The Fall of the Multiplex Empire, Or… Save Me 3-D Jebus!
In the spring/summer of 2005, the American movie industry suffered a 19-week slump in ticket sales, compared to the same period the year before. It was the first time in nearly twenty years that theaters had pulled in less money than they had the previous year.(1)
Only a brief respite on the weekend of July 9-11th (when “Fantastic Four” opened) gave Hollywood a marginal ($.07 million)(2) win over the previous year…which they promptly lost the next weekend…and then briefly regained on the weekend of 15-17th with ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”…and then…yes…lost again in the following weeks.
Now, there are those who say that these reports are nothing more than alarmist cage-rattling, and don’t take into account the fact that in the previous year, “The Passion of the Christ” and “Spider-Man 2” gave ticket sales an unnatural boost.
But twenty weeks isn’t a fluke…twenty weeks looks more like a trend, if you’re kind. And if you’re not kind, it looks more like crash and burn.
This crash may seem unexpected on paper, as development and construction of new theaters is on the rise; but to anyone who has been observing the radical change in movie-going culture over the past ten to twenty years, it should be no surprise. The market can only boom so long before it busts, even in the world of Hollywood imagination.
So…what’s happening?
American film budgets continue to expand, and the demands that distributors place upon exhibitors continue to tighten (studios get a larger cut of the opening weekend ticket sales, sometimes as much as a 70/30 split with exhibitors), while film audiences, for the most part, remain about the same: They like good movies, and they like good bargains. If they like something enough, they will tell people about it, and they will pay what you’re asking them to pay. Make something they love, and they’ll watch it again and again, and bring everyone they know.
Keep offering crap, and they’re going to turn away, and turn their friends away. Offer them something mediocre, and they’re going to wait until it hits DVD… which in this day and age, is sometimes only a month after the picture has stopped playing on screens.
The studios, of course, are attempting to peg an easy target of the modern, paranoid age: Internet piracy.
Considering the quality of most pirated films (blurry work prints with time codes running down the sides, or handheld digicam grabs complete with crying babies in the background…True, around Oscar time the Academy screeners start showing up, and they’re of high quality, but for the most part, booted flicks don’t look so great), and the effort/time spent on hunting them down, downloading them, burning them, etc., I’m hesitant to back their claims.
Instead, I’ll highlight Four Factors that I think are at the heart of the matter:
1. Movie tickets are expensive (while exhibitors argue that compared to other forms of entertainment, movies aren’t expensive enough!)
2. DVD’s are cheap: new releases can regularly be had for $10-$20 (catalog titles between $5-$15), which is cheaper than it would cost to take yourself and a date (or sometimes just yourself!) to the show…AND you get to keep it and re-watch it whenever you like, in its original aspect ratio, with digital surround sound.
Add to that the fact that home entertainment systems are growing much more
elaborate and effective, while also becoming increasingly affordable, and the fact
that you don’t have to put up with any annoying cell phones or teenagers (unless
you yourself are an annoying cell-phone owning teen, or the parent of one) and
the argument for staying home to watch a film, or “wait for the DVD” of that
weekend’s hot new box office release, seems all the more compelling.
3. Arguably, the quality of Hollywood productions seems to be in steady decline. Of course, there have always been bad movies, and a lot of them at that, but it seems as though the Dream Factory is running out of steam. For instance, this summer audiences have flocked to films as disparate as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Wedding Crashers”, while totally eschewing “The Island”, “Stealth” ,etc. The success of “Fantastic Four” can only be attributed to the lack of a loving and watchful God.
4. Film culture has changed. Movies no longer play out over the course of many months. Right now it’s a smash-and-grab culture, as films open strong, or get swallowed up. Nothing gets a chance to breathe and find an audience. Every year the “summer” season starts earlier and earlier, this year kicking off around late March/early April, with “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” leading the way.
However, rather than address the issues of ticket cost and the quality of products being shown, exhibitors and studios seem to feel that the future may lie in an update of a gimmick first employed more than fifty years ago: 3-D. 3
Mind you, the 3-D they’re proposing is a bit more advanced than the normal red/blue process stuff you’re used to. Recently James Cameron has been doing work with HD film and stereoscopic 3-D technology on such short feature works as “Ghosts of the Abyss” and “Aliens of the Deep”, which utilize grey, polarized glasses. And with the expansion of IMAX systems into “normal” theater chains, we’ve seen the release of 3-D versions of such computer-animated films as “Polar Express” and “Robots”.
But what if you could watch big-time action flicks in smooth, convincing 3-D?
Me, I’d rather have better movies rather than, say, pointier-looking movies; but the powers that be seem to think this is the gamble to take.
At ShoWest this year, George Lucas, James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez, Robert Zemeckis and Peter Jackson (via tape) came together to give a 3-D demonstration for exhibitors, apparently blowing some minds with a demo of the first seven minutes of the original “Star Wars” in a startling new 3-D process called Dimensionalized 3-D. The consensus on the forum seemed to be that IMAX is swell, sure, but these visionary (and I’ll let you debate the merit of that term in relation to this particular group of auteur) directors seem to feel that the future of the film going experience is in mainstream 3-D films.
And apparently they’re putting their money where their mouths/beards are.
To whit, Rodriguez has been producing 3-D flicks for a while now (The “Spy Kids” sequels, “The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl”) although in an admittedly low-rent style.
However, Cameron is currently working on his return to feature-length filmmaking with his long awaited, live-action, 3-D remake of the famous anime/manga series “Battle Angel Alita”.
“With digital 3D projection, we will be entering a new age of cinema. Audiences will be seeing something which was never technically possible before the age of digital cinema — a stunning visual experience which ‘turbocharges’ the viewing of the biggest, must-see movies,” said Academy Award®-winner James Cameron, director of Aliens of the Deep. “The biggest action, visual effects and fantasy movies will soon be shot in 3D. And all-CG animated films can easily be converted to 3D, without additional cost if it is done as they are made. Soon audiences will associate 3D with the highest level of visual content in the market, and seek out that premium experience.”(4)
And Luca$? Well, of course, he wants you to buy the ‘Star Wars” flicks again, this time hoping to start releasing them…again…in 3-D, perhaps as early as 2007.
“When I first saw In-Three’s Dimensionalization® process I was truly amazed. The 3D was of a quality better than anything I had previously experienced. Seeing my own Star Wars images in authentic 3D convinced me that it would be a whole new way for audiences to be able to re-live the Star Wars films. Dimensionalization® will significantly enhance the realism of any movie presented in this process.” – George Lucas
“The first time I saw In-Three’s work over a year ago all of us at LucasFilm were totally “Wow’d”. We sat there in amazement seeing our own familiar scenes in 3D. I was truly stunned that these guys actually developed a technology that can produce such high quality 3D pictures. The realism that they were able to create was unlike anything I’d ever seen. In-Three has developed an entirely new post production technology. With In-Three’s 3D process film makers no longer have to concern themselves with the complexity, uncertainties, and expense of shooting with dual cameras. Believe me, we have seen a lot of 3D, but In-Three’s is the only one that delivers. We’re sold.” – Rick McCallum, Producer of Star Wars(5)
Jackson even suggested that we might see a release of the “Lord of the Rings” films in 3-D as well.
But will that work? Do people care enough about shiny gimmicks like 3-D to start queuing up around the theaters again? “Ghosts of the Abyss” and “Aliens of the Deep” barely made a blip at the box-office, even for limited-run documentary/shorts. And that was with the backing of DISNEY distribution!
What will get people back in movie seats?
True, you have to give them something that they can’t get at home. And right now, at home, they can get High Def presentation of digital films on a non-decaying format (unlike VHS) augmented with digital surround sound systems, and at a bargain price to boot. As the technology grows, it also becomes much cheaper and easier to own.
But the studios know that they can’t get 3-D, at least not the way that IT Dimensionalized 3-D can give it to them. They knew it in the 50’s when they tried it the first time, during the glut of gimmicks (also the time of the adoption of Cinemascope, Cinerama, and the Widescreen frame), to lure people away from the theater-emptying fad of television.
But…do the audiences of today really want 3-D?
Sure, at the time, it worked. But then the gimmicks faded, and 50+ years later, we’re back in the same boat.
So why do the studios think it would work this time? And how do they think that could reverse the tremendous changes we’ve seen in recent years to the very culture of movie going?
There was a time when the public was more or less ignorant of box office grosses, except for the occasional “Star Wars plays for 55th week!” type of announcement that huge blockbusters might generate.
Now, box office receipts are a part of the daily news. There are probably 10 year old kids who could tell you how much “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” made on its opening day, how much the percentage fell by the next day, how many screens it played on, and what the per-screen average is.
Indeed, the culture of movie going has changed considerably. Rather than open on a single screen and play for weeks, films are often debuted on three or four screens per theater. Audiences seem to feel the need to go as soon as possible, perhaps to be a part of the”big thing”. When a movie you went to opens in #1, shattering records, do you feel like you were a part of the “win”? On Monday morning, casual filmgoers study the movie charts as though they were sports scores. Did we win? By how much?
Aiding in this “open big, plummet precipitously thereafter” style of film distribution is the fact that Hollywood makes SO MANY MOVIES. There are hundreds of films released every year, with as many as three or four new major studio releases competing for the top slot every Friday.
We can’t see them all, can we? Does Hollywood expect that we can? Do they not see that by releasing so many films so close together, they’re cannibalizing their own audience? Especially when you factor in the cost of tickets these days. It’s just not going to happen.
In the end, I can only shrug my shoulders and confess that while I’m an avid filmlover and regular moviegoer, I’m not a professional analyst. But the fact is that distributors and studios seem to be in a panic, and are employing Doomsday Scenario Protocols.
In my eyes, we have two sets of solutions:
The Hollywood/Film Distributor Plan: Make bigger event movies, gimmick them up with 3-D, and raise ticket prices.
My suggestion: Make fewer movies. Make cheaper movies. Make better movies.
And let them play.
The audiences will come.
1 Batman’ attempts a Hollywood rescue
Studios look to Bruce Wayne to avoid a neck-and-neck race it doesn’t want to win.
June 16, 2005: 6:07 PM EDT
By Krysten Crawford, CNN/Money staff writer
2 ‘Fantastic Four’ Heats Up the Summer Box Office
by Brandon Gray www.boxofficemojo.com
July 11, 2005
3 The author is referring to the 1952 release of “Bwana Devil” as his start date for the 3-D boom, and fully realizes that the process was employed as early as 1915, and the process itself back as far as the Lumiere Bros’ work in 1903. Don’t send him angry movie-nerd letters, thanks.
4 DLP Cinema Press Release Available at http://www.dlp.com/about_dlp/about_dlp_press_release.asp?id=1232&bhcp=1
5 In-Three Dimensionalized 3-D ShoWest Press-Release Available at http://www.videopost.com/pages/inthree6.html