Thursday, May 27, 2010

Numbers Numbers Numbers

I can't quite share the box office obsession that most of the web indulges in. What's on any given screen is way more interesting than how many people are staring at it. But sometimes it's fun to see the info, especially a whole bunch of it at once.

Anyway. This infographic had so many details, I thought I'd share...

Film industry by the numbers
Via: Online MBA

I used to love the sidebars in Premiere and Entertainment Weekly that covered things like this back when they made things called magazines on something called... what's that word again... paper!

The number I find most depressing* here is the number of screens versus the number of theaters. I'd do anything to have the giant screens back. Mr. Theater Owners, Tear Down Those Walls! Bring the big screens back. The constant inflation of ticket prices is bad enough, so the screens need to be worth it. Notice in that chart how cheap it is to see movies and then compare that to other entertainments. Done? Now, notice how much more likely people are to indulge in the cheaper entertainment. This is surely why so many people actually have television as their only form of entertainment. Very cheap. It is possible to price yourself out of relevancy. Broadway did that long ago. Must the movies be next?

* I amend: The 'Michael Bay as Hollywood's top earner' factoid takes that prize.

12 comments:

Wild Celtic said...

:-O That is the coolest graph I've seen today. And I work in finance!! I vote for big screens again, too

Robert Hamer said...

Pretty interesting factoids, but what really piques my interest is your C for Sex and the City 2. Critics have been flaying it alive, are they being too harsh?

BeRightBack said...

Daniel Radcliffe! I would not have guessed.

Glenn said...

I don't believe for one second that people are paying $7.50 for a movie ticket. I know American prices are different, but I call bullshit.

notanotherblog said...

Out of every dollar spent in watching movies, ten cents went to Avatar.

Also, I like small screens. I can watch Please Give in the same theatre as I can watch SATC2. And the smaller the space, the better I feel about watching a movie alone.

NATHANIEL R said...

Glenn -- well not in the big cities. here in NYC it's something crazy like $13 and $18 (3D) now or maybe more.

when i go to the movies now outside of screenings i almost always go into a hypnotic trance and tune out the price and just hand over a $20 and pretend i got a $10 back. it's killing me.

The increases are happening like twice a year now for years which means that ticket inflation is FAR outpacing salary bumps for everyone.

NATHANIEL R said...

robert -- people are ALWAYS too harsh with Sex & the City (in all formats) but no, it's not a good movie. I can't really be a defender on this one. I'm probably being generous.

but reviews of the movie are ridiculous. I haven't read more than 3 and I can already tell. I mean Ebert begins his review with "these people make my skin crawl"

I'm not sure what it is about these four women that makes people so angry and vicious (outside of their age and their sexual liberation... oh wait that's plenty!!!)

They say it's their selfabsborption and materialism but i don't believe it for one second. People fucking LOVE Robert Downey Jr's TonY Stark and he's pretty much those two things to an extravagant degree as well.

I read a great tweet the other day (can't remember who) that read like "sex & the city is so unrealistic. ugh. now let's go see that movie where the awkward nerdy guys hooks up with Megan Fox"

Flosh said...

Just north of NYC tickets have finally hit $11 across most multiplexes. I moved here in 1999 and a ticket cost $8.25 then - so that's a 33% increase over 11 years. I can live with that.

Much more offensive to me are the concession stand prices - i paid $6.75 for a medium (!) popcorn when i went to see Iron Man 2 a couple weeks back. And the popcorn was old and stale, to boot. So the entire experience cost $17.75 - for a movie that I didn't like at all and a bag of popcorn that I stopped eating after a few handfuls.

Luckily, my sister is able to get me discounted passes for different theater chains through her job. Otherwise I would not be seeing many new release films in theater this summer.

Barry, Milwaukee said...

Theatres here in Milwaukee are still around $9 to $9.50. There is one theatre in a rich part of town (Mequon) that is $10.

I'm surprised that there are still that many drive-in theatres left in the U.S.

vg21 said...

Okay, it's not about ticket prices, but Sex and the City. What that it's unrealistic is a problem because it doesn't want to sell itself as a fantasy in which Megan Fox hooks up with the nerdy guy. The life of these four women (way over twenty) is seen - as you wrote, Nathaniel - as the ultimate example of the liberation of a woman's life - mostly sexually and financially, which is much. But the whole thing is ridiculous, and yes, unrealistic, even for a sexually and financially liberated life for women, because it is so cliché, so missing the point.

All this I'm writing about the first film, which I acidentally saw in 2008 (and happened to rewatch this weekend on a bus trip to a competition) and was cringing (never before or since then in a movie) and the trailer of the second one. Sooo awful! I was going to see the 2. one out of pure curiosity, was very optimistic about it being better than the first one (one can always hope), but I'm not sure now. And with the ticket prices so high (it's about $10 in my country but that's extremely high compared to incomes)I will have to be very determined. I might just wait for another world championship where we will travel by bus :P.

vg21 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
vg21 said...

*The reason why that it's unrealistic is a problem is because ...