I don't know about you, but even though in my town a new movie theater opened up, with plush stadium seating, state of the art sound, wide aisles - and even Orville Redenbacher's popcorn for sale in the concession stands, I'm staying home to watch my movies on DVD! In addition, now that I have joined the droves of people with TiVo, I can set my system to capture all the movies that are of interest to us from dozens of channels on my dish. Then we can watch them when we want, sans commercials, by employing a little 30 second skip easter egg on my remote. All in 5.1 suround sound, life is good.
However, the ever present MPAA funded survey takers see that this is causing a dent in theater attendance. This is believable to me as, a few years ago, we would scan the paper each week, checking for new movies to open so we could arrange a visit to the theater, preferably a matinee. We probably hit at least 4 movies a month. Now, we still scan the paper for movies alright, but it's for deals on DVD movies, which are found every weekend! I can also get 12 servings of microwave popcorn for the cost of one bucket at the theater and there is no line at my house. Plus, there's no imported beer at the movie concession stands, just a cup of syrupy cola that costs about the same as a six pack of soda at the store.
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Discs are now released just four months after a film's debut, and the barrage of advertising that accompanies the opening in movie theaters serves ultimately as a marketing campaign for the DVD, where the studios tend to make most of their profits. By contrast, movie attendance has increased 8.1 percent from 2000 to 2004, according to the association. Many in the movie industry point to that figure as a sign of overall health. But attendance was down in three of those five years, and the sharp increase in attendance in 2002 is attributed to the overwhelming success of "Spider-Man" and "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones." More recently, the number of moviegoers has dropped, sliding 4 percent in 2003, 2 percent in 2004 and 8 percent so far in 2005. Time spent on the Internet has soared 76.6 percent, and video game playing has increased 20.3 percent, according to the association. Last year, consumers bought $6.2 billion worth of video game software, an increase of 8 percent from 2003, according to the NPD Group, which tracks video game sales. |
I have to chuckle a little bit though at these stats. The analysts are wondering if this "slump" in the number of theater goers is cyclical, or if it signals a new trend in how folks prefer to be entertained. Fearing a change in consumers habits, the analysts are waiting, wondering what the upcoming summer movie ticket sales will indicate this year. One analyst in the article from C|Net even describe the figures already gleaned as "chilling". Yet, we all know that every week they set a new record in ticket sales revenue on one movie or another. It was reported that "Star Wars Revenge of the Sith" sold 50 million dollars in advance tickets to those that couldn't wait for the movie to come out to buy them.
In addition, as they mention in the quote above, they're making money hand over fist on these DVD's after the movies leave the theater, a brand new market has emerged. You have to love a box office record smash hit being the marketing campaign for your DVD release that will make theater profits seem puny. This doesn't even take into account how much they are raking in on movies like the Matrix and it's sequels that are run ad nauseum on HBO or other pay for view, commercial TV and now the new premium HDTV movie channels! You can't have it all. Whoa.
Source: C|Net
