Bad movies , home viewing part of the reason ?

[Modelworks]

I was talking with someone at MGM studios , they are really in bad shape now, having put off bankruptcy several times , about all the junk that is being made now. Stuff that is just a remake or has a plot that a 5 year old could write and he brought up something that I had never considered as the reason why we don't see the quality we once did in theaters. We still see some, but it is getting more rare .

He said that to him the decline in quality started around the mid 80's . The reason he gave was that when movies began to become available for rental in the home it changed the whole business. He said it wasn't about the piracy aspect so lets not get into that. The change was because now studios were counting on rental and retail sales as part of the profit to determine if the film was worth making.

In the past a film was made, released at the theater and it would either make money or totally flop. It was their one chance to make a profit. Unless the movie was a huge success it would be stored in a vault never shown again unless some tv network picked it up. For the studios they were very careful about what they produced because spending for a movie would never happen without being absolutely sure it would profit. A single movie could bankrupt a studio so they seldom took a gamble and quality control was much higher. The theaters depended on revenue and if a studio wasn't producing the content they needed that was another factor that could hurt them by some theaters refusing to carry future films.

Today that has changed entirely. Movies calculate in after release sales often projecting years in the future. Now movies can be made with the idea they will lose at the box office but should be making it up in retail sales. If they think the film is not theater quality it gets sent straight to dvd. Studios gamble more than they would in the past and often are losing in the process.

I see both sides. In some ways it is good because movies that might not have been made then get made now and turn out to be worth watching. On the other hand the movie industry moved from a short term investment where a film paid off what it cost almost immediately to becoming a long term investment with a pay off in years.

 

[gimmewhitecastles]

What about rising ticket sales. It went from $7 to $13 since the 90's.
Also I don't get the lose at box office, make up in retail logic. If it is crummy in the theaters why would people add that crap to their collection? Its like they are predicting a movie to be "cult hit". By and large cult hits are rare and it's really up to the general population to decide that, not the movie studios.

Sounds like a bad business model to me.

 

[Modelworks]

What about rising ticket sales. It went from $7 to $13 since the 90's.
Also I don't get the lose at box office, make up in retail logic. If it is crummy in the theaters why would people add that crap to their collection? Its like they are predicting a movie to be "cult hit". By and large cult hits are rare and it's really up to the general population to decide that, not the movie studios.

Sounds like a bad business model to me.

The idea behind the lose at the box office is the casual buyer in stores. The ones that pick up or rent a movie based on box cover or back . They do a lot more predicting now than in the past. In the past they depended largely on focus groups. They would bring people in during filming and have them watch what they had so far and depending on that would determine if the film would be changed, completed or canceled.

 

[Koing]

A few films (The Shawshank Redemption) find a cult like following in retail and not at the box office for whatever reason.

But yes most just suck so they go straight to dvd release.

I don't think any studio wants to bank films that are going to have poor sales overall. They try and back films that are going to make them £££.

Koing

 

[HardcoreRobot]

box office alone is like a 10 BILLION dollar industry. if you cant cash in on that you need to rethink your business model.

 

[Homerboy]

Quite honestly, I agree with the guy from MGM completely.
I used to see movies ALL THE TIME in the theater. Like almost EVERYTHING that was released as it was the only viable way to really see the movie (sure VHS was available, but watching it on some 25" tube TV (if I was lucky) sucked.

With the onset of bigger TVs, DVDs, decent sound, now HD, there are very few movies that I feel I HAVE to see in the theater. It's not the price of the ticket that keeps me away (ok, maybe somewhat) but its the fact that I know it is a movie that I can enjoy just as much from the comfort of my own chair.