Shortly after A Quiet Place: Day One’s record-breaking opening weekend, there was online outrage after it was reported that the horror movie would be available to watch at home within a month of its cinema release.
This was only an alleged release date and nothing has been confirmed by Paramount even now. It sparked a debate, however, about how the report would impact Day One’s chances at the box office, and a wider one about how movies just aren’t given the time to build their audiences at the cinema.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The cinema industry is being artificially propped up by wide spread exclusivity agreements to begin with.
If the theater truly offered a superior, worthwhile, experience then people would go regardless of if it’s streaming on day 1 or streaming on day 180
Right now most people go because they are essentially forced to go to one because it’s the only way to watch the movie they want to watch. (Inb4 someone says ThEYrE nOt foRcEd, ThEY cAn JuSt ChoOsE nOT tO WaTCh IT")
After upgrading to an oled TV theatres picture quality is just inferior. So now I really don’t want to watch movies in theatres.
Sure the sounds is still better, but it’s usually too loud for me, and lacks subtitles.
Add to that the ludicrous cost of theatre tickets and it’s just not worth it.
This I suspect is an underappreciated aspect of the dynamics at the moment. More broadly, it’s about the personalisation of the watching experience. Screen size, seating/lying position, noise and brightness, subtitles and their language, audio configuration (where you can optimise your home set up to help with dialogue clarity or “epicness”)
ludicrous prices? the nicest Dolby cinema tickets at AMC are like ten bucks
sure you spend more on snacks but you can also just not
At my local theatre the nice seats are $18 and the slightly cheaper normal seats are $15. That’s including fees for times outside of working hours.
A theatre outing for me and my wife costs more than a 4k uhd bluray for the movies we watch.
That’s not even including food, which if we go to a theatre we usually bring to avoid the high food prices.
I cheapskate the whole cinema-going experience - I have a monthly pass that is paid off by two or three visits a month (I go twice a week - one week last month I went 5 times, but 3 of those was a LotR marathon), plus I bring my own snacks and a bottle of water. Probably works out at the equivalent of three bucks a pop plus petrol, for big, wide reclining seats and iSense where available.
American cinema prices are not the only cinema prices.
what are prices like across the pond?
About 30 PLN for a standard seat in Poland, but that’s not really going to tell the whole story without looking at things like the median income, average prices of other goods etc.
For some reference, that’s the price for a month of standard Netflix over here.