Why do movie prices keep skyrocketing, and what can be done to reverse this trend?
Does it have to do with people sneaking in food, as my friend believes, or is it movie star salries and general movie budgets soaring, or just what?
Please, Cecil, or someone, explain this to me!
–Dollar for parking, three for the show, twelve for the babysitter, there you go!-- Phil Ochs
I think movie prices are so high because people continue to pay them. If no one went, the prices wouldn’t increase. I try to go to the theatre that shows older movies, or if there is a new release I really want to see, I’ll go to the matinee.
Because you pay them.
I don’t go to movies anymore because of the cost. I just wait and rent the video or watch it when it hits TV. When prices for adult admission went over $4 and it started costing $2 for a soda, $1.50 for a $0.98 candy bar, $6 for a bucket of popcorn and they stopped running cartoons before and after the movie, I decided ‘screw it.’ They also started, in these multiplex theaters, making sure no one remains after the showing to watch it again, like you used to be able to do.
The last time I went to the movies was to watch the original showing of Star Wars.
Movie prices are determined by supply and demand.
I remember reading that most movie theatre chains lost money last year, so don’t blame high prices on the fellow who owns the theatre.
Somehow I"m not really sure the law of supply and demand is applicable here. Lots of movies available, so prices are low; fewer movies around=price increase? then wouldn’t prices drop, say, in the summer? As far as I can see there is no cycle to when the price goes. something else is behind this. let’s keep thinking about this.
i’m willing to accept that prices may be high because we are willing to pay them, but why did they rise in the first place?
What reasons were cited for why the theatres lost money, anyway? be ironic if it was because they raised prices, wouldn’t it?
– I’m not sure how anyone can sit through a movie at a theater anymore, given that they now sell a soda that is three times the size of the normal adult bladder.
The increase in supply in movies during the summer is due to the increase in demand.
I like the big drinks. At the movie theaters around here, the largest size is two liters. If you get that size, you can get free refills. I once managed to get three of them (last one was after the movie though). For $4.50 or so, it’s about the only way to get your money’s worth.
The movie must not have been good if you kept leaving for soda refills. and did you order the extra-large bladder from Amazon? 6 liters of soda in a two-hour period… jeez.
OK, we want more movies during the summer, so we get more movies, but this doesn’t address the price going up. scarcity causes prices to increase IIRC.
I’d guess that overall rising costs of production is a big factor. I don’t follow this closely so I can’t pull numbers out of the air, but casual reading suggests that movies are costing ever-increasing amounts to make: more special effects and more money for the big-name actors. These factors don’t apply to all movies (Blair Witch being an obvious exception) but they apply to many of them. And when they don’t apply, the movie theater (or the company renting the movies to the movie theater) isn’t going to provide a discount for low production costs.
It all depends on what you mean by “price’s”. Do you mean the price of admission or the price of concessions?
When you talk about the price of admission increasingly going up, your talking issue with the movie studios that made the movie. All ticket revenue collected at the door goes to pay for the making, marketing, and distribution of the movie.
If these prices piss you off, you should bitch at the studios for making such expensive movies.
On the other hand, if your bitching about concession prices being too high, you need to bitch at the theatres. Theatres set, control, and collect one hundred percent of the concession revenue- it’s what keeps the theatres open.
If these prices piss you off, you should bitch at them for creating such huge and expensive theatres.
Put simply, the ticket price goes to pay for the movie while the pop and popcorn goes to pay for the theatre you watch it in.
Stop paying for expensive movies shown in state of the art theatres and the price will eventually come down.
Supply and demand, plus the fact that a lot of theater chains have monopolies in a particular area.
The law of supply and demand is ALWAYS applicable.
More and more people are going to movies. The winter/summer cycle isn’t generally used as a benchmark for setting movie prices because you’d infuriate more people than it would be worth if you changed prioces up and down that often.
Overall, movie attendance has been going up for a variety of reasons:
and the cost of making movies has been going up too, so big Hollywood studios won’t supply the movies for as little as they used to - you have to consider that part of the equation, too.
Straight Dope regular Cervaise has an excellent piece on movies ticket and concession prices at his website here.
RickJay said:
Actually, this is untrue. Fewer people are going to movies. The only reason the industry keep setting annual box office records is because prices are going up. Even trade mag Daily Variety notes, in it’s box office wrapup that appeared Friday, “The year-to-year gain in 2000, though encouraging, was the smallest since 1995. And though estimates differ, the consensus is that tickets sales were slightly down for the year.”
Monopolization; both on the studio and the theatre ends.
There are fewer independent theatres. Most now belong to chains. The old independent theatres probably had low rents or were paid off if they were directly owned. The chains have built multiplexes which cost big bucks and probably carry a huge mortgage debt.
Don’t forget that most movies LOSE money (even using Hollywood’s bizarre bookkeeping methods). The studios are using the relatively few blockbusters to prop up all the turkeys that stiff at the box office. When even a “cheap” movie costs $20 million to produce, and a big-budget epic might go for $80 million or more, you have to sell an awful lot of tickets, even at $8-$10 per pop.
Whoah! I don’t believe that’s true. There’s actually a sliding scale on which percentage goes to the studio and which goes to the exhibitor. In the first weeks of release, almost all the money goes to the studio. That’s part of the reason they want very big opening weeks. As the length of time the movie’s been released goes up, the percentage that goes to the exhibitor goes up as well. So a movie like The Sixth Sense, which was still playing well in it’s 10th week, is quite a cash cow for the exhibitors.
This is a good reason why you can’t say a movie that cost $50 million and grossed $50 million broke even. (It may have, but that’s due to other numbers like overseas sales, broadcast rights, etc)
With rare exception, all prices for all goods & services are determined by supply and demand. This (of course) includes ticket and concession prices at movie theaters.
We often like to think that certain markets do not follow the “supply and demand” formula. But closer inspection always reveals that the prices are determined by normal (and expected) market forces.
In a free market economy, prices increase due to one or more of the following reasons:
Take movie ticket prices. You first have to establish if ticket prices have increased faster than inflation. If they have not, then the price has not really increased. If ticket prices have increased faster than inflation then a) supply has decreased, b) demand has increased, or c) supply has decreased and demand has increased.
My guess is that ticket prices have increased primarily due to two things: a) inflation, b) an increase in demand.
Why do tickets for all movies (at the same theater at the same time of day for the same age viewer) cost the same? I would think that the cost to the theater varies greatly from film to film, so why is this variability not passed on to the consumer? I’ve never seen a theater where different movies had different prices.
If theater A sets the price for all movies based on the cost (to them) of the most expensive movie they show, they are increasing their profit on the movies that are cheaper to them. But why couldn’t theater B down the street cut the admission price for the cheaper movies and make up for it in volume?
Basically because the cost to the theatre doesn’t vary from film to film. The major studios “package” groups of movies, and the theatres have to buy into the package. The packages are designed such that each blockbuster is combined with its share of dogs. (Among other things, this lets the producers’ acountants be creative in determining which movies made a profit and which didn’t.)
What pisses me off the most is that you are forced to sit through friggen commercials for 10 minutes before you can watch the movie you paid $10 to watch starts…unless you risk coming in late and not getting a good seat. I really, really wish theaters would quit showing those friggen things. I mean, if I wanted to watch stupid commercials, I would sit at home and watch TV, assholes! That Pert shampoo guy just isn’t funny.