Trailers Are Crucial to the Theatrical Experience
Plus: ‘Jumanji’!
A quick programming note: I think we’re trying to reduce inbox clutter so for a while I’m going to stop sending emails for the podcasts themselves. They’ll still show up in your various RSS feeds, of course (and you can find Across the Movie Aisle and The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood on Apple, if you prefer listening there), but if you have any questions/need any help accessing them, just email and I’ll help you out.
“Movie theaters are struggling at the moment in part because of technological change: the rise of streaming services like Netflix and the shift to earlier video-on-demand release dates for new movies means that fewer folks are headed to theaters.”
This is a reasonable supposition, though I think we could quibble about what is happening here. Netflix is a replacement for broadcast TV more than the movie theater. Universal’s shortened VOD window is, theoretically, capturing an entirely different segment of the market. Et cetera, et cetera. But broadly speaking, I think both statements are fair: streaming and VOD creep are cutting into box office revenues, even if other issues (e.g., a reduction in film supply thanks to the strikes, superhero fatigue) are also problems.
I would like to offer up another technological change that has altered customer behavior in somewhat unexpected ways: the rise of assigned seating at movie theaters. In theory, assigned seating and app-based purchases of tickets should make moviegoing easier: you pick what you want to see, when you want to see it, from which seat you want to see it. Ease of access should lead to more attendance.
Allow me to suggest that it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Once upon a time, movie theater patrons would show up at a theater, they would buy tickets from the box office, and then they would go and sit in the theater and wait for the movie to start. Sometimes the patrons would know what they wanted to watch in advance; sometimes they’d just show up and pick a title on the marquee that was starting soon. Regardless, if you wanted to ensure that you got a decent seat or would be able to get multiple seats together, you went early enough to do so.
This need to be in theaters early meant that theaters could roll out pre-show advertisements (or pseudo-entertainment like “Noovie”). It was a source of revenue because you had a captive audience. Then, at the listed showtime, the trailers would begin. And, again, you have a captive audience, so it doesn’t matter too much if you showed them six, seven, eight trailers. A half-hour of trailers? Sure, why not!
Trailers are incredibly important. Trailers were how people learned about and got excited for upcoming movies. And a good trailer is fun to watch! Like a little short film with the best parts of a longer film to come. The more movies you saw, the more trailers you saw, and the more movies you’d come to see again. It was a virtuous cycle.
Assigned seating fundamentally altered how all this works. With assigned seating, you didn’t need to get there early, which devalued the pre-show advertisements. Knowing that your seats were yours no matter what, you didn’t even have to get there in time to see the trailers—and with the expansion of the number of trailers and the mixing of ads for cars and insurance into the trailers, it’s no wonder people started showing up 15 or 20 minutes after the listed showtime. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at an AMC and seen people straggle in just before or just after a movie started.
This severed a vital link in the information and excitement chain that theaters need to thrive. As great as YouTube may be for generating views of trailers, there’s nothing quite like watching a mini-movie play out ahead of something you’re already at a theater and excited to see. And there’s something to be said for having a captive audience; a trailer on YouTube1 is just one more window in the floating morass of entertainment options. A trailer in a theater dominates your attention.
Now look: I have no desire to return to the before-times, when you’d have to show up to a theater a half-hour beforehand to get a decent seat or a block of seats together. And I don’t want to jump on the doom-and-gloom train rolling along 2024’s weak box office. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, and all this was driven home by a recent trip to the multiplex to see, of all movies, the new Garfield. After nearly every trailer—promoting, among other pictures, the next Despicable Me and Zachary Levi’s forthcoming adaptation of Harold and the Purple Crayon—my 5-year-old would lean over and whisper “Can we see that?” Trailers a.) informed him of upcoming features and b.) got him excited to come back to the theater.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a great solution for this problem. My biggest recommendation would be to keep trailer times short (no more than 15 minutes, which is about how long trailers run ahead of showings at the Alamo Drafthouse and Angelika chains) and to cut out ads entirely during the trailers. But this has obvious financial implications for the theaters, which really can’t sacrifice any revenue at all at the moment. It’s a tough situation all around.
That said, I simply can’t shake my belief that reducing exposure to trailers in theaters has played a key, and under-reported, role in breaking the moviegoing habit.
Links!
It’s been a … weird couple of days in Dallas. Luckily I had power long enough to tape Across the Movie Aisle (we discussed Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga) and write up some extended thoughts on George Miller’s apocalyptic visions.
AI and the Wasteland
On this week’s episode, Sonny Bunch (The Bulwark), Alyssa Rosenberg (The Washington Post), and Peter Suderman (Reason) debate OpenAI’s use of a voice that sounds suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson. Then they head into the Wasteland to review Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Mad Max’s Ongoing Apocalypse
OUR IMAGE OF MAX ROCKATANSKY and his adventures is dominated by sojourns through the Australian outback—the Wasteland—as he is chased by S&M enthusiasts with names like Lord Humungus or forced to do combat in the Thunderdome or serve as a “blood bag” for a cancer-rid…
Again: power issues meant no Bulwark Goes to Hollywood this week. But make sure to check out last week’s episode with Bobby Miller, the writer/director of The Cleanse, which is new to Blu-ray. Fun movie, and that was a fun chat.
Netflix’s CEO says that Barbie and Oppenheimer could have been just as big a deal on Netflix as they were by being in theaters. And while this is theoretically true, it does not seem to actually be true given that no films Netflix has made have ever been that big. They have had better luck with TV shows (Stranger Things and Squid Game and The Tiger King were genuinely big, buzzy hits that prompted a lot of cultural conversation), but in the movie space? I dunno.
Assigned Viewing: Jumanji (Netflix)
Okay, kind of a random assignment here, but I watched it in full for the first time since having kids and, you know, it just hits differently now. I don’t know how to explain it. Brain chemistry and all that. But the relationship between Alan Parrish (Robin Williams) and his dad (Jonathan Hyde) and then Alan and Sarah’s (Bonnie Hunt) relationship with Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter Shepherd (Bradley Pierce) … it just hits different. It. Hits. Different. Also my kids loved the mischievous monkeys in it.
A related point on technological change here: I think the availability of trailers online has devalued the theatrical experience because theaters are no longer the only (or even primary) space where people can see trailers. But that may be a post for another day.
Assigned seating has also eliminated the buzz and anticipation of a buzz-worthy new film. Standing in line for a movie (e.g. every other Seinfeld episode) used to be an essential part of the experience.
In my projectionist days in the 90s, getting new trailers in was a big deal. They usually arrived on Thursday so we could include them when we built the prints. Most of the time, we were free to program trailers as we wanted within these rules: Generally no more than four and never more than five; no red bands, ever; thematically similar to the feature; and, policy trailer last.
Sometimes movies would come with required trailers from the studio. That was for big deal releases. Most of the time we programmed them ourselves to our tastes.
I cannot fathom that the job of projectionist is the same anymore. But those folks were influencers before there were influencers because they helped get your movie hyped.