By Ian Rapoport
Executive Arts Editor
Movie theaters just might be dying. In 2014, 1.26 billion people bought theater tickets in North America. While this initially may seem like a large sum, this actually marks the lowest attendance at theaters since 1995. While it may just be a bad year, changes in digital entertainment may make this the beginning of the end for theaters like Arclight and AMC.
Entertainment is going entirely digital, with VHS having gone to DVDs, and DVDs now available on-demand. Now, instead of having to drive down to the local Blockbuster (also closed), all you have to do is turn on the TV to find the newest releases. Movie-watching, an already lazy pastime, has become considerably more lackadaisical. Jokes aside, Americans generally tend to prefer the easy option.
Recently, the Sony hack exposed a lot of different issues in the entertainment industry. However, the one thing that stood out to me was how quickly Sony shelved plans to release “The Interview” in theaters and instead released it on Youtube, Google Play and other digital outlets. This instance shows that producers are capable of posting films to digital outlets as soon as they are completed.
Furthermore, outlets like Netflix have proven to be top-tier producers of quality content for TV. Take “House of Cards,” for example. It is clear that such distributors have the resources to create quality entertainment, so the idea of them branching into film is more than probable. In fact, both Netflix and Amazon have gone to the Sundance Film Festival with the goal of purchasing films for the companies’ respective streaming services.
All this goes to show that quality films that would originally only appear in theaters now seem to be moving into homes. Theater chains will only survive so long as people keep attending, and if this year is the start of a downward trend, there simply may not be a place in entertainment for major theaters in the future.
However, I predict that this change will not happen any time soon. While “The Interview” did go straight to demand, it was a commercial disaster. Losses on the film are approximated at around $30 million, and the producer has accredited much of this toward illegal downloads, highlighting the major flaw with films going straight to download. Also, this year could have simply been a poor year for theaters, and maybe attendance will sky rocket back up over 2015 (“The Avengers” sequel does come out this year, after all).
Given recent trends in the entertainment industry, a future in which major films come out on-demand the day of release feels less like a possibility and more like a reality.
Leave a Reply