Movie Theaters Wait for Comeback as Screens Shut Down
With 5,700 Movie Screens Shut Down and the Box Office in a Slump, Theaters Are Still Waiting for a Post-Pandemic Comeback
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27420780
Movie theaters are considering discount pricing and investing in Imax and 4DX to attract audiences, but the 2025 box office is in a slump.
When even the rural theaters are $10+ per ticket, it’s much easier and cheaper to make movie theater popcorn at home at wait for it to hit streaming. A movie outing for my family is like $120 each time with tickets and concessions and such. They should diversify, or they’re going to follow arcades into the dustbin of entertainment history. Ironically maybe this will be a thing that brings arcades back too.
Even in the cities it gets expensive. If we're talking Imax or something like that you can easily get close to $25 a ticket and that's before popcorn.
Holy crap. My theater is $15 per ticket for the giant screen and I still think it’s a rip-off. It used to be — and not like 20 years ago, two years ago — that same ticket was $8-10, depending on the film. They’ve also added surcharges for evening showings, so that $15 ticket after 6pm is now an $18 ticket. My pricing has gone up 30-120% depending on when the showtime is. And this is a rural theater. I don’t even want to know what the establishments closer into the city are charging.
I’m never spending $100 just on tickets; that money could go a much longer distance at home with AppleTV+ or Max or whatever.
Also secret to perfect movie theater popcorn at home. Buy a big metel mixing bowl and use a jar of popcorn to fill the bottom of flat part of the bowl with kernels as a single layer then add enough canola oil to also fill just the flat part of the bowl then. Cover the bowl with aluminum foil and heat on the stove moving in a clockwise motion. Wait till you don't hear popping or kernels moving around.
In my experience, the secret is a big jug of fake popcorn flavoring. Yum.
Theaters aren’t going to make a comeback unless they can legally stop the studios from owning streaming channels. There’s no interest in keeping content in the theater when the studio makes better money quickly shipping it to their own networks.
I was surprised to learn that Mickey 17 just came out March 7th and is already slated for home video in May. I saw a trailer, googled it, found out it was coming out in theaters the day after and Blu Ray/UHD May 13th.
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/releasedates.php?year=2025&month=5
2 months seems super short and that's physical. I bet streaming is even sooner.
Digital 3/25 - So... yesterday. 18 days after hitting theaters.
https://gamerant.com/mickey-17-hitting-digital/
Edit Apparently the film had been delayed a year due to the strikes in Hollywood, so it seems likely the accelerated schedule is a result of the delays.
Yea. Before if you wanted to be part of the conversation, you had to see it in theaters. Now you can wait to watch at home and it hasn't even fully left theaters. I never got the appeal of theaters, so I'm loving this, but it's obvious that it's a big issue. It's gotten expensive too, but honestly I'm not sure that's making as big a difference as people are suggesting.
Unlimited movie cards for $20-$25 a month are a really great deal. The problem is popcorn, candy and sodas being $10 each.
