Why do we glorify the rise in movie ticket prices with these games?

[jtv]

Update: I now feel like a total hypocrite because I'm going to see Avengers after work today, and the only showing that fits into my schedule is the IMAX showing lol

[primedawg]

I live in NYC

I saw it in 3d put honestly who cares yeah ticket prices for movies went up so what its a luxuary not a previlage to watch a movie.

what i do care about is the subway unlimted metro card went from $72 when I first moved to NYC in 2k to $103 in 2k12 and its expeacted to go up again end of this year or start of 2k13

for big movies I vist the the AMC, Regal, Clearview, etc

for indie movies I go to the local indie movies theaters in Brooklyn where I live

to me I'll pay the luxuary of $19 to see the avengers in 3d and maybe help keep at least one person at that theater employeed another day

BUT

what i should have done was wait to see peoples review of the 3d and saved myself some money. instead I bought my tixs preorder and 3d is all they had left for the Lowes on the Upper West Side.


then again have you seen the prices of Ny Knicks, NY Giants\jets, Ny Rangers or Yankee tickets insane!! noitce I left the mets out those shites are basically free...

[tsmith15]

I saw Avengers again today (second time, both in IMAX) and I justify the extra ticket price because I a) love love love the theater experience, and b) the screen is fucking MASSIVE and the sound system is awesome. I see IMAX at every possible opportunity as long as I'm interested in the movie, especially if its not 3D.

[primedawg]

Originally Posted by tsmith15

I saw Avengers again today (second time, both in IMAX) and I justify the extra ticket price because I a) love love love the theater experience, and b) the screen is fucking MASSIVE and the sound system is awesome. I see IMAX at every possible opportunity as long as I'm interested in the movie, especially if its not 3D.

100% agree with you

i like it so much that I'll pay for my friends to go with when their broke I like the communial experieance

I also go by myself sometimes my GF doesnt like scary movies or over the top action flicks like 300

[tsmith15]

The other thing to consider is that the $15 dollar ticket isn't as bad when you don't buy $15 of food on top of it. I just get a drink so I end up paying less than $20 for the whole outing, which is fine for me. I can understand not wanting to go if you're a family (2x$15 tickets + 2x$10 tickets + 4x$10-15 food = $90-110) but on an individual level its not that bad. If you buy a movie when its new on DVD/Blu-Ray it will probably cost $25-35 dollars and if you watch it on demand it will probably be between $10-15. So, unless you're just going to pirate everything or wait 6 years until stuff is on TV with commercials, you don't have much choice.

[johnnysix]

I love going to the movies, I go once a week, that doesn't mean I need to like the price hikes and 3D surcharge. The studios like to blame all their woes on piracy, but if ticket prices were cheaper and release dates were the same throughout all territories, more people would go. I don't know why they haven't worked this out yet. Look at iphone apps and steam sales. Those markets have proven that if you make the price trivial, more people will buy.

[stubadub]

Originally Posted by johnnysix

I love going to the movies, I go once a week, that doesn't mean I need to like the price hikes and 3D surcharge. The studios like to blame all their woes on piracy, but if ticket prices were cheaper and release dates were the same throughout all territories, more people would go. I don't know why they haven't worked this out yet. Look at iphone apps and steam sales. Those markets have proven that if you make the price trivial, more people will buy.

But those cheap prices either come at a point when sales have slowed to nothing and therefore they have nothing to lose, or early for an app that was cheap to develop. Many developers have said they can't afford to spend much on iOS development because they know they can't hope to charge more than $1-$3 for their app.

There are theaters in most decent sized cities in the US that offer cheap theater tickets that already work this way. Once the movie is no longer making any money in the normal theater it will move over to the cheap theater where a ticket can be purchased for $1-$2.

With most films costing $100 million and up to produce it is not feasible to charge that amount right out of the gate. You've got a finite amount of screens with a finite number of seats and all films competing for those seats. You've got a market where you can wait 3 months and pay one rental fee for the whole family to watch at home on the big screen TV with surround sound. I don't think you'll make up enough from the lower prices to justify that approach.

[cool8man]

I think my whole point has been completely lost here. I'd be perfectly okay with talking about the success of movies with respect to the number of movie tickets sold. Instead of talking about how much revenue a movie brought in for a studio lets talk about how many people purchased tickets. Lets celebrate that number as a measure of success.

I'm not telling people to boycott this movie or to boycott theaters anymore than I'd suggest people should try to live without using oil or gasoline. I'm just asking why we fawn over the financial success of something that is increasingly becoming a ripoff of consumers? We all get ripped off at the pump too, but I don't see consumers keeping a running tally of whether Exxon or BP made more money this weekend or if premium gas set a new profit record.

When we talk about music sales we talk about the number of albums sold or the number of times the song was played on the radio. We don't rank the success of music by the amount of revenue the song or album brought in. When we talk about the success or failure of a TV show it is by the number of viewers or percentage of viewers. When we rank book best sellers it is by the number of copies of the book sold.

By focusing on the dollar amount only there is increasingly pressure to set financial records and the easiest way for a studio to do that with their latest blockbuster is to increase ticket prices every single year. If we focused instead on the foot traffic numbers the only goal would be getting more people to want to go to the theater. That would create the incentive for better movies rather than just more expensive movies every year.

[trunolimit]

Originally Posted by primedawg

I live in NYC

I saw it in 3d put honestly who cares yeah ticket prices for movies went up so what its a luxuary not a previlage to watch a movie.

what i do care about is the subway unlimted metro card went from $72 when I first moved to NYC in 2k to $103 in 2k12 and its expeacted to go up again end of this year or start of 2k13

Tell me about it. I want to know WTF are they doing with all that money. On any given day there is a train line that is down. And if you want to use the subway on the weekends or late night, forget about it. Today the only line that was working was the L train. Now that is totally unexceptionable when you have millions of people using the subway daily and each are paying a premium to do so. They must make millions of dollars daily, why do they need an increase? Something doesn't add up when prices and in turn profits are increasing and service is decreasing.

I recently moved into jersey and sure enough those assholes increased the tunnel prices by 50% and the PATH prices. WTF, who justifies these price increases. What we need is the old school mentality of taking alternative transport and boycotting the MTA and PORTauthority.

I'm more interested in number of tickets sold instead of amount made. Amount of money made only serves as a comparison to current movies being released, It's pretty unfair to say that Avengers did better than Titanic when ticket prices for Titanic were a fraction of what ticket prices for Avengers was.

[stubadub]

Originally Posted by cool8man

When we talk about music sales we talk about the number of albums sold or the number of times the song was played on the radio. We don't rank the success of music by the amount of revenue the song or album brought in. When we talk about the success or failure of a TV show it is by the number of viewers or percentage of viewers. When we rank book best sellers it is by the number of copies of the book sold.

I'm not sure how these differences originated, but I know that at least as far back as the 80s the vast majority of reporting on the theatrical success of a movie was focused on the dollar amount instead of the number of tickets.

I don't see how the public fascination with a movie's success based on dollars is allowing them to overcharge on ticket prices. The movie studio is already interested in making as much money as possible. It's not as though if we start talking about ticket sales they'll say "Get the word out, we don't care about maximizing profit any longer! Just get more butts in seats!", and although I know plenty of people that have spent the last week going "Yay, the Avengers made $207 million!" ($370 million by this point) I don't know anyone that is saying "I'll buy an extra expensive ticket to show my support." I'm still hearing complaints about the price of 3D tickets when the quality doesn't justify it. Most people don't think in those terms when it comes to their own money. Give them the opportunity to save money for the exact same experience and they'll take it.

If you want to make the argument that we aren't getting an accurate representation of the popularity of a film in the context of history because more people saw Gone With The Wind in theaters than Avatar I'll agree that you make a good point (although you open up a whole other can of worms because then you have to account for the theater being the only way you could see a movie then, where as now you've got theaters, DVD, digital, TV, etc). I just don't see the current discussion as anything other than the standard we've grown accustomed to.