There was a Cinema of the Future conference in London yesterday where industry “experts” discussed the future of cinema but will cinema be the same as how we have experienced it for the last 100+ years if exhibitors treat audiences as cash cows they currently do. You only need to look at the failings of other non digital industries like Kodak and Blockbuster and the state of the music industry that is less CD more digital to see old formats might not be what the future is for those forms of entertainment. 10 years ago Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix for $50m now Netflix are worth $30 billion and Blockbuster are worthless.
Andrew Turner, UK and Ireland sales director at 20th Century Fox mentioned about the film experience and the presentation of film. Outside central London cinema presentation there is none its all automated the tabs are gone, the masking is fixed so cinemas screen all films on the same size screen just enlarging the picture to fill the screen with some formats meaning the audience doesn’t experience the film properly.
He said also that 2014 had a mixed bag of released that mixed bag has given 20th Century Fox their best ever year and will probably have their biggest ever percentage share of the box office which was almost 30% in July but down to 24% in October that was more than double Warner Bros market share. So how did 20th Century Fox get it so right with their mixed bag of releases and most others didn’t?
Digital cinema was seen as to improve the cinema presentation but just allowed cinemas to cut staff levels issues still occur with digital projection but when it was film someone was on hand who could fix the issue within minutes being digital it is much harder especially when you don’t have anyone on site with the knowledge to fix the problem. Meaning that cinemas have to refund and cancel the screening.
Pearl and Dean CEO Kathryn Jacob said cinemas must offer greater value for time, not only money.
Apart from EE Wednesday going to the cinema has become a rip off for audiences. The CEA might claim the average price in the UK is £6.52 but we all know its £9+ and then you have 3D surcharges and IMAX. For Interstellar it was £22.50 at the Odeon Leicester Square in 70mm, £18.40 at the BFI IMAX in 70mm IMAX and £18 at the Odeon Swiss Cottage in Digital IMAX. How any exhibitor can possibly justify those prices I would like to know. There was also the issue that during the Odeon Leicester Sq run the 70mm print was damaged and they screened it digital without informing the audiences. It also was screening in IMAX Digital at the BFI IMAX for some screenings but again audiences weren’t told.
When digital first people were saying that there will be great benefits for it like cheaper prices but cinemagoers haven’t benefited from digital as instead of ticket prices dropping they have seen them dramatically increasing in recently years.
Using CEA figures they have gone up 58% in the last 13 years but the BFI said they have gone up over 27% in the last 5 years alone.
With this dramatic increase in ticket prices we should be seeing films regularly taking £50m+ in the UK instead this year the biggest film of the year is The Lego Movie (down £14m from last years biggest film) that has taken £34m. With only two others taking more than £30m this year compared with 6 last year.
As Gone Girl was climbing up the list of biggest 18 films ever the majority of them opened over 10 years ago. Gone Girl has done very well but it would need without need to in reality of taken £32m+ to beat them.
20th Century Fox green-lighted Independence Day sequel this week the original film opened in 1996 and took $811m worldwide which was a he amount. If the sequel took less than that in 2016 it would be seen as a disappointment similar to Sony Pictures disappointed The Amazing Spider-Man 2 only took $750m. With some massive mega-movies opening in the years ahead they need to take mega money at the box office but many will fail to do that if $750m is now seen as disappointing?
The problem with these films is they are surrounded by massive hype today Star Wars The Force Awakens trailer is released over a year before release, the hype and expectations are already high it can never live up to fans expectations. So these films will open big $100m big in the following weeks. The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 opened with $123m but was immediately seen as a disappointment and many said it wouldn’t taken the $400m+the first two films did (I’m thinking $350m+) as it will likely see big drops in the weeks that follow its release.
It used to be a film final box office would take 10 times+ its opening weekend now its just over 3 times with some films like Godzilla and Transformers 4 even less. So how are all of these mega-films going to ever possibly take the money the studios expect?
Audiences are down, box office is down, film budgets are up and profits are down. Exhibitors always put the blame on the films but there were plenty of films that should of performed much better than they did this year. So the question exhibitors need to ask themselves why is there roughly a 20% drop on the box office of this years top 10 UK film to last year.
I’ve said it so many times here in many different articles the reason people aren’t going to the cinema as often as they could or would like to is the cost of tickets. Its one of the biggest complaints people make to cinema staff along with the use of mobile phones within cinemas and the bad behaviour of people in cinemas.
Exhibitors always say they make more profit from popcorn than they do with cinema tickets. I bet if cinemas were to reduce ticket prices by 50% they will see a huge increase in attendance and in doing so more people will be willing to buy the popcorn and soft drinks. I’m sure more popcorn and soft drinks are sold on EE Wednesdays than most other days?
