first run shows at night are $5.50 and daytime shows are still $3.50 here
Posted on 05/21/2010 3:39:06 AM PDT by SkyPilot
For the first time, a major Hollywood film will hit the $20 threshold at the box office, as movie-theater owners test the public's ability to absorb ever higher ticket prices.
Several theaters will charge $20 per adult ticket to IMAX showings of the animated 3-D family film "Shrek Forever After," the fourth "Shrek" installment from DreamWorks Animation. The theaters include the AMC theater in Manhattan's Kips Bay neighborhood, AMC Loews 34, AMC Loews Lincoln Square and AMC Empire 42nd Street.
The increases weren't officially announced, but were reflected in prices posted Wednesday on movie-ticketing Web sites such as Fandango.com and tracked by BTIG LLC media analyst Richard Greenfield.
"With the state of the economy remaining questionable, we worry pricing is simply moving up too quickly," cautioned Mr. Greenfield in a research blog post, adding that he was especially concerned about how quickly children's ticket prices are increasing. "The danger is scaring consumers away from the movie theaters."
This weekend's price increase come less than eight weeks after theater operators instituted some of the steepest hikes in a decade. Those increases in late March—in some cases of as much as 26%—varied theater to theater and focused on 3-D and IMAX showings of another DreamWorks Animation title, "How to Train Your Dragon." The same AMC theater in Manhattan charged $19.50 for an IMAX showing of "Dragon."
The $20 ticket may prove to be a psychological barrier too steep for some moviegoers to overcome, but the industry appears ready to take the risk, especially in the wake of a string of 3-D blockbusters, from "Avatar" to "Alice in Wonderland." 3-D movies accounted for the vast majority of last year's 10% jump in domestic box-office sales.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The last movie I went to see was The Passion of Christ and that was the first in 4 or 5 years prior, or longer unless I took the grand kids when they were younger.
first run shows at night are $5.50 and daytime shows are still $3.50 here
Didn't really like the first installment, but that line is worth the price of admission alone.
Didn't really like the first installment, but that line is worth the price of admission alone.
I don’t do the movie theater thing so much anymore. There’s just not that many mainstream films out there that really grab me so much I *have* to see them right away.
I will say that there are some movies that just have to be seen on the big screen to get the full effect. A local art theater near me ran a showing of Lawrence of Arabia a few years back. It was amazing.
Interesting...THAT is the last movie we went to see too!
I recently joined the Blockbuster club, and I’ve been surprisingly satisfied with them. I recently got a Blu Ray player, and renting those discs costs $2.99 a day at the stores. But I can get them all from the club for $10 a month and keep one until I have time to watch it. The returns are really fast (I’m in suburban Dallas, so there’s a warehouse center nearby). It’s generally one about 3 days between mailing one back and getting the next one.
And one thing that beats Netflix is that instead of mailing a disc back, you can return it to any Blockbuster store and trade it for one that’s on the shelf for free. The store sends it back for you, then the instant you check the store’s disc back in, they mail you the next one in your queue. It gives you instant gratification for every other movie you watch, and you can squeeze in more movies by not having to wait for the mail return.
And if the price is too high fewer people will watch the show and lower revenue will be earned. And they will know that information within a few weeks. The free market is remarkably efficient at generating meaningful economic information very quickly. Now if they choose not to listen or observe they could end up with a few "Waterworld"s on their hands and never figure out why.
And you don’t have a bunch of people sitting behind you talking to each other the whole time, either.
I've seen all three, but there's a law of diminishing returns. By the end of the third one, I didn't want to see any more ever again. The MTV-like editing and fight and chase scenes that are all just quick cuts of close-ups of chins and hands on gear shifts, etc., start to get old after awhile. You start to long for a fight where you actually see someone getting hit, or a chase scene where you can tell who the hell is chasing whom. Eventually, you realize that the director is substituting flurries of cuts for actual action. And I really hate the way that's infected other movies, like the 007 series.
Uh, what the heck is “bittorent”?
I took the whole family to see Iron Man 2 opening night.
It’s the only film I have any interest in seeing in the theater.
(It was fun and a pretty good movie, even if some of the digitalized effects that were supposed to emphasize how quick the tartly SHIELD agent was moving were somewhat nauseating. The wit was VERY quick, and came from a variety of the roles - a decent escapist movie.)
I’m sure that Drek the Fourth will feature a short, vain, pretty-boy bad guy that resents Drek for some imagined or unintended wrong in the past... Just like the first 3 Dreks did.
“the last time I went it seems advertisements are the norm and I will be damned if I will pay money to watch them.”
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I have practically turned the cable TV viewing over to my wife alone because of that, it seems that what little there is that I want to watch is buried in commercials. Why do I have to pay cable fees and then watch endless advertising on the cable channels? If there was anything worth watching on the broadcast networks I would just go back to an antenna.
If I were twenty again I swear I would find a girl who loves the outdoors and marry her and move as far back in the wilderness as I could get.
Yeah, you hit the core of what troubled me when I watched it.
I really like Ronin, though!
There ARE no drive in movies here anymore. I kinda wish they would come back.
I’ve heard that is good.
“Someone must be paying for this crap. Movies still seem to be making a lot of money.”
You nailed it.
The last time I went to that movie (Bourne III, or whatever it is called - Ultimatum or something), we had to sit for the endless movie trailers.
Not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, but at least eight of them.
Give me a frickin break.
I don't want to sit for 22 minutes of commercials before a movie starts.
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