THE OBENSON REPORT

Covering Cinema From All Across The African Diaspora

Economics Of The Movie Theater - Where The Money Goes And Why It Costs Us So Much

Found this useful piece over at The Movie Blog.

It's a concise detailing of the money trail currently followed by the studios and theatres alike.

Each point made could be expounded on, but I think this gives you a good enough start, so give it a read: Economics Of The Movie Theater - Where The Money Goes And Why It Costs Us So Much.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous said...
     

    I love your blog!!!

    Carmen D.

  2. The Obenson Report said...
     

    My blog thanks you Carmen!

  3. Qadree said...
     

    There are several flawed assumptions in that article and some of the information is oversimplified and misleading.

    You can't really talk about this without talking about the role of the MPAA and the structure of the conglomerates that make the films. There are more ways to make money off of a film now than ever before. The days of relying solely on box office revenue are long gone.

  4. The Obenson Report said...
     

    This wasn't meant to be the all-encompassing gospel on the subject, Qadree. Just a simple "starter" for those who may not have any idea of how certain parts of the system work, especially his first point on where the price of a ticket goes.

  5. Qadree said...
     

    I understand the intent, but most of the conclusion that are drawn after that initial bit of info are inaccurate. Leaving out the fact that the largest exhibitor chains are owned by the same companies that own the movie studios changes the context of the whole article.

    The exhibitors are made out to be victims and the actual reasons for the sliding scale and the varying percentages that go along with it are not mentioned. He actually concludes that having a sliding scale in combination with an increasing amount of film releases is bad news for the movie theaters.

    He also says the studios spend too much money making movies (and make too many movies), they squeeze as much box office revenue as they can from the Theaters thus forcing the theaters to charge us high ticket prices...

    Some might consider that debatable, but I don't agree with it.

    There are too many flaws in that article to address them all here. If it was intended as a "starter" for the uninitiated, they are going to start off on the wrong foot if they accept the conclusions that are drawn. The info about how the money gets distributed isn't much use if you don't understand why it's done that way.

  6. Qadree said...
     

    Just wanted to follow up on that previous comment. I noticed that I haven't actually done a check of who owns what in a while so I wanted to get up to date.

    Right now it looks like Viacom is the only company that is involved in exhibition and production of films through it's parent company. Sony's ownership of Loews ended a little before AMC and Loews merged and the rest of the conglomerates that got involved with theatrical exhibition got out through bankruptcy and spin offs.

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