BY AARON SAGERS
I love movies, and I also see movies as part of my job. But I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore.
Let me explain: Each week I’ll attend a few press screenings of big studio movies. I get into these screenings for free because it’s part of the symbiotic relationship between filmmakers and film writers; they want us to talk about the movies so people will see them, and we need to see the movies to have something to talk about.
And yet, because I love movies, I still attend regular showings of other films throughout the week that I haven’t screened in advance. Or I will go back and watch movies I’d already seen with friends excited about the new blockbuster or Oscar bait.
That means paying for a ticket.
That, in turn, means taking out a mortgage on my house, accepting bids on a kidney or selling my firstborn child. If I want a soda and snack, it may be necessary to auction off my mortal soul. And now that we’re knee deep in the summer movie season - a time when the public takes to the theaters the most for a couple hours of air conditioning and escapism into massively marketed 3D super hero/sequel vehicles – it means I may have to pull off a massive art gallery or casino heist just to afford the trips to the multiplex.
According to
National Association of Theatre Owners, the average U.S. ticket price in 2010 was $7.89, up 5% from $7.50 in 2009. The
Los Angeles Times reported in January 2011 that the fourth quarter ticket costs in 2010 were around $8.01, a 5% increase from the same quarter in the previous year. Meanwhile, the cost of tickets where I live in New York City: $13 for an evening ticket or about $18 for 3D movie, but you’ll need to tack on another $1.50 for a “convenience fee” if you want to buy online through
Fandango.
And this is during a time of serious economic hardship. So, can we call it? Can we now pronounce “dinner and movie” as a cheap date idea officially dead? A family trip with the kids to the cinema is DOA, right?
This is madness.
I understand how ticket prices work. A majority of the astronomical ticket cost goes, not to the theater, but the studio. Aside from expensive talent, to create a movie means enlisting a crew of hundreds from high profile gigs on down to the gaffers, caterers and animal wranglers. But when the budgets for the latest adventure of a hero with a power ring ($200-plus million for Warner Bros.’
Green Lantern) or robots in disguise ($400-plus million for
Paramount Pictures’
Transformers: Dark of the Moon”) keep rising, ticket costs will also continue to increase so studios can turn a profit – or at least break even – from their bigger productions.
