How on earth did you get that completely misleading interpretation out of what I posted?
No, of course I’m not arguing that “everything should just cost the same price”. But that doesn’t mean that it would be most efficient for sellers to use supply and demand to price all their goods individually.
Like I said, if you’re seriously arguing that theater owners should charge higher prices for more popular movies, then why wouldn’t you expect ice cream parlors to charge more for more popular flavors? Or a shirt manufacturer to charge more for identical shirts in more popular colors or sizes?
If you really imagine that a strategy of constant pricing across a certain product range is somehow invalidated by the existence of the law of supply and demand, then I think you’re vastly oversimplifying the issue. There’s more to economic activity than what is represented by highly idealized perfectly-competitive market models, you know.
How does charging different prices for digital copies of different movies sold as individual consumer products somehow invalidate the practice of charging the same price for tickets to different movies shown in a theater?
Do you imagine that the business models of movie theaters and Blu Ray retailers are or ought to be exactly the same?
BluRay and DVD have variable pricing because they have a track record in the theater, so the studio has some idea how much people want to see it. When a film opens, they have no clue. The price variation appears later, when it moves out of the first run theater and moves down to the second run ones that Prelude to Fascination patronizes.
Agreed. Why is it few people complain about those types of entertainment events and their cost, yet moan and groan about how much movies cost? I realize a big part of the m&g is about concessions and sometimes parking rather than the actual movie price. The actual movie price isn’t that much compared to those other types of events and entertainments.
Not that I ever pay full price because to me it’s high too. I pay full price for a film just a couple/few times a year, and oh boy, it has to be something REALLY super special (most recently, special showings of the restored The Godfather Pt. 2 and a special screening of Citizen Kane, but the Citizen Kane looked crappy so I feel I wasted my money even though I think it’s a great movie).
I’m all about bargains. I couldn’t see a fraction of the movies I do without them. Matinees, memberships, Costco gold passes, discount nights, free screenings, I’m always looking for a bargain. I do actually skip a lot of movies I want to see, if they’re only playing at the Landmark. Their prices, even matinee prices, are too high for me.
Nitpick, sorry: Kate Miller-Heidke (last part is pronounced “hide-key”). I love her, she’s wonderful!
You’re probably right. Too many people already think small low-budget movies are “crappy movies that nobody wants to see” even though good-to-great ones are released every week (depending on where you live, of course).
It is amusing when small movies have delusions of grandeur though. I recently went to a matinee of the indie Chronicle only to find it was playing in the Super Duper Special XD! theater and they were charging full price during matinee times. I don’t know who was responsible for that theater placement, but a low-budget, “found-footage” movie for premium XD prices? No thank you. I bought a ticket for The Artist instead.
Eh, it just takes one more usher at each door to the viewing room to take care of this.
I used to work in a theater for a while. Theoretically, evening prices were $5 for an adult (yeah, this was a while ago) for a regular movie, but $6.50 for a blockbuster. In practice, just about every movie except a Disney movie was considered a blockbuster. The chain sold discount movie passes, too, and theoretically those passes couldn’t be used for certain movies, at least not during the first week or two, because the thinking was that if a moviegoer just wanted to see a movie, there were others to choose from, but if s/he wanted to see that newest Big Show, s/he’d pay the full price. In practice, people bought a ticket to see Stupid Teen Movie #2, and then go in the wrong theater. Occasionally the manager would post an usher at each entrance of the Big Show screening room to prevent this if we actually anticipated a full house during the Big Show. Most of the time, the manager would turn a blind eye to it, as long as the concession sales were good, because less than half the seats were filled.
One other silly thing about the idea of charging more for the big new film is that the theater makes little on the new films, and more the longer a film plays. They would be shooting themselves in the foot trying to collect more money that they won’t get.
AMC sells Silver as well as Gold passes that are only good for non-weekend films in their third week, or some such. Never actually seen one, but again, who couldn’t figure out paying for the cheaper one and going into the more expensive one. And, because of the way the split works, the theater actually gets more if you buy a ticket for the older film.
I have no training in economics, so forgive me if I sound like an idiot here.
Price is a function of supply and demand, right? So instead of setting a different price for each movie, the cinema creates a different supply for each movie. A blockbuster will sell out all seats on 12 screens, 6 times per day. A flop will be shown on 1 screen twice a day for a week or two before the cinema quits supplying it so they can devote more screens to the next blockbuster. The cinema doesn’t care what the production costs were, and they’re not interested in showing shitty movies at a discount. They’d rather reduce the supply of showings than reduce the price.
Everyone said Titanic would never have a chance to break even, let alone make a profit. They were wrong.
Movie production budgets are based on average ticket prices and projection of how many tickets will be sold world-wide, and how long it will run in theaters, plus of course DVD and other marketing tie-ins. Investors and producers don’t mind coughing up a few more bucks if they think they have star power, or a hit franchise, or a guaranteed blockbuster on their hands. Often they are wrong, but if they are right - what difference does an extra 10 or 30 or 90 million dollars make if they are going to get that money back ten fold?
I doubt anyone is watching the budget of The Hobbit films closely - my guess everyone involved knows that film will easily make back every penny no matter what it costs. The new James Bond probably has deep pockets in production - they know they have a hit franchise and a better-than-average shot at making back whatever they sink into that film.
As others have mentioned, it comes down to the movie theaters. If the film is a bomb, it won’t sit and eat up their real estate in the movie theater for long. There is plenty of supply (other films) out there they can shove in that theater rather than screen Battleship for an extra 12 weeks to try to recoup lost money.
Also - there are usually deals made. For a movie theater chain to get that blockbuster (ie The Hobbit), that studio might also make it mandatory they also screen 10 other films from that studio this year that are not guaranteed blockbusters. So while lines are forming to see The Hobbit, there is screen 12 showing the new Pauly Shore film with 3 people in the theater…but it is screening because they get to show The Hobbit on the other 11 screens.
The only time they put people at the door are at films that people are especially likely to sneak into. For instance, all the showings of Ted last night had a person at the door checking tickets, as it was obviously attracting under-18s who would but tickets to a PG movie intending to sneak. None of the other 20 auditoriums had an attendant.
Right, and I bet it’s only opening weekend (mainly Friday and Saturday) that they even bother with that. I certainly never see it happening when I go midweek. Well, there’s usually a guy outside the IMAX screen, but that’s got more to do with passing out and collecting the IMAX 3D glasses, I’m sure.
I’m sure your right. The ticket checking was very unusual, and I have only seen it happen a few times. Movie theaters are all about selling as much popcorn as possible, and the only reason they worry about it is because if the auditorium is filled up with kids who sneaked in, there might not be any space for the folks who paid for that movie.
I think that they only put ushers at the doors of the individual screening rooms about 3 times when I was working at that theater. I’m not sure of the exact number. But each time it was the opening weekend, during the evening (so it was Friday and Saturday nights after 6 PM), and it was just to the room where the Big Blockbuster was playing. The manager really didn’t CARE if people were sneaking into Steven Seagal’s latest vehicle, as long as they bought plenty of popcorn and soda. For that matter, the manager didn’t care very much if someone wanted to sneak into another theater after watching one movie…as long as they weren’t taking a seat from someone who’d actually bought a ticket for that movie, and they were buying concessions, and they weren’t causing a ruckus.
Interestingly, we had a lot of drug deals going on in that theater. This was back in the very late 80s, before cell phones became so very affordable. We had pay phones, and a lot of dealers would buy a ticket, buy some popcorn and a drink, and just hang out near the phones all evening. I’m not sure of the rest of the details, but it was a bad neighborhood. I’m pretty sure that the management all knew about this, and didn’t care that much, as long as concession sales were up.
How on earth did you get that completely misleading interpretation out of what I posted?