Tired of $12 movies?

While you may want to pay 12 bucks, a piece, for you and your wife to watch a movie in a theater rather than $5.00 to watch it at home on your big screen... I'm just the opposite.  All too often, nowadays these so called block buster movies as so crappy, that I'd be mad as hell if I paid $25+ bucks to watch them and that's not including popcorn and drinks....which would easily take us  to the  $50.00+.  Now if this is about the two of you spending time together...maybe it's worth the $50 bucks, but if its about the quality of the movie experience...hell no it isn't worth it. 

I agree with the previous poster all movies should be directly streamed to netflix or similar service.. theaters are an outdated concept.

I've been to maybe 6 movies since 2000 ... couple in Iceland .. 1 in New Zealand ... 2 in Brazil ... 1 in the states ... Prices vary ... But sadly mostly the same crap movies year after years ...

Im 55 ... there are almost no good movies > Ones with real acting .. real writing .. Great Filming (NOT SPECIAL FAKE EFFECTS)

Why pay to go to the theater, when shortly after you could buy the dam thing on DVD for around the same price at Walmart or online ... A New movie to YOU, is still new even if you see if 3 months later ...

When I was a kid, i manage a theater in a fancy mall ... the one on the other side of town ( the Dollar one made less gross > MORE PROFIT ... the distributors get a HUGE % of the ticket price and thus the reason Snacks & Drinks cost so dam much ... general speaking a theater makes little profit off the ticket price, as distributors can get 85% & more of the ticket price.

The problem is Hollywood's target audience is teens. Very few pictures are made for adults, and I'm not talking about porn. I'm talking about films like the classics--films written and produced for adult audiences.

For whatever reason, Hollywood is, in my opinion, practically ignoring the adult audience. There are exceptions, with films such as "The King's Speech."

Most films today are mindless trash for teenagers. Unfortunately, that's what seems to be selling, or so they say. The truth of the matter is most films don't even make back their cost of production (excluding cost of marketing)!

Several years ago the film "Driving Miss Daisy" cost $7.5 million. It grossed over $125 million. You'd think they'd have learned something from that.

From what I gather, the point of tiered pricing is to fill the theater at each showing, thus maximizing the theater's profits.  That won't work for me as I go (on the rare times I do go) in the afternoon so I don't have to deal with the talking, texting crowd.  And also because it's cheaper.

Fill up the theater and I won't go for any price.

When I was on the road and was bored in my hotel, I would often go to the nearest multiplex and bounce around from 1 movie to another. The system you describe, $5 for this film and $10 for that film wouldn't work. Everybody would pay $5 and bounce to another theatre. The way multiplexes are set up, you go to the ticket window, pay for your ticket and pretty much go see any movie (or movies) that you want.

It's a good approach but it simply wouldn't work.

yes!  i've been thinking this for a while now.  not all movies should be priced the same at a theatre.  Do the distributors not get it?  People are staying away from movies because tickets are too expensive.  The only movie I would pay that much for is a blockbuster hit loaded with special effects.  If a movie is produced with a lower budget, the makers should be able to show their film for a cheaper ticket price.  It's sad that this situation results in mostly special effect superhero movies being put out, and sequels that a studio can bank on. 

maybe someone will find a better way to do on-line theatre distribution.

It is a hard balancing act. I think movies are too expensive. I know we have inflation, food, fuel, etc are more expensive, but first: the movies are not a necessity and a small difference in price can make a huge difference in attendance.

I fill give you an interesting example about a multiplex operator experiment in Poland when I was there. Now - you have to understand that movies cost about the same all over the 1st world, which gets the top releases on the same day everywhere.

The cost of the move ticet was about 22PLN ($8-$10 depending on the exchange ratio), but that was way more than most people would want to pay, so the theaters were rarely packed and in a lot of cases there was like 10 people total watching a movie.

So this big opearator made a "special weekend" where the prices of the tickets were decreased to about 60% fo the normal price. The long story short: if you did not get the ticket like 3 days in advance you could not get to see the movie during that weekend no matter what you wanted to see or at which hour.

So in this case "the WalMart way" worked. 10 people at 10 bucks = $100 per show. 200 people at $6 = $1200 per show. Not to mention that with all that extra cash everybody felt really generous at the concession stand (in short I had to wait 20 minutes to get my 2 hot dogs, nachos and 3 drinks).

There is no saying it would work the same way in the USA, but the story shows sometimes the scale is more important than a singular profit. of course the theaters are packed in the US for the good movies, so no reason to decrease the price. But any movie after 2 weeks of showing could have the "old movie price" with 2 bucks taken off. Somteims it is not how much you spend, but how much you save... :)

I have run the numbers before and it is cheaper for me to go to the $2.00 theater, which is farther away, than to go to the megaplexes.  Not that I dislike the megaplexes, it is just the cost for a family of 6.

Megaplex cost:

Tickets:  $49.00

Popcorn & Soda: $15.00

Gas: $8.89 (with gas at $3.50/gallon)

All in: $72.89

$2 Theater Cost:

Tickets $18 ($3.00 after dark)

Popcorn: $14.00

Gas: $14.91

All in: $46.91

I can go and watch a movie, though a month or so after release, eat up lots of popcorn and drink some soda with my whole family cheaper than I can get tickets for the movie at first run.  That is the reason why I don't go see first run movies.  Not that I don't want to, it's just a cost thing and in this economy, I need to be very careful how I spend my money.