This is certainly a part of the problem. The other side of the coin is “why bother when it’s going to be streaming”. It’s a perfect storm of a terrible experience in cinemas and easy access to streaming in the comfort of your own home. At home I have a perfect view on my big screen TV, can control the lighting, the temperature, the food, and the audience. Cinemas feel like they’re in a death spiral - they make less money so they pump in even more ads and increase fees making the experience worse, which puts off even more punters, so they make even less money.
Hollywood is largely to blame as the article mentions briefly - the 90 day exclusive window for cinemas to show films created an incentive for people to go out and see them, made the cinemas and the studios lots of money, and made movies “special” - they were an event like going to the theatre or going out for dinner. Now going to the cinema feels more like an event such as catching dysentery.
Since the pandemic, the studios have devalued their own product. If you want to see a movie, you just have to wait a couple of weeks and it’ll be available to rent to stream from home. It costs less to rent a movie than go out to the cinema with a much better experience, and Hollywood gets a smaller cut of that. But lots of people don’t even bother with that - for the vast majority of movies you might as well wait until it ends up on a streaming service like Netflix, where Hollywood makes even less.
If Hollywood wants to save itself, it should listen to the cinema chains and extend the exclusive period back to 45 days (or even 90). If you want your product to be premium, it needs to be a premium experience.
This is certainly a part of the problem. The other side of the coin is “why bother when it’s going to be streaming”. It’s a perfect storm of a terrible experience in cinemas and easy access to streaming in the comfort of your own home. At home I have a perfect view on my big screen TV, can control the lighting, the temperature, the food, and the audience. Cinemas feel like they’re in a death spiral - they make less money so they pump in even more ads and increase fees making the experience worse, which puts off even more punters, so they make even less money.
Hollywood is largely to blame as the article mentions briefly - the 90 day exclusive window for cinemas to show films created an incentive for people to go out and see them, made the cinemas and the studios lots of money, and made movies “special” - they were an event like going to the theatre or going out for dinner. Now going to the cinema feels more like an event such as catching dysentery.
Since the pandemic, the studios have devalued their own product. If you want to see a movie, you just have to wait a couple of weeks and it’ll be available to rent to stream from home. It costs less to rent a movie than go out to the cinema with a much better experience, and Hollywood gets a smaller cut of that. But lots of people don’t even bother with that - for the vast majority of movies you might as well wait until it ends up on a streaming service like Netflix, where Hollywood makes even less.
If Hollywood wants to save itself, it should listen to the cinema chains and extend the exclusive period back to 45 days (or even 90). If you want your product to be premium, it needs to be a premium experience.