This question is as ubiquitous as bankruptcy filings by movie theater chains. Spoiler alert: I don’t think the end of movie theaters is near. But the year 2024 will test my confidence. The box office for the entire month of May was $520 million. We have to go back to May 1998 ($510 million) to see the worst start to a successful summer season. To put things in perspective, all of the movies released last month (The Fall Guy, Furiosa, Garfield the Movie, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, among others) generated less cash than Avengers: Endgame (2019) in its first 8 days. of liberation.
In fact, the comparison is not comparable. Avengers: Endgame is the conclusion of a multi-year cinematic event. Although the Mad Max universe and the Apes videos are well-established franchises, only the Star Wars Cinematic Universe has rivaled the box office system created by Marvel in the 2010s.
Martin Scorsese endlessly criticized social media for comparing Marvel movies to amusement park rides. He said summer blockbusters are less “cinema” than bombastic occasions designed for the big screens and the thunderous noise of movie theaters. In fact, the box office confirms his theory. (Scorsese also put his career and money where his mouth was. His two most recent films, The Irishman and The Flower Moon Killer, have largely avoided theaters and gone to Netflix and Apple TVArray respectively. )
It’s also worth noting that Avengers: Endgame was released before the pandemic, a year before quarantine, masking, and social distancing became commonplace in our country. Film critics who integrate sociology into their economic research point out that the general public has just become accustomed to staying at home. Dinner at a restaurant and a movie turned into GrubHub and Netflix.
No queues. Nobody talks about the film. And there’s no chance that some random disgruntled individual will make the decision to show up in the movies like they did at the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight (2012) in Aurora, Colorado. Everyone feels satisfied to stay in their personal bunker after the pandemic and be left alone.
Not to mention the cost of watching the videos with the family. A group of four people with reduced rates crosses the $100. 00 mark for a night out. Parents can be heard muttering, “I didn’t need to buy this place. “”Movie chains have responded by creating clubs where a consistent payment per month (usually between $30 and $40) gives subscribers the right to watch several videos per week. This might be ideal for a retiree with time to watch 3 videos per week, but The Family of Four would still pay between $120 and $160 a month for such passes without a sufficient family fee to justify the expense.
Going to the theater also requires a significant investment of time. The trip to the cinema, the location of the parking lot, the queue at the concession stand, the advertisements, the trailer after the trailer, the duration of the film and the journey home. Depending on the length of the market, going to see a single movie can easily take up a day. I’m an evangelist for the theatrical experience, and there are days when I think, “Maybe I’ll watch two movies on Criterion Channel, MUBI, or Netflix in less time than it would take me to see a movie in the theater. “” on a busy summer Saturday.
Asking why movie theater attendance has declined helps keep movie sellers and exhibitors awake at night. Is this an inferior product? (I still can’t call a movie “content. “)We just haven’t made the next Avengers: Endgame, and if we could just get the formula right, other people would return to theaters in droves. Is this a change in society? People need movies. They just need to enjoy it away from the yelling young people and chatty adults.
The challenge for cinemas is not so much to find a better product. They have no control over what Hollywood produces. The challenge for theaters is to create an “experience” greater than what moviegoers can have by staying at home. That’s precisely what the Alamo Drafthouse chain has been doing for a while by providing food, alcohol, and a strict no-talk policy in its theaters. However, this week, the channel was bought through Sony Pictures following the bankruptcy of Alamo.
The answer is probably easier than you think. People need a theatrical experience, and yet they build those theaters in their homes. According to Sound and Vision magazine’s June/July factor, sales of 85-inch TVs increased by 1,200% last year. Samsung lately sells 98-inch TVs at Sam’s Club and CostCo. The Chinese electronics company TCL (which stands for Telephone Communication Limited) is selling a 98-inch TV at Best Buy for $2,500. 00 (which can be financed for twelve to twenty-four months for those who don’t want to be saddled with that price). . giant check). The 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) showed many TVs with screens larger than 100 inches available lately.
I bought an 85-inch Sony Bravia in 2019. It crouched like a giant steel bird of prey over a small trunk that housed my stereo. You can just stay inside the empty box. It looked like the TARDIS phone booth from the TV series Doctor Who. My wife and friends thought I had lost my mind. They attributed it to my uncontrollable movie buff, to the endless search for the best image and powerful sound. Five years later, it is the most popular television feature film in the country.
The theatre industry competes with the generation itself. The same advances that put cigarette butts on the seats of the multiplexes are now being implemented in the recliners of the living rooms. When it comes to generation, the word “build it and they will come” has morphed into “build it and they will stay. “
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