The Death of Movie Theaters - Beyond the Black Void

Theaters are dying because people would rather watch Mike and Jay talk about movies than actually watching the movies.

“It’s so weird that Rich says he loves something.” - Mike Stoklasa, man who hasn’t felt a positive emotion since 1999

Remember taking a marketing class for movies at USC about 15 years ago, and many of these kinds of things were brought up. Their answers boiled down to, "we tried that already," or "we don't want to do that." They want people to just return to the theaters without any changes to their business model.

spending over an hour watching a film ❌ spending over an hour watching jay and mike talk about films ✅

There's a local theater in the town I live in that has, in recent years, changed their business model into playing cult films, b-movies, art films, foriegn films etc. and the theater is consistently full every time I go. Plus, the audience is usually comprised of people who care enough about what they're watching to not talk the entire time.

Mike missed an obvious analogy with graveyards. You used to have to drive all the way to the cemetary to mourn your loved ones, and only at certain times. But with cremations you can now mourn all day, every day from the comfort of your own living room.

Sat through 20+ minutes of trailers prior to Garfield. Then, sat through Garfield.

Theaters are dying because people don't want to pay $18 to sit behind a group of kids playing with their phones, lighting up the room for two hours.

As a former manager of a single screen mom-and-pop theater all I have to say is that Deluxe/Technicolor are such greedy assholes. If you want to get a film within the first four weeks that it's out you have to give up 90% of your ticket sales to the distributors. If you want a 50/50 split or better you have to wait like 2 months. It was always a major gamble on what to wait for and what to actually get right away. They also make these BS rules like; our movie is the only film that can be shown on any given screen. Meaning if we wanted to do an early and late show, we couldn't. You're forced to only play one movie for weeks! Once that got more common the business basically died. The biggest insult is that the theaters have to pay for movie posters. We're already giving them all the sales, and then they have the gall to ask theaters to pay for the movie's advertising too? Are you fucking kidding me?

Can't wait to cap off my weekend with the lighthearted entertainment of 2 elderly men telling me how horrible everything is now

its funny to hear RLM say that movie theaters are dying for years but its another thing to realize "I won't be able to go to a movie theater anymore". That's what getting old feels like

Arcades died out in the 90s when everyone got “good enough” gaming hardware at home and now everyone has “good enough” home cinema equipment that the same is happening to movie theaters.

When I saw Furiosa the guy next to me decided to watch the NBA ECFs Game 1 Boston vs Ind on his phone. He went to a movie on opening night… and started watching a basketball game on his phone. He just ignored everyone around him that complained to him. That turd is the reason why i dont want to spend my money and time seeing a movie in the theaters anymore.

I think what would save movie theaters is more Nicole Kidman ads telling us why we go to movie theaters...while we are at the movie theaters.

“If you don’t like it just don’t watch the movies then, we don’t care.” “Wait - not like that”

Most normal/civilized film fans don’t want to put up with the film being ruined by human garbage every single time

Ironically, going to the theatre and seeing it half empty makes this this more favorite time to go to movies.

I bet Space Cop 2 could save theaters

I haven't been to a movie theater since 2012. Why would I want to overpay, have idiots kicking my seat, talking, looking at their phones and loudly eating food 360 degrees around me, when I can watch from the comfort of my own living room... with the subtitles turned on too, since sound editors forgot how to do their jobs around a decade ago as well.

Matt Damon interviewed on Hot Ones a while back and made another good point why studios don't take risks anymore. And one of the biggest reasons is the sales of VHS/DVDs/Blu-ray died out. He pointed out that a studio could still recoup their investment even if it didn't do well in theaters because of the sales of tangible copies of the movie down the road.