I have notes accumulating for two “rant” posts but I'm going to combine the topics and let rip here to get it off my chest!
Please humour me and read on.
I am obviously not going to solve anything because I don't work in the movie industry I'm just a guy with a dumb blog.
The money spent on tickets in cinemas in the UK and the US has dropped by 50% since 2013.
Obviously, movie studios and cinema companies have looked into this with polls and investigations to look at why people are staying away.
Findings from these polls and Investigations include,
Societal changes.
- Competition from other forms of entertainment.
- short attention spans.
Hollywood specific issues
- Streaming
- Piracy
- Lack of diversity
- Overreliance on franchise films and reboots.
- Chasing insane budgets
Cinema specific issues
- Ticket and concession cost.
- Behavior of other cinema patrons
- Cinema cleanliness and seat comfort
- Lack of selection
What is crazy is how over the last decade Hollywood has seemed to ignore the established challenges to their industry and just plowed ahead regardless.
1. Competition from other forms of entertainment.
It's not a new threat. Since the 1950s Television and home entertainment have threatened cinema but almost everyone having an HD screen in their pocket is a new threat level.
YouTube, social media and TikTok do seem to occupy a lot of people's time. Especially Gen z.
The best thing the film industry can do is to identify and elevate talent from these platforms for example the YouTube content creators Danny and Michael Philippou from Australia made the horror film “Talk to Me” with the studio A24 for $4.2m and it took $92m at the box office.
The biggest box office phenomenon in the last decade “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” AKA “Barbenheimer” was an organic trend born online via social media not an idea from any Hollywood executive. Although it would be impossible to knowingly recreate they should be looking at films and scheduling them for success. I don't hold much hope because scheduling seems to be a mystery to Hollywood. I still have no idea why they are allergic to Halloween when it comes to releasing horror/spooky films I would think that was an open goal. In 2023 Disney released their “Haunted Mansion” movie in the Summer and now in 2024 Universal Pictures has scheduled the “Nosferatu” remake for Christmas time.
- short attention spans.
If it is a known fact that people's attention spans are getting shorter… Why have films got longer?
The shift to digital filmmaking and projection has slashed the costs around film production and distribution not needing expensive physical film stock and the related costs of transporting heavy film reels to cinemas.
This has appeared to have opened up filmmakers to moving away or just simply ignoring the established concept of feature-length films being 90 minutes long.
90 min was born from a practical reason. A film would be projected in a cinema and each screening would consist of the projectionist showing a reel of adverts and trailers lasting about 20min then a feature film with a run time of approximately 90min that would require seamlessly switching between projectors 4 times to show because 90m of film would be on 4 reels. Longer films would be shown with an “Intermission” or “Interval” This allowed for the resetting of the projectors and allowed patrons to stretch their legs, have a bathroom break or even spend money on additional concessions.
But now films tend to be projected digitally the gloves are off!
The tried and tested formula of a tight three-act structure telling a story in an hour and a half is becoming a thing of the past… while it is a known fact attention spans are getting shorter. Wrap your head around that!
I watch a lot of films and so many of them are 2 hours + and they are too long! Baggy! Most would benefit from 20 or 30 minutes chopped out of them. On the rare occasion A mammoth run time is justified the concept of an Interval is no longer an option. In 2024 cinemas who were offering a brief comfort break during Martin Scorsese’s 206-minute film “Killers of the Flower Moon” were threatened with legal action if they continued to do so. That film ultimately lost $200m at the box office And I bet Hollywood has not learned any lessons.
- Streaming!
In a nutshell, Movie studios need to stop having streaming services and be paid by other streaming services to stream their movies.
Movie studios need to invest in films tooled for success in the theatrical market Cinemas are their friends.
For example, Disney released a kid-friendly spooky film in the Summer in cinemas! nobody cared! cinemas screened it to empty screens! No footfall! No concession sales! Just So Disney could dump it on their streaming service for Halloween! If no new customers signed up to Disney+ because of that specific film they didn’t make any money from that film and they also damaged the movie theater industry by prioritising their dud streaming model. That film was “The Haunted Mansion” (2023) which made a loss of approx $155m in its theatrical release.
Netflix also needs to embrace the theatrical model and stop seeing theatres as the enemy. Netflix put “Glass Onion” in cinemas and it did well and they pulled it. If they had given it a fair run they could have had a theatrical hit made all their production budget back and had screens busy for theatres… but to share the smallest slice of their pie is so disgusting to them that it is tragic. They pretend to like movies but they hate cinemas and the cinema experience is so very sad. Perhaps they should stick to making the first season of a TV show and then cancelling them!
4. Piracy.
Still an issue in 2024 piracy has morphed to a place where consumers instead of knowingly illegally downloading a movie now have apps set up on streaming devices accessing illegal content that they stream and just think they have "outsmarted" the system rather than breaking the law. There needs to be a crackdown on this.
Google Play Services and Apple iTunes make a lot of money renting and selling digital download movies the movie industry must lean on these companies to make sure none of these apps are available in their app stores or even findable via the Google search engine.
This would be a start.
5. Lack of diversity.
Cited as an issue for many not only do filmmakers need to make quality films that people of all races, creeds, genders or sexualities can relate to, but there also needs to be increased access to world cinema it is 2024 world is supposed to be smaller than ever being able to see the latest anime from Japan or action film from India shouldn't be too much to ask for.
6. Overreliance on franchise films and reboots.
Original films do get made and films "like we used to get" still get made too but they get chewed up by online critics before they get a chance or are just poorly attended and flop at the box office.
IP films sell. Comic book movies may have passed their sell-by date but movies based on video games and toys are coming up fast.
If people don’t go and see films not based on an existing IP they will stop making them. Film fans need to seek these out and see them. In 2023 Gareth Edwards directed a really good mid-budget Sci-fi film called “The Creator” not based on any existing IP and it lost $57.6m at the box office. I know for a fact it will hit streaming Hulu in the States and Disney+ in the UK and there will be articles written about how great it is and how it was overlooked and its a hidden gem… But that is not great news for Gareth Edwards who will be trying to get another project off the ground or 20th Century Studios profits.
7. Chasing insane budgets.
If ticket sales are 50% down film budgets must be set realistically.
We know that pre-2023 strikes jobbing actors and scriptwriters were paid badly and it is an open secret that special effects technicians and digital effects technicians are still paid badly.
But Disney will make an action-adventure film starring an 80-year-old man for $300m then spend $100m promoting it knowing cinema attendance is down 50% and then wonder why it lost $175m the same Disney that has been moving away from selling physical media and have their own streaming service… cutting their own throats!
Studios need to stop thinking films will gross $1B worldwide because now that is like capturing lightning in a bottle not business as usual.
Budgets need to be slashed on projects. I would also like to add I have no idea where this supposed money goes on these projects I can not see $300m on the screen when watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny I think Disney needs better accountants.
With these cinema-specific issues, they all have similar solutions.
They need to be more busy!
- Ticket and concession cost.
Prices are what they are. Cinemas are expensive to run and due to the economy are getting more expensive. It shouldn't be impossible for even the most casual film fan to go to the cinema 10 times a year. Currently, more than 30% of the adult population of the UK claim they don't visit the cinema at all that's where the change needs to happen.
- Behavior of other cinema patrons.
This comes down to the cinemas. Staff levels and training. Having rules displayed and enforced.
In an ideal world cinemas would be busy they would have the seating areas in all screens covered by night vision CCTV that was supervised by dedicated security staff who could enforce the rules. The fear a cinema staff member could have about throwing out 1 or 2 idiots due to the fear of losing those idiots as customers…you may have lost 10 adults in the screening who have just decided to never go to the cinema again.
- Cinema cleanliness and seat comfort
Again staff levels when it comes to cleanliness add to that if the cinemas had security enforcing rules and keeping order there would be fewer idiots throwing food and drinks around and vandalising seats and facilities. The more money cinemas bring in the more likely screens will get refitted with new seating. Cinemas need to respect they can operate with fewer seats per screen have them more spaced out and increase the comfort they are competing with home sofas.
- Lack of selection.
Currently, where I live we don't have an independent cinema so a lot of smaller titles that are released are tricky to see and I will probably have to wait for Digital Rental or streaming. I don’t know why chain cinemas can show these films on smaller screens when they come out increasing the choice for patrons. I don't know how busy a multi-plex would be at 7 pm on a Tuesday but if they were showing the latest A24 movies in screen 7 I would be a lot more likely to be there.
Anyway! end of rant!
Please feel free to forward this to any Hollywood executives you may know!
Since we are not Hollywood bosses things we can do…
Go to the cinema as much as you can! When you are there buy concessions!
Don’t give the staff hassle because they are overworked and underpaid!
Seek out original movies go see them!
Don’t steal movies or TV via illegal streaming and challenge people you know who does.
If you are on TikTok look for movie-related content and spread the word about good films you have seen to encourage people to put their phones down and go to the cinema.
Anyway! thanks for your time.
