Still More People That Agree With Me On Movie Downturns
The theatres, of course, are the most vocal opponents of my “theatre as an industry is doomed without change” theory, and they’ve got some fair ammo on their sides. They point at The Dark Knight as though it were some kind of talisman, chanting “four hundred million” like it were voodoo.
And yet, there are analysts out there saying that the movie industry is being badly affected by the recession, for literally ALL the reason I’ve been talking about for the last two months!
Although the film industry has generally boasted that it is immune to economic slowdowns, a new study suggests that moviegoers are already seeing fewer movies at the multiplex. As reported by today’s (Thursday) Wall Street Journal, a study by Los Angeles-based market-research firm Interpret Llc found that 52 percent of respondents are cutting back while only 5 percent said they are going to the movies more often.
There you go. Clean evidence–film attendance is falling off. Major blockbusters–now down to a handful so far this summer and even Pixar was in the mix–notwithstanding, the polls are in. Concrete and bulletproof evidence that movie attendance IS falling off in places, and it’s right there in black and white.
Of course, the question of why comes up, and that’s a question that the article also answered thusly:
While studio executives have argued that a slow economy is actually good for their business because movies offer low-cost entertainment, analysts have observed that films must now compete with even lower-cost entertainment. “You can’t compare how this slowdown might affect the movie industry to previous recessions,” industry analyst Hal Vogel told the Journal. “The industry still has a degree of recession resistance, but this time around there is all this new technology and all these new distractions for moviegoers — you didn’t have Web episodes and cable television and computer games coming out of your ears in the past.”
Any of this sound familiar? It should, because I’ve been chanting it like no tomorrow for the last like two months now. The entertainment market is now fundamentally different. The internet is rapidly coming into its own as a universal and massive entertainment clearing house. Video games as an industry have surpassed filmmaking. Video stores and mail-order video delivery and set-top boxes and digital delivery are all working in concert to give consumers unfettered access to any movie they want at any time.
The formerly recession-proof movie theatre is no longer–they may be low cost entertainment, but they’re now competing with entertainment that’s even LOWER cost. And the theatres aren’t as low-cost as they once were–remember, that ten dollar ticket and eight-dollar-a-gallon Coke is not the value it once was especially when put alongside the four dollars a gallon for gas to get there. It’s definitely not the kind of value that going to the video store is, or for renting movies from Netflix.
Popularity: 2% [?]
The theaters are going to have to stop inconsiderately undermining your argument by making all this money.
Matt, you make me smile
Just to play devil’s advocate for a moment, though, one must take ticket prices into account when calculating grosses. TDK is so high on the all-time charts partially because most of us are paying roughly $9.50 per ticket instead of the $6.50 we paid for Titanic. That renders it slightly less impressive.
But only slightly.
I actually read somewhere that people are going to the theater more because it’s a cheaper form of entertainment than, you know, actually leaving town. But I can’t find it now, and I don’t remember if it was actually sourced with numbers or just speculation.
yes, i know…the bastards. actually, liz makes a good point–four hundred million dollars today, especially with the weakened dollar, is a lot less than it sounds like. I know, it’s still preposterous, but it’s still just one of its kind. Though the thing is, liz, more people are also staying home outright because it’s even cheaper than both actually leaving town AND going to the movies.