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Honestly I'm expecting the whole industry to crash hugely. I've received so many free cinema tickets to mainstream cinemas in the past 3 years that I haven't on

Honestly I'm expecting the whole industry to crash hugely. I've received so many free cinema tickets to mainstream cinemas in the past 3 years that I haven't once actually paid to see anything by a major studio in that time, and I'm someone who goes to the cinema once a week on average. Much like MoviePass I assume _someone_ is paying for all those trips I go on for free, and when they stop paying I'm not going to go anywhere near 90% of those films. Meanwhile the specified prices of cinema tickets have grown and grown to the point that I'm honestly appalled when I hear how much people go to see such and such a new blockbuster on release day. And on the TV side of things Netflix seem focused on making consumable content over anything that endures. I can't think of any shows of theirs that're going to age as well as HBOs finest have and I can see that being an issue in the long term when they don't have these kind of pillars to fall back on. It all seems focused on hyping people up into subscribing and then hoping that they forget about the subscription cost indefinitely.

chipperyman573 7y ago
Wow, what mailing lists are you on that give you weekly tickets to mainstream cinemas? I'd love to get on that.
- JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
  The main one is my health insurance, which consistently gives me a free cinema ticket ever fortnight (was every week) for walking distances I'd've walked anyway. Mubi gives me free cinema tickets each week to a designated film. My phone network gave free ones occasionally for a while too, have switched networks since but I believe they still do.
  - boudin 7y ago
    Those tickets are all paid through the services you are mentioning though. The health insurance, the phone network and Mubi don't get those tickets for free. You do pay a fraction of the tickets through those subscriptions, and a lot of people are paying this fraction too but whithout taking advantage of those tickets, so actualy spending money on movie theatre tickets not even knowing it :)
    - JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
      Maybe I phrased it poorly but that was my point. It's free to me but when it comes to box office numbers they can still claim record breaking figures partially off the back of it. As far as the economics stand right now everything is going good but this kind of thing will have a long term knock on effect towards the perceived value of a trip to the cinema. These companies won't endlessly do that, there's weird stuff going on with the numbers to prop up the unsustainable cinema prices and it isn't going to last. I'd say the industry is increasingly reliant on opening weekend hypefests leading to crazy preorder rates too, which actually might hold up even though I find it grim for wholly different reasons.
    - a_imho 7y ago
      if it is free you are the product Cinemas show so many ads I would not be surprised playing movies is just a side gig.
thrusong 7y ago
One of the most frustrating things for me regarding ticket prices is that no theatres in my hometown (Winnipeg, Manitoba) offer matinee pricing anymore. I'm guessing this is possibly because of the Cineplex monopoly since they bought out Famous Players. I get so pissed off with paying $16 to see a movie by myself in an empty auditorium during the day when it used to be $8 a seat. What happened to supply and demand? As for the whole Netflix = consumable content thing, I completely agree. Maybe they come up with a good first season because of big data... there's no overall plan where to take the story and usually the follow up seasons are terrible. Look at a show like Santa Clarita Diet- I'm positive that show had absolutely no idea how to explain anything or how to wrap it up.
- williamDafoe 7y ago
  When I was a kid in the mid 70s movies cost $3.00 in the Midwest. Westegg says that inflation is up 10x since then. Any movie less than $20 is actually a bargain. However, my dad's salary was 7,000x a movie ticket (Midwest CS professor before salaries exploded).
  - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    When I was a kid in the 90's, I could see a movie for $1.50 in the evenings or $1 for a matinee ... in the midwest. They weren't first run movies, but rather movies that were in between their time in the movies and when they went to video. I'm guessing a few of them might have been on HBO during that time frame, but it really didn't matter. Some years later, that theater quit doing the second run movies and switched to regular movies. I feel kind of lucky that it was after I moved away and had basically quit going to theaters anyway. I'd probably go more often if things were of similar cheapness. The low cost also meant that I'd be more willing to see comedies and take chances on other movies that don't truly benefit from a large screen and sound system. I also wasn't all that out of sorts if the movie wasn't very good since even at that time, it wasn't much money. I truly think the advantage of movies in the 70's and early 80's was the lack of popular home video. If you didn't see the movie, you missed out. And I think that helped afford somewhat higher prices, though they didn't need to charge less for second showings as they used to do (Disney cartoons, for example).

chipperyman573 7y ago

Wow, what mailing lists are you on that give you weekly tickets to mainstream cinemas? I'd love to get on that.

JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
The main one is my health insurance, which consistently gives me a free cinema ticket ever fortnight (was every week) for walking distances I'd've walked anyway. Mubi gives me free cinema tickets each week to a designated film. My phone network gave free ones occasionally for a while too, have switched networks since but I believe they still do.
- boudin 7y ago
  Those tickets are all paid through the services you are mentioning though. The health insurance, the phone network and Mubi don't get those tickets for free. You do pay a fraction of the tickets through those subscriptions, and a lot of people are paying this fraction too but whithout taking advantage of those tickets, so actualy spending money on movie theatre tickets not even knowing it :)
  - JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
    Maybe I phrased it poorly but that was my point. It's free to me but when it comes to box office numbers they can still claim record breaking figures partially off the back of it. As far as the economics stand right now everything is going good but this kind of thing will have a long term knock on effect towards the perceived value of a trip to the cinema. These companies won't endlessly do that, there's weird stuff going on with the numbers to prop up the unsustainable cinema prices and it isn't going to last. I'd say the industry is increasingly reliant on opening weekend hypefests leading to crazy preorder rates too, which actually might hold up even though I find it grim for wholly different reasons.
  - a_imho 7y ago
    if it is free you are the product Cinemas show so many ads I would not be surprised playing movies is just a side gig.

thrusong 7y ago

One of the most frustrating things for me regarding ticket prices is that no theatres in my hometown (Winnipeg, Manitoba) offer matinee pricing anymore. I'm guessing this is possibly because of the Cineplex monopoly since they bought out Famous Players. I get so pissed off with paying $16 to see a movie by myself in an empty auditorium during the day when it used to be $8 a seat. What happened to supply and demand? As for the whole Netflix = consumable content thing, I completely agree. Maybe they come up with a good first season because of big data... there's no overall plan where to take the story and usually the follow up seasons are terrible. Look at a show like Santa Clarita Diet- I'm positive that show had absolutely no idea how to explain anything or how to wrap it up.

williamDafoe 7y ago
When I was a kid in the mid 70s movies cost $3.00 in the Midwest. Westegg says that inflation is up 10x since then. Any movie less than $20 is actually a bargain. However, my dad's salary was 7,000x a movie ticket (Midwest CS professor before salaries exploded).
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  When I was a kid in the 90's, I could see a movie for $1.50 in the evenings or $1 for a matinee ... in the midwest. They weren't first run movies, but rather movies that were in between their time in the movies and when they went to video. I'm guessing a few of them might have been on HBO during that time frame, but it really didn't matter. Some years later, that theater quit doing the second run movies and switched to regular movies. I feel kind of lucky that it was after I moved away and had basically quit going to theaters anyway. I'd probably go more often if things were of similar cheapness. The low cost also meant that I'd be more willing to see comedies and take chances on other movies that don't truly benefit from a large screen and sound system. I also wasn't all that out of sorts if the movie wasn't very good since even at that time, it wasn't much money. I truly think the advantage of movies in the 70's and early 80's was the lack of popular home video. If you didn't see the movie, you missed out. And I think that helped afford somewhat higher prices, though they didn't need to charge less for second showings as they used to do (Disney cartoons, for example).