Movie Goers Unite

When the latest Batman movie was released I went to go watch it at the movie theater. Although the movie wasn’t without some flaws, I still found it to be a very enjoyable experience. What I didn’t enjoy was getting bent over and fucked in the ass to have to watch it. You know who bent me over? AMC Theaters, and they and their competitors have been doing this to me for years. In the beginning it was a light ass smack, and then it became genital fondling; now it’s full on rape. Ticket prices these days are outrageous; the national average ticket price has increased from $5.39 to $7.93 from 2000 to 2011 respectively according to the National Association of Theater Owners. These figures amaze me, not because they are so high but because they are so unrealistically low. I haven’t paid less than $10 for a movie ticket since leaving Gainesville, a small college town. If you are living in an urban area, like the majority of Americans, you are going to be paying anywhere from $12 to $25 for a movie ticket.  This is ridiculous. At the high end of the ticket pricing spectrum you could buy a movie on Blu-Ray and on the low end a DVD, this is assuming you are going alone.

Although the ticket prices really frustrate me, it’s the concession stand prices that make me feel violated. I’m going to low ball the prices of the usual items and they are still going to seem ridiculous. Popcorn and soda costs around $5.00 a piece, add or subtract a $.25 for either small or large. So, that means if I want to go to the movies with a drink in hand and some popcorn to snack on it’s going to run me upwards of $20 on the low end, and upwards of $35 on the high end. As a single man I can rarely justify going to the movies and getting the drink and popcorn, so I rarely go to the movies. I can’t imagine how often a family man/woman could justify going to the movies with the kids. If a family of four goes to the movies these days, gets four drinks and shares two popcorns, they will be paying anywhere from $70 to $130.

I can draw two conclusions about what’s going on in the minds of the movie theater executives and distributors from my analysis of this pricing structure. Either they are complete assholes and are knowingly screwing people over, or they think there’s nothing wrong with their pricing model. If the second conclusion is true, then these executives are out of touch with reality and have no business running a company. A monkey could tell you that paying more than $20 to watch a movie is a rip off. And if the first is true, well we need to let them know that we don’t like getting screwed over any more by not going to the movies.  

So, when I read articles talking about how people aren’t going to the movies as often anymore I can’t help but think that the answer to why that is happening is quite obvious. The pricing structure that the movie theaters are using is completely unreasonable and insulting. These prices are not set by supply and demand factors; they are controlled by an association of movie theater executives who have an oligopoly on the market. I would guess that if both ticket and concession prices were reduced by 50%, attendance and purchases would increase more than two fold and the movie theaters would make even more money. Until these prices are adjusted I will avoid going to the theater and encourage you to do the same.

Cazador