Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Day and Date Update

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Topic: Day and Date Update

Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 05-11-2016 09:45 PM

I did my own survey. At a dinner with people of a wide range of ages and different areas of expertise (only a handful of movie industry types), some middle-agers with their wives and some 20 somethings, I asked if there were a service that allowed you to get first run movies like Captain America - Civil War or the Starwars movie at home on the TV the very same minute it opened in the theatres, would anyone be interested in seeing it at home instead of going to the multiplex. The 20 somethings showed a bit more interest than the others who were mostly just curious. Then I said, to get a first run movie with this service, each movie would cost $50 a pop... would you still be interested? They started laughing amid shouts of "Are you effin kidding me...50 dollares?! NO WAY, etc.

Granted in the moment none seemed to take the time to do the math about how many people they could get to their $50 screening; they were just reacting to the price. It was obvious that $50 a ticket hit them as a much to high price-point for a movie ticket. One woman in her 60s looked at her husband who evidently wasn't exhibiting as negativity about it as she would have liked and she said, "You put $50 on our credit card to see a movie and you will be watching it from outside the house."

Point is, the reaction to a $50 charge for most people...and I am talking about many who are middle to lower-upper class folk who aren't exactly counting their pennies, is a sizable chunk of change; it seems that a $50 price tag as too expensive to shell out for a movie and the reaction was mostly negative. Of course the way they were thinking about it was that it was the equivalent to the price of a single ticket to a movie.

Maybe in the end if they were to figure the economics of it more carefully in terms of the additional costs associated with going to the a theatre verses stay home, they may see that it isn't as expensive as it might seem at first blush. I am only pointing out that I think the cost factor may be a much bigger psychological stumbling block that the proponents think.

While the group was visibly negative about the ticket price, they didn't seem all that concerned about the $150 set-top box. I guess they parallel that with other electronic set-top gear that they need to purchase or rent for service and $150 seemed reasonable, but it was the $50 ticket price that got the big guffaw.

If the studios support this, it way wind up being a limited niche market which may not have the dire consequences for exhibitors that we can all imagine. After all, there was a niche market for Laserdiscs with people willing to shell out $30 for a movie (adjusted for today's inflation, that probably was more like 50 bucks). And that market always remained marginal. Then again, they weren't offering day and date titles on laserdiscs either. Thing is, just cause the technology may work, doesn't mean it will catch the public's fickle magic threshold to make it take off.

And then of course, the first time someone buys a tripod and a high-end digital camera and aims it at his 4K OLED screen and makes a decent copy, one MUCH better than what that guy in a trench coat gets off a screen in the theatre and without the stress of some usher wandering in and calling the FBI and the MPAA...the jig will be up - "The Screening Room service responsible for 6 BILLION DOLLARS in revenue loss do to the piracy of NN blockbuster title." Nice thing about that, the MPAA won't be able to blame the movie theatres!!