coca cola, cell phones and young people who cannot see a movie without eating.
If a movie starts at 18.30 then I hate advertising starting at 18.25 and ending at 18.45. I hate trailers starting at 18.45 and ending at 19.00. = cinemas in Sweden!
I love cinemas for women and mature pubic who carry on time. Something in style like
https://www.slashfilm.com/imax-introduces-home-theater-systems/
Maybe for between 100 - 150 people. And the cinemas should be able to survive on the ticket income.

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Leo Enticknap
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I found that piece intensely annoying.

Basically, it consists of a bunch of entitled narcissists, who collectively are the cause of the problem (no-one wants to go to theaters anymore other than to see big event movies, with the result that Hollywood now makes little else), pontificating on the solution. That's like asking the CEO of Budweiser how to reduce alcohol abuse, or asking a bunch of BMW owners how to combat dangerous driving.

The journalist should really have found and interviewed ordinary citizens who used to go to movie theaters regularly, but now don't.

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Bobby Henderson
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quote: Leo Enticknap
The journalist should really have found and interviewed ordinary citizens who used to go to movie theaters regularly, but now don't.
I'm skeptical the movie industry overall makes any contact with its customers. Overall they're out of touch with the American public.

Regarding who the NY Times interviewed and who is collectively to blame for the current situation, they didn't talk to a bunch of studio heads or, better yet, people in charge of giant media companies. Those are the real people to blame inside the movie industry. They're the ones who keep regurgitating the same old ideas (no matter how many times a re-make fails miserably). They're the ones refusing to take chances on new ideas. They're the ones who keep making a trip to the theater more expensive yet enable to watch the same movie at home that much faster and cheaper, all for short term gain. Those are the guys who shifted a movie's mark of achievement away from the overall gross of a movie's theatrical run to where it's all about the opening weekend numbers.

quote: Kumail Nanjiani
I read a stat somewhere that the average person goes to the movie theater around four times a year, and these huge movies come out and kind of suck up all the air. You look at comedy especially, and it’s been pretty tough going at the box office for the last couple years. I think it’s because there’s this sense that only certain movies are worthy of watching at the movie theater.
That comment describes much of the problem. But it leaves out 3 specific factors why most people aren't willing to pay the premium to watch "smaller" movies in theaters: 1: the cost of watching a movie in a theater, 2: the viewing quality difference between the theater and home, 3: how long a viewer has to wait to see the movie at home (at a far lower price).

Cost is a big factor. There is no denying that. For most people in the middle class and everyone in lower income brackets a trip the movie can be a pretty expensive thing, especially when it's a family trip out of the house. People (and families) have always been choosy to some degree on which movies to watch at the theater versus home. But I think families in particular are getting even more picky about what they spend extra to see at the theater. The schemes of short term gain from distributors are influencing it. I think other living cost inflation factors are playing a part too. Really this issue is no different from the cost cutting people are doing to ditch traditional cable/satellite TV or get rid of their old copper wire-based home telephones. The music industry is dealing with this too. People are shifting away from buying albums and singles to just subscribing to a music streaming service. It's all about money.

At the same time there is very little penalty to pay at all anymore in terms of perceptible image quality for waiting to watch a movie at home. TV sets are bigger and better than ever, and huge TV screens are available at relatively low price points. That makes it even easier to watch "smaller" movies at home and only go to the theater for the big event releases.

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I went to our local multiplex to watch Toy Story 4 at an afternoon matinee. We paid $3 bucks extra per ticket to watch it on the IMAX with Xenon screen, about $10 per ticket, which is relatively cheap for a 2K IMAX 2D show. I reserved our seats early, expecting pretty much a sold-out show. When the movie started not more than maybe 1/3 of the seats had been sold. I was shocked. The movie was still good though.

That article devoted a lot of space to streaming, aka "the future of movies."

I think there is a big hazard with the whole streaming trend. It's very easy for good movies to be lost in all the clutter you see in any streaming app interface. At least in the video rental store all the aisles of discs and tapes were organized. You could see ALL of what was available to rent in an organized way. None of the streaming apps provide that user experience.

If you want to watch a 2 hour movie but are undecided about what movie to watch you can waste a lot of time just scrolling and scrolling through rows of what turns out to be a limited number of choices. All of the limited pool of suggested movies are just re-arranged in the different rows. It's very annoying. I think Netflix, Amazon, etc design their apps like that on purpose. They make it hard to find good quality 2 hour movies but really easy to find their own in-house TV series or other in-house content.

I don't see how the entertainment industry can support half a dozen or more streaming services. Each one is a "walled garden." Even though it costs relatively little to subscribe to a single service like Netflix, the cost balloons if/when you add Amazon, Hulu and any number of other studio-specific streaming services that will be available. It's clear not everyone can afford a $100 or more per month pay TV bill. That was the whole point why so many people cut the cord in the first place.

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Justin Hamaker
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This article has nothing from the perspective of theatre operators. There was a brief mention about how independent movies are not usually available in small markets. But no discussion about how this is because studios don't make them available for small markets to play. No discussion about how studios are almost driving the demise of theatres by continuing to push policies which make it more difficult to keep movies on screen.

I'm trying to get Yesterday booked into my theatre. What we keep hearing is the studio doesn't want us because we didn't make enough on film X or film Y. This is absolutely absurd. We have the DCDC satellite system. The movie is already going to be on the server sitting in your booth. The only marginal cost is the cost of keys. But not allowing us to show the movie just hurts us when it comes to the next movie. It makes it easier for people to not even think about the theatre.

The article also lacked any discussion about ticket prices. Disney is hauling in huge profits off of Avengers: Endgame, but charging theatres 60%. And these numbers keep creeping up year after year. Maybe if the studios made it easier to not raise prices it would be easier to keep people coming.

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Bobby Henderson
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I don't think the executives at movie studios or their global media company parents care about the viability of commercial movie theaters. I think those guys view theaters as a very annoying thing they're being forced to tolerate. They don't appreciate the symbiotic relationship theaters have with the entire movie industry. Without commercial movie theaters all movies will be made-for-TV movies.

As much as a studio head might think his operation can survive without theatrical releases, I can guarantee that studio head honcho will never spend $100 million, $200 million or more on the production budget of just a single 2 hour movie that plays only on TV screens. He'll make 10 TV movies or even fund a couple or so series with that kind of money.

The movie theater industry is in a tricky enough place. The big chains, like AMC, are bigger and more monopolistic than ever. Their booking choices are not exactly diverse either. And they're playing all kinds of hard ball games against smaller, more independent theaters and theater chains. Industry consolidation is playing its own part at forcing lots of smaller movies out of even having any theatrical release at all. And it's another thing forcing prices higher for customers.

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Pravin Ratnam
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I used to be an avid moviegoer. But no more. First, there is just too much content on netflix and amazon. A lot of very solid stuff out there but not as much "must see" viewing.

When it comes to theatrical movies, I just dont find most new movies that interesting. And most action movies are superhero movies. I used to watch at least one movie a week in the summer and now, the only movie I bothered to watch was Avengers. I will watch Rocketman on TV later. I am looking forward to Tarantino's new movie. That's aout it.

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Leo Enticknap
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quote: Pravin Ratnam
I just dont find most new movies that interesting.
Most of the movies that my wife and I go to see at the theater as customers now are the "Tuesday night classics" at our local Harkins. They are always full or nearly full, and, significantly, many of the people there are in their 20s and 30s. The audience for them is not just people who saw them the first time around and are looking for nostalgia.

Digital remastering, restoration, and cinema projection has swept away many of the barriers to re-releasing older movies in mainstream theaters more widely, and I see this being a growth area.

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Mike Blakesley
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quote:
Disney is hauling in huge profits off of Avengers: Endgame, but charging theatres 60%.
Ha! Try 64%. Disney is on the 'sliding aggregate' system. Any movie that does over $350 million is at the top rate.

Even the Aladdin remake, which most people view as a "minor hit," is almost to that point.

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Martin Brooks
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quote: Mike Blakesley
Ha! Try 64%. Disney is on the 'sliding aggregate' system. Any movie that does over $350 million is at the top rate.

Even the Aladdin remake, which most people view as a "minor hit," is almost to that point.

That might be true, but overall, AMC, the largest movie chain, paid 50.52% of box-office in 2018 for film rentals, 49.68% in 2017 and 53.2% in 2016 and in the first quarter of 2019, paid 49.94%.

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Buck Wilson
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quote: Justin Hamaker
This article has nothing from the perspective of theatre operators.
IndieWire noticed:

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/movie-exhibition-distribution-future-1202152832/

quote:

Here’s How Movie Theaters Will Survive the Next 10 Years: Exhibitors Speak Out
The New York Times gave a voice to Hollywood influencers to address moviegoing's uncertain future, but nobody in exhibition. So we asked for their thoughts.

Eric Kohn

Jun 28, 2019 9:30 am

@erickohn

Empty chairs in movie theaterVARIOUS

Mint Images/Shutterstock

The movie business is always changing, but these days it can be difficult to tell the difference between struggle and outright decline. The 2019 box office is down nine percent from last year, and soon the theaters’ Netflix battle will be joined by Disney+, Apple+, WarnerMedia, and more. Even Hollywood is worried: Last week, when The New York Times assembled a sprawling collection of influential figures from the film industry to assess the state of moviegoing. The result was a multifaceted collage of alarming messages.

Among the musings that reporter Kyle Buchanan pulled together: J.J. Abrams wonders whether meager returns on “Booksmart” raise the question of “how to protect the smaller films.” Jessica Chastain asks, “What happens to these beautiful, small, dramatic stories?” Jordan Horowitz says, “I don’t feel particularly optimistic about the traditional theatrical experience, especially for independent films.” Ava DuVernay calls the theatrical release “a privilege.” And Joe Russo says, “You’ve got so many options for viewing content that there has to be a need for you to leave your home. What is going to drive you to do that?”

Related

Theaters May Use AI to Entice Audiences, From Ticket Pricing to Concessions
Magnolia Pictures Expands Subscription Service, But Not at the Expense of Theatrical Business

However, even as multiplexes face an existential threat, a 2018 Art House Convergence survey of some 22,500 moviegoers found that 65% of them considered their local art house theater valuable to their overall quality of life. That’s what the article failed to note: Of the 24 voices in the story, there were only four distributors that release non-studio films and all of them — Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight, Netflix, and Amazon — are attached to much larger businesses. Absent was any representation of the exhibition community, people who make a living booking independent theaters around the country, or smaller distributors who a range of films from around the world.

We decided to give them some space to respond. Here are some edited highlights.

Adam Birnbaum Nova Theatre Circuit president and director of film programming, Avon Theatre: Why is the voice and opinion of the exhibition side of the industry completely omitted from the New York Times article? The media’s failure in this case to provide any analytical feedback from those who are closest to the ground and in touch with audiences is sadly rather reflective of the cloistered silos in which our production and distribution counterparts too often exist.

Michael Tuckman president, mTuckman Media No large chain, no art house chain, no mom and pops. Crazy.

Ted Mundorff president and chief executive officer, Landmark Theatres We have gone through theatrical slumps forever and we always recover. Some bloggers love to talk about attendance going down every year. Well, attendance goes down at baseball games and football games. You want to name a place where attendance is going up? It’s not. Our $10.5 billion-$11-billion-a-year business is very strong.

Ryan Kampe president, Visit Films I believe the traditional theatrical model for “smaller” films is certainly broken. A few films break out each year, but a majority don’t get a theatrical release in the U.S. or fail to crack even $30,000 at the box office. Fewer films are selling for VOD and/or TV; as such, there is often no incentive to spend the money to release the films in theaters. What used to be a negotiation for a final sale price has turned into a roll of the dice to see if any deal exists at all. This is especially true in the foreign-language space, where the vast majority of films do not find a deal that pays at a profitable level following the theatrical release. When major partners are all clamoring for genre fare or cast-driven titles over $5 million, where can the movies that we work on go to find a home that, at a minimum, pays back investors?

Neal Block head of distribution, Magnolia Pictures Some of the “flops” that everyone’s giving their apocalyptic hot-takes on were seriously overambitious — these were wide releases for smaller-scaled films without stars. Everyone’s done it — it’s not new, and it doesn’t portend anything other than that we’re occasionally doomed to repeat our own mistakes. It’s easy to pontificate on trends and bemoan the loss of something, especially something as singular and personal as moviegoing. It’s our job to listen to audiences and meet them on their terms, however mercurial and foreign those terms may seem to an industry that has done things roughly the same way for a very long time.

Dennis Lim director of programming, Film at Lincoln Center The takeaway from the New York Times piece is not that movies are dying, it’s that Hollywood is in trouble. If Hollywood is struggling, maybe it is time to reframe this tired discourse and remind us all that cinema is about a lot more than Oscar movies and summer tentpoles. I watch hundreds of new films from around the world every year, and I find it hard to be pessimistic about cinema as an art. Maybe a more relevant and less cynical question to ask is how an art form might sustain itself or even thrive while the business around it flounders.
The Walter Reade Theater

The Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center

Mettie Ostrowski

Eric Hynes curator of film, Museum of the Moving Image Time and again, Hollywood can’t conceive of people getting into a car and sitting in LA traffic to see a movie — as if that were the universal experience, as if people didn’t also live in smaller towns or cities with public transportation where they want to leave the house and want to share an experience with other people, and want to experience 35mm, where communities actually exist and independent films and documentaries are sought out.

Richard Lorber CEO, Kino Lorber We have to broaden the conversation about the “future of cinema.” The world inhabited by the “indies,” including the distributors, art house exhibitors, and independent filmmakers is a different planet from the Hollywood universe. There remains a passionate and vital community of interest supporting the “theatrical experience.” If the voices in the [NYT] article were gospel truth, it would be hard to explain the economic and cultural incentives driving a proliferation of new art house screens in cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as the improving health of so many exhibitors in smaller cities.

Gina Duncan associate VP, Film, BAM: I’ve just spent 11 straight days in cinemas watching 28 completely different sold-out audiences go crazy for the “beautiful, small, dramatic stories” some are lamenting the loss of. Yes, some of the films in BAMcinemaFest will end up on streaming platforms, while others will find their way to the big screen. This is not a bad thing! Streaming and cinemas should be able to co-exist — the issue is how?

Alison Kozberg managing director, Art House Convergence Instead of questioning if theatrical and home viewing can coexist (we know they can), we should consider how and when films succeed theatrically. Conversations with exhibitors who contributed to the theatrical runs of “Black Panther,” “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Lady Bird,” “I Am Not Your Negro,” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” would offer valuable insight into the ongoing vitality of moviegoing’s social and cultural attributes.

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

Andy Bohn co-managing director, Greenwich Entertainment How often have all of us in the movie industry heard someone say, “Why would I pay $15 to go to the theater when I can watch something on Netflix for free”? Obviously, streaming services aren’t free, but subscription services eliminate the cost-benefit analysis of seeing an individual film. While the economics and third-party status of MoviePass may have never allowed it to be sustainable, let’s not forget that it was the fastest-growing subscription service in history for two reasons. People love movies, and they love value.

Joana Vicente executive director and co-head, Toronto International Film Festival and TIFF Bell Lightbox: While it is easy to assume that theaters will principally become arenas for studio tentpole films, we believe there is still a vital need for places like TIFF Bell Lightbox — places where one can discover distinctly original and diverse voices, and be transformed by the experience of seeing a film. For years, people have been declaring the death of the publishing industry, the death of the novel. But the publishing industry in North America has never been more robust. We believe the same can hold true for the kinds of films we show at the Lightbox. Sure, books like “Twilight” and “Harry Potter” will always be blockbuster tentpoles for publishers, but that has not gobbled up high-quality literature. They just work on different scales and economies.

Dennis Lim: As someone who programs festivals, retrospectives, and theatrical releases year round in New York City, there are still sizable audiences here who value curation and engagement, and for whom the cinema experience remains central or at least part of a balanced media regimen. At Film at Lincoln Center, where we just celebrated our 50th anniversary, 2018 was our best year attendance-wise across the board [and] we’ve had our most successful retrospective ever (Visconti) and our most successful revival run (Sergei Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace”). Despite a few high-profile closures, the NYC repertory and art-house ecosystem is as healthy as ever, and in fact offers more, and more variety, than it did a decade or two ago.

Rajendra Roy chief curator of film, MOMA: I’m a perennial optimist. My experience at MoMA — and what I am witnessing at many art houses in the New York area — has demonstrated that you can rejuvenate your audience with re-energized programming and direct engagement with filmmakers. Hard work for sure, but really tangible and exciting results possible. “Tea leaves” are sometime just soggy plants. I don’t think anyone can tell the future… you just have to follow your gut and keep yourself engaged.

Ted Mundorff The question people are asking now is whether these films are being released right. It started with people questioning what happened with “Bookmart.” Now, when you see “Late Night” go out, it’s astounding. Just because one pays $14 million for an acquisition doesn’t mean it should go into wide release. The amount being spent on acquisition or production doesn’t change the character of the film. If it requires nurturing, then it should be nurtured, not blown out on 2,000-plus runs. That type of wide release ensures that the film will fail. I can’t speak for Bob Berney, but I can tell you: Bob Berney did not think that film should go wide.
Emma Thompson appears in Late Night by Nisha Ganatra, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Emily Aragones.All photos are copyrighted and may be used by press only for the purpose of news or editorial coverage of Sundance Institute programs. Photos must be accompanied by a credit to the photographer and/or 'Courtesy of Sundance Institute.' Unauthorized use, alteration, reproduction or sale of logos and/or photos is strictly prohibited.

“Late Night”

Emily Aragones

Adding 2,000 runs on “Late Night” after the initial platform release took the screen average down to $2,300. Last week, it went to $1,100. Let’s put some perspective on that. “Last Black Man in San Francisco” had a $5,7000 screen average in the same week. Even a little film that’s been around even longer, like “Biggest Little Farm” — a nice documentary — was a $5 difference in its screen average than “Late Night.” That’s what kills independent film. The last four or five films I’ve seen, I’ve really enjoyed. It’s not like we have awful product. We have awful release patterns.

Neal Block: This spring has been tough for everyone — specialized distributors and exhibitors both. We’re in a marked downswing, and it’s gone on longer than usual. But more new screens have opened, or are in the process of opening, in Manhattan and Brooklyn than any time in recent memory.

Toby Leonard programming director, Belcourt Theatre (Nashville, TN) Are people freaking out because it was a light spring? Our biggest competitor is a beautiful spring weekend, and there were no shortage of those this year. And they’ll be back again in September and October before awards season kicks in. The Belcourt screens a healthy mix of first-run and repertory, and 2018 was our best year on record.

Mike Stevens executive director, Moxie Cinema (Springfield, MO) We’ve never been in better financial shape. That is not due to booming ticket sales; indeed, our 2019 box office to date would be generously described as anemic. No, we are secure and sustainable because our community stepped up to help us transition to a non-profit art house in 2010. Every year since that, financial support has grown. We are thriving by showing a wide range of critically acclaimed first run movies and repertory. We aren’t going anywhere.

Rachel Jacobson executive director, Film Streams/Dundee Theater (Omaha, NE) We are thriving with a mission-based, philanthropic model with more than 3,600 member households and diverse revenue streams that allow us to prioritize the community-building around the art of film over box office. Both of our cinemas are open daily, but we depend on box office and concessions for less than half of our operations. I am hopeful that the theatrical experience will always be viable commercially. Either way, nonprofit art houses will continue to be vibrant hubs like museums and public libraries, creating wonderful experiences for diverse constituencies in cities large and small.

Cameron Bailey co-head, TIFF: There’s no mass audience anymore, which is a relief because there never was. Now’s a good time to pay more attention to each person watching. What motivates them, what rewards the time they spend with us? Big streaming companies can do that with data. Those of us running festivals or independent cinemas need to use both data and a more personal touch.

“Roma”

Ray Nutt CEO, Fathom: Documentaries are a great example of Fathom’s business model. We give life to content that may not otherwise be seen theatrically by making an event out of it. “They Shall Not Grow Old,” “Emanuel,” and “The Dawn Wall” are some recent examples that cross very different genres (military, inspiration, and sports, respectively) and have all proven to be successful. We carved out space in our upcoming programming schedule to show more documentary content in movie theaters.

Michael Tuckman: The decrease of local reviews is nothing new, but it used to be a film would get a wire review run in most major publications. That’s not happening as much anymore. As a result, distributors take advertising funds they might have spent on those outlets and instead use them for targeted digital advertising. And let’s be real: Is there is better return on investment when you target your demo with the accuracy that such ads allow? But what results is a system where we are just chasing our bases and not having culture discussed on widely shared media. It also creates a tough circle for exhibitors: if local press coverage is not supporting these films, then they don’t do as well at the box office, and it makes it more difficult to open these films in the future — and easier to take a seventh or eighth screen of the new blockbuster that week.

Joana Vicente: The onslaught of large amounts of content, combined with large platforms’ personalized curation, makes it all but impossible to discover new voices through traditional distribution. It is becoming harder and harder to stumble upon a film that ends up changing one’s life.

Eric Hynes: For a long time, I’ve felt the model we should be looking at is film festivals, where people are often very enthusiastic about the new, eager to take chances, and participate in cinematic culture. And I’m not talking about New York City. I’m talking about smaller towns all over the world where moviegoing remains passionate and vital, and it’s not about previewing the new Avengers movie. The audience is out there. The audience is not dictating that not everything is theatrical. That’s been forced upon them by business concerns that aren’t concerned with their experience — or their passion for film culture — at all.

Dennis Lim: There is clearly something about cinema that brings out the doomsday rhetoric. How many times are the movies supposed to have died by now? This is the invention that one of its inventors declared to be “without a future” and that has faced successive existential threats from the arrival of sound, television, home video, digital technology, corporate consolidation, and so on. And cinephilia, if you believe Susan Sontag, is long dead and buried.


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Mike Blakesley
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quote:
That might be true, but overall, AMC, the largest movie chain, paid 50.52% of box-office in 2018 for film rentals, 49.68% in 2017 and 53.2% in 2016 and in the first quarter of 2019, paid 49.94%.
OK fine, but you didn't say anything about an average. You said Disney was charging exhibitors 60% for Endgame, which is incorrect. (In fact, I was wrong too -- Endgame was actually 65%.)

I agree with those average figures though. For us it's closer to 55% because we don't play movies in later weeks when the rentals go down, and also due to the dreaded "sliding aggregate" scale in which the rental rate NEVER goes down, unless you wait for the sub-run date, which would just be suicidal.

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
existing digital projectors will need replacing starting in five to seven years and there will be no VPF's this time... How will theaters survive?
Well anybody who is smart has been planning for replacing their projector(s) since they first switched to digital. That's why we started running pre-show ads. A savings account and a good banker are the two keys.

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Marcel Birgelen
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For me it looks like Hollywood is trying to flush itself down the crapper. Yes, they will continue to make a few billions before they finally swirl down that hole, but if they continue in the direction they're heading, they'll beyond the event horizon in even less than 10 years.

What we see is an ever ongoing consolidation, which is already bad for the industry. Disney being the biggest monster in the room right now. But to be honest, Disney in its current state sucks so badly, it's almost unreal. At this stage, we should start a crowd funding to bring back Michael Eisner, yes, it's THAT bad.

Look at the sad state of affairs. Their biggest business right now is pushing one superhero movie after the other, while they managed to actually deliver a Star Wars movie that failed at the box office... simply imagine that for a second: A Star Wars movie that flopped.

What original content have they been pushing? They manage to make a "live action" remake of Dumbo, Aladdin AND the Lion King in a SINGLE year... really? At Pixar, they decided yet to make another Toy Story. While the movie itself may be good, it's yet another franchise re-heat.

Meanwhile, at the other studios, not much else happening there either, besides reheating last year's stale soup.

So, what do we have to look forward to the 2nd half of this year?

- The Lion King reboot, now with 3D rendered animals
- Yet another Spider-Man movie
- Another Fast & Furious movie
- Another Angry Birds movie?!
- A Playmobile movie...
- Hopefully the LAST Rambo movie?
- Another Frozen movie
- Yet another Batman reboot
- A sort-of Terminator reboot
- An Addams Family reboot
- A Charlie's Angels reboot
- A Jumanji-reboot sequel
- A last-ditch effort to fix Star Wars

Without the guts to do something original, people will simply get tired of it all. Maybe you can reach a new generation with the 30th Batman reboot, but those who saw the previous 29 will gladly skip it.

Creative writers simply don't get their chances anymore, if you want to get the $100M+ you need to produce a potential blockbuster release, you'll only get it green-lighted if you bring half the cash yourself or if it's based on some boilerplate pre-proven franchise.

It is this lack of creativity, which is slowly killing Hollywood and the exhibition industry in tandem.

People still go out to see movies, you only need to give them the movies they want to see... if nobody is doing that, they stay at home and watch the latest straight-to-tv crap they're being fed on their all-they-can-watch subscription services.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001


 - posted 07-02-2019 11:25 PM      Profile for Bobby Henderson   Email Bobby Henderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
The movie industry will continue to survive in some form, but the American "Hollywood" version of it has been sleep walking farther and farther out onto thin ice. Americans are used to American movies dominating the movie industry world-wide. How would they feel if 10 or 20 years from now most of the movies playing at the local multiplex were Asian or European titles? Of course that's assuming commercial theaters would even still exist at that point.

Movie distributors continue to think the "window" between a movie's theatrical debut and when it is released on home video is meaningless. I'm 100% certain that if the average window gets short enough it will be like a roller coaster cresting that first big hill. In this case the metaphor of a roller coaster rapidly gaining speed going downhill will symbolize the crash in movie theater attendance that will happen.

If the wait time is short enough not enough paying customers will show up to keep theaters in the black. The concept of day and date release, putting a movie onto commercial screens and TV screens at home at the same time, would put theaters in a fatal disadvantage. Only a small minority of people would bother to show up and pay extra to watch a given movie in a theatrical setting. Everyone else will watch the show at home on their big flat panel TV screens (which continue to get bigger, better and more affordable). Or they'll watch it on their phones. Yet some movie studio heads think commercial theaters would carry on just fine with that arrangement. But, basically, they're telling lies with such statements. They know what would happen. They just don't care about commercial theaters. What I think is really foolish is how money the movie studios will lose if they allow the commercial theater industry to become a tiny shadow of its former self.

It's obvious the movie industry is already letting certain kinds of movies just go direct to video (or Netflix). Very few theatrical screens are available for artsy, independent content, or pretty much anything that actually takes a damned chance doing something new. D-cinema was supposed to give commercial movie theaters more flexibility over the wider variety of content they could book on their screens. In practice that's all been 100% horse shit. If anything the majors have made their booking demands even more ridiculous. All these big theater chain mergers have reduced variety of content on the big screen even worse.

Streaming a good movie is fine if you have an Internet connection at least 25 megabits per second or faster. But it's a pain in the ass trying to find anything good to watch on any of the streaming services unless you already have a specific title in mind. It's very easy for any new "indie" movie release to get lost in all the rows of title suggestions which show only a tiny fraction of what's actually available to watch. I feel like movies that don't get a theatrical release and are instead released on Netflix, Prime or Hulu are basically sent there to die. What's really sad is some good quality movies are reduced to the same standing as those shitty straight-to-video movies we used to see on video rental store shelves.

The theatrical release (and an effective national ad campaign) is the only thing that will embed a particular movie into the public consciousness. Otherwise the movie is yet another title no one has heard of.

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999


 - posted 07-03-2019 04:02 PM      Profile for Frank Angel   Author's Homepage   Email Frank Angel   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Exhibition -- Dead Industry Walking.

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