Movie Theatre Blues
By Adam D. Miller

I love going to the movies.  And I don’t mean renting, I mean going to the local cinema, having my ticket torn, and being among the first to see one of the year’s latest releases.  But even I am starting to get cynical as I see the movie theatres around me transform into flashy neon greedmonsters.

Apparently I’m not the only one.  The Hollywood box office is experiencing its longest slump in twenty years, with many of 2005’s highly anticipated film releases experiencing lukewarm ticket sales.  And I don’t believe this to be because the movies coming out are bad.  Some of the worst movies ever made have scored huge numbers at the box office.  It has much more to do with in my opinion, two things.  The first is ticket prices, and the second is advertising.

A recent poll conducted by The Associated Press and AOL determined that 73% of American adults prefer to stay home to watch a movie, rather than visiting the theatre.  It is a preference that has become more and more feasible thanks to the technology wonders the home entertainment market has developed in recent years, from widescreen HDTV televisions to DVD players to 5.1 surround sound.

I’m not all that old, but in my lifetime alone, I have seen Canadian ticket prices quickly escalate from $7, to $8.50, to $9, to $10, to $12, to $13, to $13.50.  Surely this is more than inflation at work.  Now, with DVDs, you can just about guarantee that owning a title on DVD will be no more than it costs to send two people to a screening at the local cinema.

Here in Canada, companies like Famous Players have realized that filmgoers are put off by high pricing.  For a limited time, the company boasted that tickets would never cost more than $9.50.  A valiant effort, but Famous Players was recently bought out by another cinema giant, Cineplex, who still charges $13.50 for most of its screenings.

So off I go to Hitchhiker’s Guide or Batman Begins on a nice evening out, and the price I am paying is $27 CDN, which works out to around $22 USD.  Adding popcorn and a drink doesn’t seem like a feasible option anymore, since the price of that has gone up as well.

But I wish I could say that the pricing is the only thing that has gone wrong with movie theatres.  Is it just me, or does it seem rather odd that the ticket increase from $7.50 to $13.50 coincides with the addition of more and more ads, both prior to the lights dimming, and for a good ten minutes afterwards?

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate and understand the purpose of advertising.  In its place.  On television, the shows you are watching are supported by the commercials.  In England, you pay for a TV license instead of being bombarded with TV commercials.  In the theatre, it is simply a marketing ploy to make the theatres more money.  And we’re already paying them $6 more than we used to.  Isn’t that a little screwy?

I have no idea if movie theatre chains are listening to the scores of recent reports showing the sufferings of the box office, but the answer really is pretty simple.  Stop being greedy, and start thinking of tactics to get moviegoers back into your seats.  I would start by lowering your ticket prices so that the guy working at McDonald’s doesn’t have to work for three hours to justify going to see Herbie: Fully Loaded.