How Theatrical Exhibition Helps Stave Off Piracy

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Welcome back to the Bulwark Coast to Hollywood. My name is Sunny bunch of culture editor at the Bulwark. And I’m very pleased to be joined today by Jackie Brennan, who is President of the Cinema Foundation, which is a supporting organization for NATO, the National Association of Theater Owners. Very excited to have Ron. We’re gonna talk about all sorts of stuff, the new reports.

You guys just put out on the state of the industry. We’ll talk a little bit about CinemaCon, which is NATO’s big con fab, but we’ve got all sorts of great stuff to discuss today. Jackie, thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Thank

you so much for having me.

So let’s talk about the state of the industry. I I I love these reports Narrow puts out a report like this just about every year. And there’s lots of cool stuff to dig into. Including, like, very nuts and bolts, stuff that only the weirdest sort of person gets excited about. Like, new average ticket prices we have new we have new average ticket prices that we can better figure out what’s going on with ticket inflation and all that, but fun times.

So the but the first thing I wanted to to to talk to you about is the thing I got very excited about because it proved something that I believe for a long time, and I’d love to have my bias confirmed. There’s a there’s a slide in your presentation about what happens to the piracy of films, the minute they hit streaming. Can you can you talk to us about that, walk us through what happens there?

Yeah. So I wanna go back a little bit when we talk about privacy because, you know, when I started at NATO, piracy was actually one of the tasks I was charged with. And, of course, back then, it was all about Canaccord. And NATO and the MPA had a rewards program to try to incentivize theater workers to stop camp hoarding in the act. And there were lots of laws and all of that.

Right? And so that was the biggest threat. That said, I would go to some meetings at studios and I would hear from time to time the belief that a shorter theatrical window would be necessary going forward because it would help prevent piracy. And the argument there was that there was something that that was called a dark window. Which was referred to as that period where you couldn’t access that content legally anywhere.

So the only way you could access that content would be via piracy. Right? So it’s not available in theaters anymore, but it’s not yet available in the home. So what do we do? We steal it.

And, you know, we had some data to suggest at that time, but that wasn’t actually true, that date that, in fact, piracy tracked availability. And in fact, piracy really spiked most right before the DVD was released because, you know, there’d be a copy that fell off a truck, if you will, and that would be a really clean copy and that would lead to a spike in piracy. But there was, you know, a lot of, you know, smart people would disagree and a lot there’s a lot of research on this and, you know, different tests and hypotheses, and then the pandemic hit. And all of the tests that were kind of hype a theoretical out in the academic world could really be tested in real life. And what we saw was that as soon as there was a clean digital copy, of a title.

And of course, this is very different than the DVD era. This is streaming. You can get it right away. There’s all kinds of very sophisticated ways to take that copy. Then in fact, that was where piracy spiked the most.

And you see there’s a, you know, as you mentioned, there’s a slide in our report where you can see there is certainly a small spike when it’s first available in the theaters. But, you know, Variety put out a report a few weeks before we released our report. And in there, as they said, in fact, what they were finding was that the Canfor quality was so bad compared to what consumers had become used to in the home and the piracy. That they were actually being driven to the theaters to watch a better version. I think their example, there was the it was Avatar two.

Just it was so unsatisfying to watch this technological masterpiece in a shaky camcord that people are being driven to the theaters. Whereas once you get the beautiful pristine digital copy, it spikes just so much more dramatically. So I think we’re we are pretty clear now that, you know, whatever the piracy may have been pre streaming and pre digital. It’s very clear that digital is certainly the bigger threat and that camcording is certainly something you want to continue to monitor. But it’s not nearly as as problematic as that digital copy.

Yeah. I mean, I I I like I love this I love this slide on your graph because it again, it it really drives home a thing I have I have kind of long argued, which is that piracy is not not strictly speaking about ease of access. Because what what happens you you look at this chart, the the there are huge spikes when, for instance, Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness hits Disney Plus, which is, you know, the second most popular streaming service. In the country. Right?

When when bullet train hits Netflix, right? There’s a there’s a huge spike there. Everybody has Netflix. It’s, you know, it’s the easiest thing that that you can sign up for. So the what you’re seeing here is not is not, like, well, I don’t have access to this movie.

How how else will I watch it? It’s people just not wanting to to to pay to see it. Right.

And it you know, it’s so interesting too because we’re we’re also living in this time of churn. Right? Where you can really sign up for a service for free for a week or two and then, you know, cycle off. And we’re still seeing these piracy numbers. So it’s it’s almost like people could get this stuff for free, but they they just don’t wanna go through any of the friction of even signing up, which I I do find a little surprising.

I I do think that the but the thesis that if, you know, you really want it and you want access to it, it’s all right there for you, that you won’t steal it anymore. I’m I’m I am surprised to see the level of piracy that we’re we’ll see.

Yeah. Yeah. So we’ll we’ll move off we’ll move off of this a little bit again. This is just my my own personal hobby horse. What is what is going on with with theaters?

I mean, we we saw we have new total screen numbers. We’ve got we’ve got new, as I mentioned, ticket averages. What what is actually what is the state? Of the the movie theater right

now? So, I mean, look, for the movie theater business, everything is about supply. Right? There’s a you could there’s also a slide in our present that shows our box office last year compared to twenty nineteen. And what we use as the metric of wide releases.

I mean, we define wide releases as those movies that debuted on two thousand or more screens. And what you saw was that we had about sixty three percent of the wide releases last year. And our box office was about sixty four percent And title by title, the average was actually slightly higher even last year. So when there are movies, there are audiences. The box office is there.

I will certainly argue we need more diverse titles. Just generally in the marketplace. We can’t just be living on one type of of diet. We need a balanced diet. We need our vegetables.

I love vegetables. And so that we do need lots and lots of different movies. The good news is is that with the, you know, with the experimentation on day and day or straight to streaming. And with just the general content, you know, supply issues we were having just because of the pandemic, We all again saw how important a theatrical release was to the cultural awareness to the economic overall life cycle of a title and more. And so we’re seeing studios doubling down on theatrical.

You know, I know that there was a, you know, a couple years there where we weren’t sure what was going to happen. But they’re really you know, you see when they happen, that’s like Warner Bros. Is doubling its output. Lots of studios are increasing their number. So we actually have a fifty percent increase in those wide release titles just, you know, that are announced as of now.

So there could be even more by the end of the year. We’re getting very close to twenty nineteen levels of white releases. We’re really excited about that. Yeah. And

there was there was some screen contraction over the last couple of years. I mean, I think that is is to be expected, at least in North America. But worldwide, there are I think more screens now. Right? There’s five percent more screens than there were two years ago.

That’s that is correct. So, you know, I think for a long time, the whole time I’ve been in this industry, you know, people have said that the domestic marketplace was sure and needed to probably contract more than the five percent it did is what some people have argued. I will never argue about a number of screens. That’s the right number of screens. I wouldn’t presume to know and I don’t know if there’s a right answer.

But that said, most of the screens that we know that of closed. We’re more kind of the underperforming locations from bigger circuits. Some were not. And there’s also we don’t know how many of those are permanent closures Right? So the domestic marketplace, yeah, we lost about five percent, just two thousand screens.

But, yeah, worldwide, there’s growth. Right? And And that’s because there are still territories that need more screens. Nigeria was a really interesting example I like to use. Last year, they actually did better than twenty nineteen.

Because they were dramatically under screen. They built more screens during the pandemic and they have a really good domestic supply. So they had the supply to meet demand and they increased their screen. So they did better than they had pre pandemic. Japan was almost a hundred percent.

It was in the nineties. So there are territories where the screen because they have enough of the domestic supply and they have the right number of screens, they were able to meet demand. And we’re gonna still see some of that growth. I know that there are, you know, I think the PVR merger PVR wants to grow quite a lot in India. They still feel like there’s much more room to grow.

So we’re gonna see more growth overseas for sure.

Yeah, that’s really interesting, especially about Nigeria. Nigeria does have a fascinating film industry. It’s it’s really it’s really kinda wild. I I wanna I wanna step back one second to to something that you mentioned a minute ago, the diversity of offerings. I mean, this is this is a thing.

I think about a lot as somebody who writes about movies on a on a weekly basis, you know, and and has well, I mean, there there are a lot of superhero movies. And they’re they eat up a lot of the the the consciousness and the discourse. But another thing we’ve been talking about a lot, and I think about this all the time as a parent of two small children, you know, the lack of kids movies in theaters is killing me. And also, I imagine pretty frustrating for the theaters. I, like, I don’t know, you know, what you guys obviously, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it since you’re not making the movies.

But you know, what do you guys kind of see happening to the next generation of of of consumers? Frank, I mean, like, how do you how do you train a generation to go to the movies when when you put everything on Disney plus and Netflix?

I mean, this is a a good question. I hope it’s going to be answered pretty quickly. I hope that the supply is just gonna even that out. And, you know, again, every studio is nervous. They were nervous to put family titles in the market because kids couldn’t get vaccines.

And so then it became, there’s no family titles in the market, maybe families don’t wanna go to the theaters. Right? Becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I mean, obviously, my children are I’m a nine and a four year old. They’re the daughter of someone who works movie theater industry.

So they’ve been going since the movie theater reopened. But there are very few movies. I tried to take them last weekend and I could the only movie I could take into something I’ve already seen three times in theaters and ten times in the home. And so it is a real challenge. I do think there’s a really exciting opportunity, though.

You know, a lot of parents, there are a lot of new parents that can people that had babies right before the pandemic or during the pandemic, and their kids that have the attention span now for a, you know, for a movie. They take them to a matinee. I think these parents who have been kind of stuck at home with kids difficulties with childcare and all of that are going to find out that there is no better way to spend a couple hours with your kid than taking them to a movie. They get really excited about the snacks. They get excited about the movie, and then you leave after two hours with your kids and you feel relaxed.

You feel actually good. Unlike if you drag them around and you have to chase them everywhere and you feel drained, but your kids are happy. This is this is a real win win. So I do think, you know, really targeting those parents and really encouraging them to come out to theaters for some of these movies that are coming out is going to be a revelation for some of them. We do know that when we did National Cinema Day last year, that was September third, and it was, you know, all movies, all show times, they were three bucks.

Most of the movies have been in the marketplace for weeks, if not months. And it’s no surprise that the family titles dramatically over performed. They were titles that parents have probably already shown their kids at home. They were available in the home. But it was a way to get out of the house.

And, you know, they they was like two hundred and fifty percent, you know, compared to the prior week in box office. So I mean, just huge numbers. And of course, it would have been cheaper to watch those movies at home. But bringing out your kids and having a day meant a lot to those parents. And what we’ve seen is that, you know, when we polled people that went to to National Cinema Day, you know, well over half of them said that they’re going back to the movies more often.

And I can guarantee that it’s probably a lot of those parents who were like, oh, this was fun. Now they’ll go see plus in boots. Right? Until I do think we, you know, we need movies in the marketplace to continue to incentivize people to come. But I Will Saletan I know I’ve got a lot to say on this topic.

I think about it a lot as well. But when you look at the over performing titles in the home, the over performing titles in the home, the streaming titles, you know, this is all public information. Right? The all the streamers have their kind of top ten. And when you look at which movies are on the top ten week after week after week, it was titles that performed well in theaters.

It’s Sing two. Sing two dominates every single chart. It is hilarious how much, you know, like the Netflix viewership on movies. It’s just about kids watching Sing two a hundred times. My son makes up every morning to watch bad guys.

Like, it is he’s he saw in the theaters and now he watches it at home over and over, same with in context. So I do think you know, they’re having a place where they can watch it over and over again after they got to experience it the magical way in a theater with candy and popcorn. I I do think it really helps the streaming service as well. We’re really not seeing those straight to streaming animated titles perform at the same level for the same amount of time as the as the theatrical title. So I think once we learn to market together and work together a little better, which I think is the future of this industry, I think we’re gonna see a lot more that.

How would I mean, talk about that a little bit. Working working with the studios to kind of synergize the theatrical and at home experience. Like, what what what in particular are you thinking of in terms of ways to improve that that partnership?

So I don’t have a specific answer because some of this will be company by company, and so I don’t wanna step on any of those toes. But what I will say is a couple of things. You know, one, what National Cinema Day did, was it encouraged the studios and the exhibitors to use all of their loyalty programs, all of their social media to promote moviegoing together. So I think that was just that alone was the first time the industry had done anything like that. And it’s also the first time we’ve had the level of social media that we’ve had and the level of loyalty that we’ve had.

And so that was hundreds of millions of people we could reach. And so you saw the National Cinema Day tag being used on TikTok for twenty million times, just one platform. Right? And so it really, like, seeped into the consciousness because we use a unified message about moviegoing. Now, what does that look like for individual movies with individual exhibitors?

I think the sky’s the limit. I think there’s going to be a lot of creativity. I also make the case. Again, this is a very personal this is a Jackie story. This is not a NATO opinion or a Disney opinion.

But I will say that, you know, when I took my kids to see Strange World on Thanksgiving, my daughter who sees every movie in theaters and has all of the streaming services. Hadn’t heard of the movie. And I felt like that there was a real missed opportunity there for, you know, a Disney plus to be advertising directly to her. You know, I I remember being advertised to as a child and how compelled I was to buy whatever toy or sugary cereal it was. And so I felt like being able to market a, you know, a a cartoon for kids on Disney plus and here’s a sleep preview for this cool thing.

Only Disney plus kids get to see this behind the scenes peak. Tell your parents to buy a ticket. Here’s a QR code. Whatever. I think that there were real really exciting ways we can work together when we accept the fact that we are part of a joint shared ecosystem and we’re not really competitors at all.

Well, I mean, you mentioned advertising to people, and this is this is also, I think, something that we saw with Top Gun Maverick and, like, Elvis. Right? Like, I remember I remember thinking like, is is anybody really gonna go see Elvis? Like, is that a thing that people are gonna go back to the theaters for? And what I heard over and over again from people was, yeah, I saw a trailer for Elvis when I went to go see Top Gun Maverick, which is the first movie I saw after the pandemic.

And I was like, oh, yeah. That looks that looks like fun. I’ll go see that. This is I don’t know. In terms of in terms of what you’re what you’re talking about, just getting people getting getting product in front of eyeballs.

Like, there’s really no better way to do that than the the optical trailer.

A hundred percent. And there’s lots of data to show that you know, when someone is watching a commercial or a trailer in a theater, they have much higher retention than kind of anywhere else. And that makes sense. Right? The way that we are expected to behave in a theater kind of creates that that retention atmosphere where we that we would based on the distractions we have everywhere else, we just don’t have.

So it is a really important opportunity, and that is exactly right. Right? I’ve heard the same thing And it’s not surprising, but it surprised everyone. Right? Which is there was an idea that a certain demographic wasn’t coming back to the theater, so they were afraid.

And really, it was that they were afraid to watch a movie. They didn’t wanna watch. They were afraid to be bored or disappointed by a movie. And so they weren’t excited about those kind of safe movies that were being put in the marketplace. The ones that appeal to audiences, we knew we’re ready to go back and excited to go back.

And it may perfect sense to start with those movies. I’m not challenging that decision. I think it was the right way to go. But because Top Gun appealed so much to such broad audiences and really over performed based on what people have thought about what women over thirty five would come back to the theater. So many of them did And then they did.

They saw that trailer for Elvis, and they said, oh, I wanna see that. And then they went back for that, and then they sought to get for paradise. And as long as we have a steady slate of movies that appeals to those audiences, we’re gonna be in a good position. You know, I used to I’m sure you did too, go to the movies just on a weekend, and not necessarily have a movie you had to see. Just you felt confident that when you showed up, there’d be a movie that you’d be happy to see.

And we need to you know, if we wanna have that level of movie going, we need to be able to offer moviegoers at that level of options And so I and we’re getting back to that this year. I’m really excited about it.

Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned National Cinema Day. Is this going to be an annual thing? Are we doing is there gonna be another national cinema day later in twenty twenty three?

What are we what are we looking at here?

I certainly hope so. It is my intention to make that so. I’m not, you know, I I’m not the queen of the movie theater industry. I wish I were, but I am not. So, you know, there are a lot of people that we have to convince.

I think the performance last year absolutely beat everyone’s expectations even mine. You know, we had about five weeks, half a million dollars and no movies in the marketplace to get this done. Six day public mark we have public facing marketing, you know, timeline. And we had eight point one million people come to the movies on a single day. The box office was better.

On Saturday than it had been to Saturday before by eight percent. And so there’s something really special about that. And again, it was leveraging all that social media to marketing movie going. And I think, you know, if we have enough time this year, we can do an even better job. Right?

Meet the family demand a little better. Make really cool trailers. We have more movies coming out this year, so we’ll have more things for people to be excited about for q four. So I do think that this would be a great opportunity. It’s not as safe as it was last year because there are so many movies.

But I think if we all really take that leap of faith one more time, we’ll see that this is something that should be an annual holiday. Well,

I mean, it it you know, last year’s national cinema day was kind of a a a a a a function of not having anything to go see. I mean, I remember I remember when it kinda got rolled out and it was like, well, there’s this is this is a good weekend to do it because there’s nothing new in theaters. And there may not have been the weekend before either. I mean, it was a it was a tough time.

Well, I’ll argue with that a little. I will say that gave us the opportunity to try it last year. But national cinema days and things like that have been in place around the world for years. And they’re all very successful. They just have never come into the domestic marketplace.

And in fact, in other territories, studios will debut titles on that weekend because of the word-of-mouth you’ll get. You’ll see special sneak previews of movies for, you know, the loyal audiences. Twenty five percent of the audience is on Saturday last on Saturday last year were frequent moviegoers. Another twenty five percent where those hadn’t been in years. So it’s really a special day to bring people in, show them how movie theaters have changed, show them all of the, you know, innovation and investment that movie theaters have made in the past few years, and also give them a chance to try some of the fancier technologies.

Right? So there’s the three dollar last year that applied to all formats, all show times. So people try to debott I heard I heard about people that just Had always been curious about d vox and then tried it and now they go because they were like, that that seems really expensive. I don’t know. Then they went and they were like, this was so fun.

I wanna do this again. And so it really gave people a chance to try some of that stuff, which is also a really cool way to continue to get people excited about going to the movies.

Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about the loyalty programs? Because I I find this one of the more interesting developments in the I don’t know, movie theater business of the last few years. I mean, the idea of something like an a list at AMC, right, or Alamo Drax season pass, which is what I have. Turning turning the theatrical experience into almost I I don’t know.

I like a a a buffet rather than a, you know, a, you know, individual course. I’m I’m I’m fascinated. Like, what what do you hear from your what do you hear from your member groups? I’m I’m sorry. Your member companies about, like, how these these programs are working, what people like about them, what they don’t like, what what might be changing going forward?

So I have an investigative that much on the individual loyalty programs and what how they serve audiences differently. I will say though what it shows is a change in how consumers view movie theaters. Consumers used to view movie theaters as kind of all the same. Right? You just go to a movie theater, it’d be you’d expect the same kind of seats, the same kind of concessions, the same kind of service, whatever it is.

You went there to to watch a movie in a dark box. With other people. And the brand of the theater was maybe not so relevant to you, and the individual identity of the theater. Because so many of them were so similar. And now what we’ve seen is theaters are really they’re such fierce competitors with each other.

They’ve really been changing and evolving and trying to meet individual consumer needs and individual marketplaces. And so they’re creating these more personalized experiences. And you’ll see, you know, theaters and areas that have lots and lots of families. You’ll see some of them with, you know, special auditoriums that also engage the gymnasiums in them for kids to play in, or you’ll see in a more metropolitan area, you’ll see, you know, higher end beverage service or, you know, in fancier recliners so people can feel, you know, sophisticated and grown up when they’re going out. And so being once you find a theater that feels like this is catering to my identity, then you start to want to, you know, course, if you’re a loyalty member, you’re gonna get some benefits.

But you want benefits that are beneficial. Right? Like, you know, how telling me I get to go watch sporting event is not a benefit I want because that’s not what I’m interested in. Right? So I’m not gonna be a loyalty member to the ESPN Theater.

Which doesn’t exist. But you know what I mean? But like I there are things that I enjoy. And so if there’s a a theater chain that has a lot of Broadway shows. I’ve got Broadway and bubbly.

I’m gonna be, like, all about that theater chain and wanna hear about all of their cool offerings, so I can go watch things with like minded people and have a really good time, because I feel like that theater gets me. And again, I think that’s some – that’s this really – that’s a new opportunity that we haven’t fully capitalized on. To be able to market brands of theaters and experiences. Because I think that’s the thing we learned. To me, that’s the biggest thing we learned in the pandemic was you know, is a movie theater about the movie.

Right? And when we had movies to watch in the home and everyone could watch them and in fact you really couldn’t go to a theater California. And Southern California couldn’t go for over a year. I watched every movie at home. And then when movie theaters reopened, we wondered, well, people going to go back when they can watch everything at home?

Has the habit changed so much? And what we saw is they came back. And the the question is sort of why, but I guess the answer has to be there is something different about experiencing things in person with other human beings. And it’s also a low stakes way to engage with other people. You’re not expected to talk You’re expected to sit down, face forward, and shut up, but you’re gonna laugh, or you’re gonna gas, and you’re going to feel human.

And we can’t really feel human alone. You know, we don’t laugh usually when we’re by ourselves. We don’t experience humanity the same way in isolation. And so the movie theater experience has to be more than just being about movies. And I think that’s another thing that movie theaters are really evolving and adapting to find out what’s my who’s coming to my theater and why?

What special human experience am I giving them? And how can I keep doing that?

Yeah. I I I mean, it’s funny you joke that there’s no ESPN Theatre that that doesn’t exist. But one of the one of the interesting sub sections of the report is about sparementation in theaters, sporting events, you know, live theater, you know, the sort of metropolitan opera the shows that we see in in in theaters sometimes now. TV shows, I mean, like, if I feel like the the the chosen you know, drops its season premier and does twenty million dollars of business. And I assume studios and theaters are both kind of looking at that and thinking, well, that’s Is

this

money left on the table that everybody else isn’t doing this? What’s what’s the deal? What what is what is the future of experimentation in theaters actually look like?

So I absolutely knows. Thank you for taking that bait. I really appreciate that. Yeah. So look.

We we pulled audiences. We hired Quorum to do this research. They they looked at thousands of people. Moviegoers, non moviegoers frequent moviegoers, infrequent moviegoers, and ask them what experiences would they like to have in a theater? What would bring them to a theater?

And then most importantly, what would they pay for? Right? Because it’s one thing if you say, like, yeah. Sure. If it’s free, I’ll go to it.

But will they but if someone’s willing to pay a premium, that’s really interesting information. And what we saw was an oh, especially with television and with concerts. There was an overwhelming desire from across all demographics to have more of that in theaters and to pay for it. And there are real examples like you just said chosen and then there was the, you know, the there have been a couple of concerts that have done, you know, forty million dollars for, like, one or two performances. And they could have done more if they had been open to more theaters or had more concerts or, you know, some of those that went those were live, I believe, and one was, like, at four in the morning, and people sold out.

So again, we have these spaces that people feel safe going to, feel an affinity towards and we have a major opportunity. Now the business models have to adapt. Right? Because when you’re when you’re starting a concert, you you aren’t signing over those. Right?

Right? So it has to it has to go to the outset. You know, same thing with television. You know, I’ve heard a little bit from Paramount and Warner Brothers about the challenges when they decided to take a couple of their titles from straight to streaming back into the theaters. They had to do Bulwark, and that was their own those were their own movies.

But because they have different divisions and because they had different negotiations when they started those deals, they had to really do a lot of work to bring those movies into the theaters. And, you know, I I, you know, give them so much credit for doing that and for taking those risks. But that’s that’s part of what has to happen. So what we were trying to do was say, hey, look, here’s some really interesting data. We also have some, you know, as you saw on the slides and as I mentioned that some anecdotal evidence that this Bulwark, because it has worked.

But maybe we should all start taking a look at this and seeing, again, how we can work together, how can we elevate some of these things, share these with other people, really bring the world in to see these these shows, to see these concerts. Because, you know, that’s the interesting thing also about the kind of streaming landscape, the television. It’s not all synchronous. And by putting the the, you know, at least the first and maybe last episodes in theaters, you kind of force a synchronicity amongst a huge audience. And that’s also a really compelling way to bring that into consciousness together all at the same time and really drive awareness of a show that you believe in.

Yeah. Let’s let’s shift gears slightly and talk about CinemaCon, which is coming up April twenty fourth through the twenty seventh. This is the big annual get together of the the theater owners. What are you what do you guys have programmed for CinemaCon? What should folks be on the lookout, therefore.

So this year, CinemaCon is going to be incredible. It is right now, our data, we are tracking attended wise over twenty nineteen. So there’s a lot of enthusiasm. My my kind of word for the year is Bulwark. And and I’m seeing it across across the board.

Right? So we’re seeing it with audiences, we’re seeing it with studios, we’re seeing it with exhibitors, and we’re just seeing it even with our convention. People want to be there. All of the major studios are participating. And from what we’ve heard, they’re doing some incredible shows.

They’re really bringing out the big guns. So you know, they the CinemaCon team, even though they’re part of NATO, they keep their cards very close to the vest. They’re sworn to secrecy. So I truly you put me on a lie detector test. I don’t really know all of the details, but I know that it’s going to be incredible.

I know how excited that team is you can see it in their eyes and then a little bit of the mania of their emails. It’s it’s going to be incredible. And most most importantly, and on a sad note, you know, it is John Fitzgens last year, so he’s gonna have his big farewell on Thursday night, and it’s going to be that’s also going to be a really important evening for the industry.

Howard Bauchner: Yeah. Former Bulwark of Hollywood guest on fitting had him on the show. You know, he he weathered a he weathered a pretty tough storm for the industry. So, you know, he deserves a nice send off When

fifty yen is an incredible leader, I would not be here without him.

Yeah. Alright. Well, I always like to I always to close these interviews by asking if there’s anything I should have asked. What do you think folks should know about state of the industry of theaters, and anything I did not ask that people should know about.

I would just say that people should be going trying different theaters because you’d be really surprised at how incredible they are. Are the theater owners across the country and across the globe did not just sit back during the pandemic, they reinvested. So there’s an incredible amount of innovation out there and more to come. They’re really trying to listen to you. And also, I would also recommend, if you go to a theater and you like something, tell them.

If you go to a theater and you don’t like something. Tell them they want to hear from you in person, not in the comment section somewhere. They’re really trying to adapt and grow to meet consumer needs. And I every time I get to go see a a new theater across the country or in another part of the world, It’s amazing to me how different and innovative they are.

Jackie Branneman, thank you for being on the show. You can you can read the report for yourself. I’ll I’ll link to it in this email, but it’s also at NATO’s website site, again, National Association of Theater Owners. I asked somebody yell at me the last time, I had somebody from NATO on because I did not spell that out in the subject. Line.

That’s on the cinema foundation dot org.

And it cinema foundation dot org. So go go check it out. Again, I’ll link to it. You can you can read it in the email. But it’s it’s it’s if you again, if you’re oh, I didn’t even I forgot.

I forgot the average ticket price. We have new average ticket prices. Inflation. Tell me I have I have I have friends who tell me that it’s too expensive to go to the movie theaters. Now the tickets cost too much and I can’t they can’t afford it and they just there’s other better things that they can spend their money on.

Is that true?

Okay. Right. So thank you for bringing this up. We can have a fun little rant. I’ll be short.

First of all, as the report shows, pretty clearly, average ticket price you know, is below where inflation would happen by a couple of cents. So it’s just kind of matching inflation. So nothing significant has changed. A couple of really interesting points about how average ticket price is calculated. Right?

Average ticket price, it it’s about sixty ish percent of the market. It’s the two gives us the information. It’s a third party that does it. But and it really encompasses most of the metropolitan areas. And so it’s actually missing a lot of the smaller marketplaces so that average ticket price nationally probably is lower than what we report.

But it’s it’s the same methodology we’ve always used. Just on a person to person area to area basis. It’s kind of interesting to know. It also reflects what movies were in the marketplace. Right?

As you mentioned, there were like no family titles all last year. Family titles tend to, you know, you don’t necessarily go to the premium screen and you go to the matinee and all of that. And so they, you know, What we’ve also saw last year was just the first show time to sell out with a premium large format, the fanciest show time, the fanciest format, I can guarantee your friends that say movies are too expensive or choosing the most expensive format. I had a friend tell me this the other day and I said, Pepe, you only watch movies in Dolby. You could go to the same theater down the street on five dollar Tuesdays.

You’re not doing that. And so what consumers are you know, people say things and they don’t really think about them. Right? When people are choosing to go to the movies, they find the most value in choosing the most premium experience. That’s just what consumers are doing.

That’s how they’re voting with their dollars. They are choosing those show times, and they are choosing to buy the snacks. No one’s you don’t have to. There’s a two drink minimum at the theaters. People want to buy a drink.

They’re cited that there are cocktails. That’s why movie theaters have spent all the money to put in bars because people want to buy drinks. They want premium concessions. And so it’s a very funny disconnect when people are clearly seeing value in all these add ons. And in the most premium screen, but then feel compelled to to kind of complain about how it’s more expensive than if they just went to the five dollars show and have, you know, just popcorn or snuck in candy, which I would never condone.

You know, but I I do think to guarantee most of your friends that complain to you about this are also snobs that are like, oh, to see it the most premium expression that the the director wants, you know, I can guarantee. So it’s it’s very funny I will say that there are absolutely price points out there for all audiences. People like to complain about ticket price because they remember going to the movies as a kid and it was four dollars or five dollars or whatever it was. And so that’s is baked in their memory and then they hear that complaint over and over again, so they start to internalize it. But again, you’re choosing that most expensive option overwhelmingly.

There are lots of people that go out to discount Tuesdays across the country. So you know, there the theaters do have something for everyone. I’d encourage you to, you know, look explore your own local markets.

Yeah. And just the actual numbers here, I mean, the if you look at the the average ticket price in nineteen seventy one was a dollar sixty five. You ingest adjust that for inflation. It’s up to eleven ninety two. You know, in twenty nineteen, average ticket price was nine dollars sixteen cents, and that adjustment for inflation is ten dollars fifty eight.

And most recently now, we have average ticket price of ten dollars fifty three cents, which obviously adjust to ten dollars and fifty three cents. But the but I mean, I like, I you know, a a lot of my friends I live in a metropolitan area. I live in Dallas. You know, tickets are a little more expensive here than where I grew up in Stafford County, Virginia. My friends who live in New York and LA, like tickets are a little more expensive.

I I I get it, but it is it real compared to I have my whole rant here as well, but the the long and the short of it is compared to anything else. You know, going to a concert or even just going out for a lake nice dinner. It’s the it is not it is not more expensive.

Find a cheaper out of form entertainment option. I dare you.

Alright. Jackie, thanks for being on the show. I really appreciate it. I’m glad I I’m glad I remembered that. I wanted to get that in there.

Alright. My name is Sunny Bunch. I’m culture editor at the Bulwark, and I will be back next week with another episode of The Bulwark goes to Hollywood. We’ll see you guys

then.

If you miss Bob and Tom in the morning, don’t worry, because you can catch the Bob and Tom podcast all day whenever you want. I mentioned that when I was a kid, I went to something called a grottelancer I bought a chameleon from a guy walking up and down the aisles like he would have a trifle of beers and you scoffed at that. And got this from Greg, my grandparents would take me my brothers to the Schreiner circus selling chameleons, and this would have been in the early seventies. I think the days of the boxed chameleon probably over. Yeah.

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