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My fiance mentioned we haven't gone to see a movie in theaters in years and it would be fun to go.
I checked what was playing and:
2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.
$86 dollars.
Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
The last movie we attended people were incredibly disruptive throughout the film, to the point that it was difficult to focus on the film. Some people enjoy screaming, laughing, and talking as part of the experience, but it's apparently been normalized beyond my tolerance threshold. Add in the cost and overall movie quality decrease of Hollywood productions, and it's difficult to justify.
Presently, we watch foreign movies at home 95% of the time and maybe a Hollywood production when they manage to find their roots and create something worth watching.
Most if not all the ticket price goes directly into the studio's pockets.
So the theatres stay alive by selling concessions.
I'd wager everyone here complaining about prices would also wax poetic about how theatres don't "pay a living wage" to the kids scooping popcorn and would immediately drive home in their $100k Rivians or Teslas so they can give a one star review on Yelp or complain on Reddit about the bathrooms or floors being dirty or sticky.
These same people wouldn't bat an eye at paying $14 for a food truck grilled cheese and leave a tip.
You can't have it both ways.
Where is that? Tickets here are only $7-10 each (except maybe some IMAX or similar showings) and two drinks and popcorn would be $15-25 for two people (size dependent). This is in Colorado.
EDIT: I was going off of memory, but matinee/child/senior pricing is apparently $9.75 at the theater I usually go to, evening is $13.25 (I never go in the evening, had forgotten what that price was). They have a two drink and popcorn combo for $22.10. So the worst case of evening prices (again, not considering IMAX, just regular screens and seats) for two with that combo is $48.60. That's not cheap, but it's not $86 either. And if you're willing to share the drink and go to a matinee you can cut the price to $34.80. This is a Cinemark, a pretty big theater chain.
Then I guess you aren't familiar with the 20 minutes of trailers, 1 minute of Cocacola ad and 2 minutes of other completely irrelevant content before the movie actually begins.
Not a conventional theater, but I recently went to Vidiots in Los Angeles and enjoyed myself so much I went back a week later. The location I went to has two theaters—37 seat and 270 seat, both with comfortable seating and an excellent picture/sound. Most people who go are kind of movie nerds, so everyone was super respectful. And they don't really play blockbusters, so you don't get that kind of crowd. They seem to be doing well, and I really hope the model works and is reproducible.
Oh, and it was $11 for one of the tickets, $13 for another. I don't remember how much a beer cost, but it was on par with (and maybe less than) local bars.
Support small theatres, you won’t get charged like this.
What theater is that at? Sounds like a mega chain like AMC or Regal. The local indie theater we go to in one of the 5 largest American cities has never been over $15 per ticket and adding popcorn and a drink is maybe $10 more on top.
The people going to movies regularly are playing a different game.
The prices you see upfront like this are for "suckers". People who come in, don't think about price, and just pay whatever the cost is. McDonald's is like this now too.
People who are concerned about price though - they use the app, they get deals, and so forth. I've gone to movies and done the same thing - two tickets, two drinks, 1 popcorn and it was $30. This is because these movie theaters run "deals" all the time for this stuff.
You'll have to get used to this paradigm as it's the main way everything is priced now. There's not going to be a "one price for everyone" thing anymore. It's going to be dynamic and different pricing for everything.
Where do you live? I'm in a HCOL area and just checked that same combo for a Friday night premiere and it's more like ~$70.
The markup on concessions has always been a thing but it really is just insane to think the unit economics on 2 sodas and a popcorn must be like 50 cents and selling it from $26 (in my area). Clearly they must make the most money this way but it is just crazy that anyone outside of significant disposable income even considers buying concessions. It's priced in such a way where anyone outside of the top 5% income brackets should just laugh at the price and view it as an extreme luxury good and not ever even consider buying anything.
The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming. The article doesn't mention it. The market for video games in 2024 was around $225B, compared to movies at around $33B. Hollywood has worked very hard not to realize that their industry has become niche and have succeeded.
My last week may be an indicator. I've watched zero TV or movies but have spent about 40 hours helping a small colony of scrappy hard working beavers survive on post apocalyptic earth. Steam got my money, Hollywood didn't.
The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the economics of streaming is finally playing out in the loss of the geographical concentration of power in Hollywood and California.
This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change.
One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous.
The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.
My 2c: They should stop concentrating on appealing to the broadest audience. Formulaic heros' journeys, franchises, predictable characters acted by the same narrow set of the the most-attractive people etc.
Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity.
For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.
Maybe I'm insane or it's my age, but I can't watch new movies/shows without just seeing propaganda agendas at every turn. Really kills it for me.
There just aren’t as many good new movies. Most movies we watch at home are from decades ago. If we didn’t have streaming maybe we’d go to the movies more often, but it’s hard to say.
A few movies we watched are not worth the money. To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much, the movie better be absolutely outstanding, and the are just not usually, so we stopped going.
If Sinners and One Battle After Another are up for movie of the year then it's no wonder no one is going. One is a fun but ultimately forgettable horror action movie. The other is a movie that just based on its major theme would attract less then half the country and even in those remaining is a very polarizing movie. It's up for best picture because to preach, not because it's actually good.
I started watching 1960s era movies with my kids and I understand why Hollywood had the power at the time. Entertainment and solid values crafted into a "picture".
I can imagine back then eagerly awaiting a new release. Now, who cares. Some depressing trauma story of someone I can't relate to or rehashed superhero flick. Yawn.
Nobody else to blame but themselves. Of course, Hollywood is full of narcissists so they'll blame everyone else, e.g. streaming, prices, etc. but the reality is of the last 10-15 years of mainstream US cinema is:
- Scripts that sound more like an HR meeting than a good story.
- Blockbuster superhero movies that are all the same movie.
- Lots of remakes that added modern CGI flare and destroyed the artistic value of the original.
- As consolidation of studios happens, way more "safe" stories that aim to not offend anyone. I think the only one able to get away with it right now is Tarantino.
Prices, streaming, theaters, etc. -- they're all accessory to the problem. People went to the movies for enjoyment, why would they go to endure them? There's no cultural collective experience anymore in the sense of going to see Lord of the Rings or Matrix with your friends for the first time.
Also this is happening throughout all media. Music and video games have the same kind of discussions.
So many more products are competing for finite attention now. And the solution to that problem is not to productize your commodity imo, art created for the sake of selling is not art.
Everyone is complaining about movie theater prices. But, I'll also complain about streaming prices. I want to watch The Secret Agent and it's $9.99 to rent on Apple TV. It doesn't seem to make sense in comparison to month all-you-can-watch subscription prices.
What if all the good stories have been told? I conjecture Hollywood is out of ideas but there’s plenty new if you look elsewhere.
Recently watched a fantastic Chinese movie: Upstream (2024) - a dramatized view of a culture driven by algorithms where everyone is plugged in but opportunity does exist if you work hard. Optimistic and pessimistic, with an underdog you want to see win, and a bunch of beautiful human and touching moments. Highly recommended.
Hollywood will keep going maybe in a smaller form. It’s ok for industries to change or run out of steam, and it’s ok for new to replace told. It’s ok for a place to run out of stories to tell, because new stories will get told by others in other places.
Good riddance. It won’t be missed. Very little of Hollywood benefited humanity - it was mostly a tool of the rich and governments to propagandize. It was just an another opiate for masses. It was built on ruthless exploitation of labour and consumers.
I was already complaining about the price when it was only $30 for two tickets, two drinks, and popcorn. To think it's more than double that now!
Add in the fact most anyone can have access to a pretty good quality 60" display. It's not as large as the theater, but it's pretty good-sized, has better color reproduction than a lot of older (read: less-maintained) theaters' gear, and you don't have to deal with people using their phones or talking over the movie.
Lastly, let's just consider that for most people the number of movies you'd actually want to watch on a yearly basis has probably decreased in general while the cost of actually producing those movies has skyrocketed-- it's the same problem with AAA gaming. Your costs are so high that if a movie/game isn't an immediate massive hit, you're doomed.
Yeah, the bottom has dropped out of that market entirely. Gaming will be saved by indie and AA games, but I'm not sure if there's anything like that for movies; sure, smaller films exist but distribution, etc. doesn't really have anything like Steam.
People like to point at prices and bad audience behaviour for the downfall of cinemas, but I'd suggest that it also comes down to availability and home experience.
When I was growing up we went to the cinema regularly, but the only options for watching a film were VHS rentals and the cinema, both of which required going out. Films were rare. Sometimes there would be a film on TV, but it would have ads every 20 minutes, and our TV was a relatively small CRT.
Now I have nearly every film made available to me to watch within minutes on a huge screen, in a quiet room, that doesn't smell, with no ads, at the time I want, without going out, and I can pause it to go to the toilet or get a drink rather than having to hope I don't miss anything. And I don't have a home cinema setup, I have a <$1k TV and <$200 speakers, no surround sound, very basic, very accessible.
The only time I go to the cinema now is for IMAX because that passes the bar of better than I have at home as a whole package.
Cinemas just suck.
I watch a film every single day since Covid. There are great films everywhere every year. I'm not american but the sooner you ignore the american cultural imperialism is the better (or at least the films that don't premiere at competition festivals). There is a whole world outside of America.
The most interesting part:
> North Americans are going to the movies about half as often as they used to a decade ago, based on the number of tickets sold at cinemas in the US and Canada.
50% down in just 10 years is massive.
I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.
Every time there’s an article about the “good ol’ days of Hollywood” I like to trot out this comic strip- looks like last time I posted it was five years ago:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201112024059/https://www.gocom...
Hollywood has been a franchise and licensed IP sequel/remake/reboot farm since the ‘80s, since Star Wars and Jaws blockbusters killed off the experimental period of New Hollywood. And even before that it was Cecil B. DeMille bombastic productions and westerns and musicals everywhere. The movie industry has always been characterized by crowd pleasers.
As if the world needs more video content.
There's already enough movies and TV shows to keep me busy for the rest of my life. If they stopped making movies and TV shows tomorrow, I wouldn't get through everything I would be interested in watching before I died.
And neither would you.
Hollywood has been going through a similar cultural problem that gaming has. They have been extremely woke, and I'm sorry that people won't like that, and they have made movies to make far left critics happy instead of audiences. Not all are like this but this has dominated the industry. There have been some big moneymakers in recent years an the industry could try to make movies for audiences again but they have gotten into this space where they have to make the Academy happy. There was those Danish filmmakers at a press conference talking about their movie set in the 1700s, or something like that, and the press were whining about the lack of diversity in a historical Nordic film. I think if they decide to make movies people want to see and stop using Millennial vernacular in all script writing, they will see people wanting to watch movies again.
One small thing I noticed.
The best movie of this year, a film called Sirāt, was in part funded by a grant from Spain's Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts [1]. Another incredible one this past year, a Brazilian film called The Secret Agent, was funded by various grants and institutes as well [2].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film)
The only reason I like going to the theater now is to see movies in "4dx". It's a ridiculous format where the seats move and there are other special effects including air, water, and smoke which are custom edited for each chosen movie. It's like a combination between a movie and one of those amusement park rides. I think most people hate it, but my kids and I enjoy it. Tickets are ~$30 each though.
Otherwise I would just rather watch a movie on the couch at home. They come to streaming so quickly there's no problem waiting for it.
> ... California doubled the annual assistance it gives to film and TV productions to $750 million to stop them from fleeing the state.
750M/38.9M = $19.28 per resident
Why can't we call a taxpayer subsidy by its right name?
The promise er sorry propaganda used to be “attend the big blockbuster movies so they can spend the extra money on riskier indie films”. Essentially trickle down for the movie business. Here we are.
I put more stock in the the Sundance and Cannes jury prizes: even if they're comprised of the elites who can afford to go to these festivals, they've still got far more artistic sense than the ossified corporate board that the Academy has always been.
Hollywood moved into the “exploitation” phase of its optimisation problem:
Sequels, prequels, spinoffs, remakes.
If a movie costs O(Billion) to make, you need to be sure to at least earn back 1.x times the investment, the only way to do this is to play it safe.
Iv had some movies I wanted to see but had to wait for them to appear online via youtube, apple, PBS, or DVD.
Niche films / indie films don't get shown everywhere and unless your sometimes willing to drive over 150+ miles you just have to wait.
Another victim of the efficiency of the market.
Market forces know no culture except what consumers pay for. Absent real care, stewardship and focused investment, the product will always get cheaper.
And of course consumers' tastes are under attack from another direction: their attention spans.
Some load-bearing pillars of human culture are weakening.
As a kid I often went to the drive-in with my family. Completely different experience to a theatre, but one that I remember fondly.
The sound was always tinny and in mono from the small speaker you hooked on the window, but it was fun and very cheap.
Most recent in theater movie I was was "F1" because I thought the audio experience would be worth the ticket price. While the audio was good, seat quality was sub par, popcorn stale and soda was from a Freestyle machine (YUK!)
Here's a great video-essay on adjacent topic: Why The Movies Don't Feel The Same Anymore
One new problem for theaters is that entertainment now comes in other time formats than the 1-3 hour movie or the hour-long TV show. Netflix is not constrained by the need to push groups of people through a movie theater.
There was a bubble when all the new streaming services started making content, now there's a bust.
Attendance drops at movie theatres is irrelevant. Most people have watched movies and tv shows at home for years.
Hollywood will be fine.
$100 to go to the movies for a family of four. No thanks. There’s no mystery why the movies are dying. They’ve priced themselves out and then they give away the product on streaming several months later anyways.
If they want theaters to come back then they’ll have to put movies behind a paywall again.
I went to the recent re-screenings of the Lord of the Rings movies -- and maybe 30 minutes into the first film, I realized I'd never actually seen it in a theater before. It was glorious.
There seems to be a lot of gloating in this thread from people who haven't been to a theater in many, many years -- lots of disgust at the idea of a movie ever being a communal, social experience. I get the annoyance of other moviegoers talking or otherwise disturbing the movie, but you have no idea what we're missing when big films don't have big individualized social moments to match.
We can't go two hours without picking up our phones. We don't deserve the great experiences movie theaters once gave us.
They have no one to blame but themselves, judging by the quality of Hollywood movies in recent years.
I mean when you have Larry Ellison and other goons pledging investments in these major studios, it's no wonder people who actually enjoy watching movies don't want to give their money+time to watch some dumbed down bottom of the barrel slime that AI has decided people will sit through.
Thankfully, filmmaking is becoming more and more independent. It's never been easier and cheaper to make a movie and share it to millions of people on YouTube or Vimeo. Why go through Hollywood, investors, or give money to festivals for a chance at success when you can just upload the thing and see what happens?