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Number of movie tickets hit two decade low
| January 6th, 2015 at 12:44:37 AM permalink | |
| Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25011 |
The figure includes int sales, it did 2 times more overseas. The ship has sailed on Exodus, it will never make a profit. People are bored with remakes from the Bible. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |
| January 6th, 2015 at 9:19:24 AM permalink | |
| Pacomartin Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 1068 Posts: 12569 |
Noah will probably be the biggest money loser of the year. The studios don't get 50% of the boxoffice internationally. The nominal break even point used to be to have domestic sales equal to production budget. The theory was that the studio gets half the ticket sales domestically, and the other half of production budget and sales and marketing are made up by international sales, VOD, DVD, streaming rights, and television rights. As foreign sales exploded (over twice domestic sales in the case of Noah), the back of the envelope calculation is worldwide revenue is 3X the production budget. There are modifications to the rule. A Million Ways to Die in the West looks like a poor performer partly because "Ted" was such a massive success. A $40m production budget resulted in $43m domestic and $43m international. But a movie like that will probably have strong sales after theater market. The biggest shock this year was the big budget animated films made less than half what they did last year ($2,269.5m vs $4,527.8m). 2014 Worldwide animated films (9 over $100m) 11 How to Train Your Dragon 2 Fox $618.9 13 Rio 2 Fox $500.2 15 The LEGO Movie WB $468.1 17 Big Hero 6 BV $378.6 26 Mr. Peabody & Sherman Fox $272.9 27 Penguins of Madagascar Fox $270.7 45 Planes: Fire & Rescue BV $147.0 53 The Nut Job ORF $113.3 56 The Boxtrolls Focus $108.0 2013 Worldwide animated films (8 over $100m) 1 Frozen BV $1,274.2 3 Despicable Me 2 Uni. $970.8 7 Monsters University BV $743.6 11 The Croods Fox $587.2 22 The Smurfs 2 Sony $347.5 28 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 Sony $274.3 37 Planes BV $219.8 65 Free Birds Rela. $110.4 |
| January 8th, 2015 at 9:21:21 PM permalink | |
| reno Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 58 Posts: 1384 | Paco-- which industry do you think is in bigger trouble: Hollywood studios or cable/satellite TV?
I might be wrong on this, but I'm guessing that the labor cost of staffing employees at a 20 screen theater is not 5 times greater than a 4 screen theater. Perhaps the bigger theater will have 2 or 3 times as many workers than the smaller theater, but it won't have 5 times as many workers. The bottom line is that a bigger theater will have lower overhead per ticket sold and therefore will be more profitable. But the economies of scale for the theater owner is dependent upon Hollywood's ability to churn out enough decent movies to fill all those seats. (And lately, they haven't been up to the task.) If you think about it, the movie studios have never had it tougher: they're competing with 50 inch HDTVs playing Blu-Ray discs connected to surround sound systems. They're competing with Netflix, Facebook, Playstation/Xbox, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Hulu, Redbox, and infinite internet pornography. And they need convince people to turn off their TV, get off their couches, get in their cold car, stand in line with rude teenagers, and gamble $10 on a movie that might possibly be dreadful. The alternative? Wait 4 months and watch it via Netflix/Redbox on your 50 inch HDTV. |
| January 8th, 2015 at 10:16:20 PM permalink | |
| Pacomartin Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 1068 Posts: 12569 |
Color TV households went from 3.1% in 1964 to 24.2% in 1968. ABC and CBS converted mostly in the 1965-66 TV season. NBC had half their shows in color in 1964. Basic Cable went from 17% in 1977 to 50% in 1987. Every time, the death of movies was predicted. A lot of people don't realize that movie attendance plummeted much worse in europe than in the USA. EU attendance began to start back up in the 1990's when Eastern Europe began to go to the movies.  But all the growth in movie Attendance is in people who don't speak English very well. Eastern Europe, Russia, CIS, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. US theater owners figured out a long time ago they could run a 10 screen movie theater for not much more than a single screen theater. Hence the almost laughable average attendance of less than 90 patrons a day at a screen (for all showings). The average release window is 4 months, but is often cut to 3 months for movies aimed at adults. While that is perfectly reasonable for a Disney film, it is ridiculous for a movie aimed at adults. But many artists are against the idea.
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| January 9th, 2015 at 12:28:48 AM permalink | |
| Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25011 | People go to movies for the concession stand. Get rid of that and movies die. It's being able to stuff your face in the dark that makes people go to movies. The same was true for drive-ins in the 50's and 60's. The concession stand was the highlight of the experience. Food and movies are joined at the hip. People will eat stuff in the dark that they would never eat at home. My wife has a rule that she can eat whatever she wants on road trips and at the movies. I never eat anything in a theater, I find it disgusting. That's probably why I go about once every 5 years. As a kid in the 50's and 60's, all the candy and popcorn was why we went. To sit there for 2 hours eating Junior Mints and huge buckets of popcorn and almost getting sick was part of the experience. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |
| January 9th, 2015 at 2:25:41 AM permalink | |
| AZDuffman Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 135 Posts: 18211 |
Cable TV is in bigger trouble.
True the marginal revenue is in the favor of the bigger theater in terms of labor. One more concession stand employee may add 200 seats of potential revenue. POTENTIAL revenue. That does not make the bigger place more profitable. All that extra space must be bought, built, heated, cooled, and cleaned. And when they add more screens they seem to add more "dead space" around the concession area. Some look like palaces. The President is a fink. |
| January 9th, 2015 at 3:25:44 AM permalink | |
| Pacomartin Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 1068 Posts: 12569 |
I would have to agree 1000%. I would say the movie circuit business is in trouble. Vastly overbuilt with with a dwindling customer base, they are very dependent on people who go to the movies every month. Just saying 1,275.3 million tickets last year compared to 1,291.7 million tickets in 1994 says it all. But Hollywood studios in toto are increasing revenue. The drop in domestic revenue of 5% this year, is more than made up by the huge increases in foreign revenue. The cable business is vastly larger than the theatrical business. Domestic box office is about $10.355 billion last year, less than the revenue from ESPN division of Disney ($11 billion in 2013). The percentage losses in customers are very high, and there is very little foreign business. Cable companies have so much of the internet business, however. But they used to publish this list every year, but it hasn't been updated in the last 4 years. Nobody wants to make it easy to see how many households have been lost by each MVPD. Top 25 Multichannel Video Programming Distributors as of Jun. 2009 Rank MSO - BasicVideoSubscribers 1 Comcast Corporation 23,891,000 2 Time Warner Cable, Inc. 13,048,000 3 Cox Communications, Inc.1 5,316,100 4 Charter Communications, Inc. 4,929,900 5 Cablevision Systems Corporation 3,093,000 6 Bright House Networks LLC 2,301,300 7 Mediacom Communications Corporation 1,282,000 8 Suddenlink Communications1 1,257,500 9 Insight Communications Company, Inc. 720,100 10 CableOne, Inc.1 692,100 11 RCN Corp. 368,000 12 WideOpenWest Networks, LLC 363,500 13 Bresnan Communications1 309,100 14 Service Electric Cable TV Incorporated1 290,400 15 Atlantic Broadband Group, LLC 283,800 16 Armstrong Cable Services 246,700 17 Knology Holdings 231,100 18 Midcontinent Communications 213,200 19 MetroCast Cablevision 196,200 20 Blue Ridge Communications1 177,300 21 Broadstripe1 158,200 22 General Communications 150,000 23 Buckeye CableSystem1 147,600 24 WaveDivision Holdings, LLC 141,400 25 MidOcean Partners1 139,700 |
| January 9th, 2015 at 5:45:53 AM permalink | |
| AZDuffman Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 135 Posts: 18211 |
International will keep movies going. Internationally people love what the USA produces, if we made cars like this nobody would know what a Toyota is. In T.V. "Baywatch" was going to be canceled but someone noticed how much money it made overseas. But it had to have an American presence even if hardly anyone was watching. There was a pitch on "Shark Tank" where the producers said for their movie the domestic box office didn't matter nor much did the plot which they did not have. It was to be an American motorcycle flick so people would come and watch. The average Chinese might not yet know when they are watching a bad movie. Cable, OTOH, does not much have this luxury. The big channels will survive but the providers are dead. The President is a fink. |
| January 9th, 2015 at 9:17:02 AM permalink | |
| Ayecarumba Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 89 Posts: 1744 | But cable remains the dominant method of two-way high speed internet communication. Satellite may be able to provide equivalent download bandwidth, but physical fiber is a vastly superior way to upload large files. |
| January 9th, 2015 at 10:14:07 AM permalink | |
| AZDuffman Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 135 Posts: 18211 |
For now. I can see it just being a matter of time before that is broken up and each cable provider handles the line for a fee but anyone can use the lines to get customers. Just like happened with telephone, electricity, and natural gas. I can also see there eventually being a "super wi-fi" where you set a router on a block and sell internet that way. The President is a fink. |