Will movie theaters survive

Love the old “finger bowls”. We took the kids years ago to the one that was still in Ocala. You would have thought they were at Disney. Brought blankets and chairs and they had a ball.

 

We had an AMC Stubs membership for years and saw a flick nearly every Friday night. We stopped due to the pandemic and I really miss it. We still occasionally go to Tampa Theatre because of its size and relatively sparse attendance.

The death of the theater experiences been predicted many times over the years and it's never actually happened. It might this time although I still suspect it will likely just contract but not die. There remains something uniquely enjoyable about the theater experience, especially for a big opening.

One thing to keep in mind. As others have noted, there is so much quality content right now on streaming. But that won't continue. Streaming services listened to Wall Street to try to build up subscriber numbers and dumped a lot of high quality content for discounted prices. That cannot continue and is already starting to end. I've greatly enjoyed it, but I also realize the economics will not allow that to continue. Consumers don't remain loyal to a streaming service when the relative quality of content does not justify it. They jump around. On a personal note, we drop Showtime for a while but will resubscribe when enough quality content available again.

 

I loved bookstores but my aging eyes mean I only read e-books now. So even if bookstores were as ubiquitous as they used to be, I still couldn't enjoy it the same way. But that was another uniquely enjoyable experience.

 

I love BJs!!

 

This is the meat of the issue to me. Without content, the movie theater company has nothing to offer. If the studios wanted to (Disney, 20th C Fox, etc.) they could end movie theaters as a business and go straight to streaming.

 

Ironically, they had a show on Netflix about the last Blockbuster Video and it outlined how they pretty much ran every mom and pop video rental place out of business.

 

Nope, Todd Grantham did that all by his lonesome.

 

I remember a local video store that had hundreds of videos lined up like you do in a bookshelf, cover to cover. They went out of business after Blockbuster came.

The BBs had a very limited selection of videos, all standing flat faced on the shelves. No more foreign films, no more old films, no more obscure films.

 

That Blockbuster will always make it due to history...

Home - Blockbuster (bendblockbuster.com)

 

The reason that Blockbuster was able to put other video stores out of business was they worked out a deal with the studios where they didn't BUY the movies and were able to get many more multiple copies of first run movies.
Remember how at the mom and pop store you would have to fork over 80 bucks if you lost a movie? That's because that is what they paid for each copy of every movie in their store. Blockbuster paid pennies for each copy and gave the studio a cut of each rental fee. The mom and pop store purchased movies retail. That way they could afford to have thousands of movies instead of a hundred or so.

 

Today is National Cinema Day and theaters across the country are showing films for $3. We’re going this morning to see the new Top Gun. My wife normally doesn’t like going to the theater, but her friends told her this movie is best seen on the big screen.

 

Great deal. If it wasn’t for football games I would be going to see multiple movies today

 

Theaters have struggled for many reasons, one of which is their never having figured out how to monetize their technological advantages during the weekday when most screen rooms sat empty, especially since most if not all theater operators make most of their money on concessions, not ticket prices.

 

Would be ironic if the last film a theater shows is a movie called " Toast"

 

Not as ironic as The Last Picture Show