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Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

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Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#451

Post by quickthrower2 »

bjt wrote: post #445
quickthrower2 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to make this work first off is the cinema on a quiet day offers the chance to rent a smaller theatre and play one of a preselected back catalog of movies. Then people will do it as a party experience kind of thing. They could just ask for a minimum of 10 customers, which might be a better turn out than the quiet days. Then extend it by offering a “ride share” where you let the cinema sell more tickets to stra…

The Cinemarks near me did this during COVID. For $100 last summer I was able to rent out a theater and see the original Jurassic Park with my extended family. Rather than a minimum number of people they had a max of 20 (because COVID). Looks like they're still doing it. https://www.cinemark.com/misc/private-watch-party/private-wa...

Looks like that link has made cloudflare think our hug of love is a DDOS

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#452

Post by jtwaleson »

stragio wrote: post #366
jtwaleson wrote: post #183

Ok, here's my problem with the movie theatre industry. There's 100+ years of fantastic historical content and we're not doing anything with it. 99% of what's shown in theaters is new releases. I understand we don't want to "go stale" as a society and that movie producers also need to make a living, but the balance is just way off. I would pay good money to see "the good the bad and the ugly" with my kids in a couple…

In Europe this is different though. In Amsterdam we have 10+ cinemas showing a lot of classics too, unlimited for 20 euros a month in amazing theatres. I rarely go to these large cinemas anymore.

I'm actually based in Utrecht ;) Looking at all the comments here it seems there's possibly lots of old films being shown (depending on your geo) but awareness is very low. I've certainly never seem tv ads or posters that advertise old films. Maybe it's something that smaller cinemas tend to do, as you say, but the 10+ screens megaplexes do a LOT more volume. I will definitely look at some of the smaller cinemas to see what they show nowadays.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#453

Post by dredmorbius »

snowwrestler wrote: post #398
jtwaleson wrote: post #183

Ok, here's my problem with the movie theatre industry. There's 100+ years of fantastic historical content and we're not doing anything with it. 99% of what's shown in theaters is new releases. I understand we don't want to "go stale" as a society and that movie producers also need to make a living, but the balance is just way off. I would pay good money to see "the good the bad and the ugly" with my kids in a couple…

I can think of at least 4 big movie theaters in DC that did this. The Uptown used to do revivals between big releases. I saw Blade Runner, Ben Hur, 2001, and other classics there. They did not make money on those and had to convert to 100% current releases. I think it is now closed. The Air & Space IMAX theater used to do “Sci Fi Sundays” where they played a classic science fiction movie on Sunday evenings as the las…

There are repertory cinemas. One that at least some HN readers might be familiar with is the Stanford Theatre, on University Avenue in Palo Alto, which shows almost exclusively black-and-white films from the golden age of Hollywood.

As with so much else, it's been closed due to COVID-19, but looks to be reopening.

The 2019--2020 season featured films from 80 years prior: 1939--1940.

https://stanfordtheatre.org/

https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/1939.html

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#454

Post by jtwaleson »

clydethefrog wrote: post #307
jtwaleson wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! Where is this? In Amsterdam I know one theater that's showing old films and that's the 1% I was talking about ;)

Which theatre in Amsterdam? Lab111?

Some place on the Ceintuurbaan around Sarphatipark. I often cycled past there on my way to work but never managed to visit.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#455

Post by dogorman »

allturtles wrote: post #446
dogorman wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The angular size of Clint Eastwood is or can be made the same, by adjusting your distance from the screen. The difference is everything else about the experience, everything except the apparent size of Clint Eastwood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter

Your brain can perceive the difference between a 25 foot tall figure and a 25 inch tall one even if the angular distance is the same. Just like you can tell the difference between a giant ant striding through your neighborhood and a tiny ant on the wall in front of your face. One is impressive, the other isn't.

If you watch Clint Eastwood on a drive-in screen where he's 50 feet tall, does that make it twice as impressive as a regular theater? I like drive-in theaters, but not for this reason.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#456

Post by kbenson »

Spooky23 wrote: post #438
kbenson wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great. Now every movie theatre starts doing that. What happens to profit margins? Why would every movie theater need to do that? That seems like an absurd proposition. Do I really need to watch older movies in some newer giant theater designed with a special sounds system that the entire theater needs to be certified for if I'm watching a movie that wasn't scored to take advantage of it? > What happens to profit ma…

The problem is like any other modern business. The business consolidated and scaled up to the point that it can only survive with big blockbuster movies. They need to grow and operate at scale to survive. How do you sustain 20 theatres in a super expensive mall that charges insane rents while sending 75% of the gross back to the studio? It’s not going to happen without big movies that appeal to a broad audience that…

It's only 75% of gross for new releases, and I ky for the first few weeks. Older movies that have much more profitable revenue shares might be one way to do so, if you can draw the people in. That might be hard to do for a 20 Plex, but there's a lot of perfectly serviceable smaller Thayers which can be repurposed in part or whole (most likely in part, as some theater chains have been doing for a long time already).

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#457

Post by mackrevinack »

mullingitover wrote: post #67

We're arguably repeating history, where 100 years ago film was the upstart (but rapidly growing) business and vaudeville was the established incumbent. Film offered far more creative possibilities and were dramatically more immersive than the entertainment it replaced. Today the film industry is the incumbent - profits have peaked, and the upstart video game business has already eclipsed it. Once again, video games h…

a gaming system is much more expensive than a dvd player so i can't ever see it becoming the norm. there's also the problem of having to upgrade your system every 10 or so years and your old games possibly not working on the new system

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#458

Post by crooked-v »

lostlogin wrote: post #410
ftio wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The open-mouthed chewing, soda slurping, and bag rustling is unbearable for me. It completely takes me out of the film, particularly during quiet scenes.

My killer feature at home is volume levelling or whatever you call it when you quieten the load bits and raise the volume of the quiet parts. I’m using some Sonos thing to do it, but I’m sure there are loads of variant (presumably with the Sonos proprietary crap).

Usually that's only necessary at home because the movie's mixed for a huge surround sound system, though.

("Usually" because there are some exceptions like, say, the way that Christopher Nolan films have repeatedly had garbage sound mixes even in theaters.)

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#459

Post by chrisseaton »

jdavis703 wrote: post #444
chrisseaton wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can watch all these anytime on streaming - why do you need a cinema to see them?

There’s also the community aspect. Being in an audience that’s actively engaged in a movie is like being at a sports game vs watching the game on TV.

I guess that’s cultural then - here it’s polite to stay quiet in a cinema.

Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back

#460

Post by agumonkey »

foolfoolz wrote: post #346
agumonkey wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, I keep seeing this era the same way. There used to be such a different structure behind things. Everything was more expensive but we went to grab them because they were so superb. Also it imposed some kind of order.. those who managed to fabricate large things in front of the random nature of workgroups, social trends and audience desires got to grab the hero / fame status (for better or worse). Today, av…

think of it as “leveling the playing field” in which it over time asymptotically approaches shit

And I wonder how much of nature works the other way around, and how our biology is fit for unleveled playing fields. Make things hard to see who's the fittest.. not the other way around.
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