Dreamworks CEO Wants To Charge By Screen Size

Chas said:
And here's where you screwed up.

He's talking about ACTUAL SCREEN SIZE (not resolution). You're talking about resolution (480p), not screen size.

So you'd pay more to see it on a 27" 1920x1080 monitor than you would on a 20" 1920x1080 monitor.
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Yeah the article wasn't particularly specific, the way it's written is there's "movie theater" size, "home TV" size, and "Smartphone screen" size.
 
Koolthulu said:
..just sell me the high quality physical media with a DRM free digital copy for $15 or less and I'll be happy.
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Exactly this. Just looked into buying a digital movie for the first time (checked Amazon, Google Play, VUDU & Sony) and the damn movie was almost $20 to buy in HD.. DRM'd and tied to a particular service. Fuck that.

$15 bluray w/DRM-free digital copy (or clear-cut legality to rip my own) would be perfect.
 
"On the 18th day, these movies will be available everywhere ubiquitously and you will pay for the size"

Yeah! Cause fuck theaters making any money!

IE - Movie studios get 95% of the ticket sales first week, 75% second week, 50% third week, 35% fourth week etc as is, and now this guy is saying movie studios get almost all the revenue for three weeks, and after that, fuck the theaters?

You know why he wants it on blu-ray etc after 3 weeks? Cause he doesn't want movie theaters to get any cash, that's why, cause fuck the people on the bottom rung of your business chain!
 
Also you know why I don't go to the theaters anymore?

Cause a large popcorn there is $9.50

Fuck that, fuck them, fuck theaters
 
Look, I rarely go to movies at the theater anymore.
$15 a ticket
$8 for a medium soda
$7 for a small popcorn

Wait... It gets better.

THEN, you get to try to enjoy the movie while some jackass talks to his/ her buddy either in theater or on phone or someone stands up in front of you and starts screaming at the screen like the picture is going to respond.
Then there's the "Anti-piracy" measure, where parts of the picture randomly disappear a couple dozen times so they can track which region the movie is getting pirated at.

Hey assholes, just ditch the theater and let me sit at home in my LayZboy recliner, with my OWN popcorn and soda, WITHOUT the idiots, and enjoy the movie in front of my big screen with full stereo surround.
Why?
Because the world is full of idiots without courtesy that could give two shits if they ruin a $30 trip to the theater for everyone else.
 
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Chas said:
And here's where you screwed up.

He's talking about ACTUAL SCREEN SIZE (not resolution). You're talking about resolution (480p), not screen size.

So you'd pay more to see it on a 27" 1920x1080 monitor than you would on a 20" 1920x1080 monitor.

If they wanted to base it off normal resolutions, SD, HD, SHD, great. I can see paying more that way, as HD and SHD streams require higher bandwidth.

But this luddite jackass wants to charge basedly solely on the dimensions of the screen.

Never mind that resolution has been thoroughly decoupled from screen size for years now.

This makes his idea probably the dumbest, craziest possible suggestion.

It's so dumb that he's overblown my quota for idiocy this quarter.
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sfsuphysics said:
Yeah the article wasn't particularly specific, the way it's written is there's "movie theater" size, "home TV" size, and "Smartphone screen" size.
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The article shouldn't have been that confusing for anyone to understand yes it did say screen size and not resolution. But he isn't talking about you paying $X per inch. He made it clear by what me meant which you did pick up on there sfsuphysics. The idea he has was pretty simple and makes a lot of sense. Instead of waiting months for a movie to come out on DVD or digital, move it to a shorter time frame and have one cost for if you want to rent it on your computer or through a set top box, another for through a phone or some other smaller mobile device.


Merc1138 said:
$15 including a drink and popcorn? LOL

$12 at any theater within a 30 minute drive just for a ticket, which doesn't include any additional fees for imax or 3d(which can jack the price up to $18 a ticket). And if you bought the tickets online, you're paying a convenience fee on top of that. Even the child's ticket price that only goes up to age 7 if I remember right ends up as high as $15. A family of 4(2 adults, and 2 children that still qualify for the discount) you're looking at almost $70 not including junk food from the concession stand.

$5+ for a soda

$6+ for popcorn

What third world do you live in where a movie ticket is still only $8? I haven't seen a regular ticket that low since maybe 2003? Even the early bird matinee first showing of the day at theaters(the ones that still even do that) for an 11:30am showing on weekdays only is $7.50 because everyone is at work or in school.

Then on top of the insane prices you're paying, you still end up in a filthy theater with sticky floors and crap under the seats.

I would GLADLY pay $4 to see a movie in my own home if the quality is decent, using my own HT setup and my own couch with my own snacks and drinks, getting a much better viewing experience, than pay the insane prices that theaters charge.
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Think it is $8 around me (although I am in Indiana which is close to being a 3rd world ;) )

ShamisOMally said:
"On the 18th day, these movies will be available everywhere ubiquitously and you will pay for the size"

Yeah! Cause fuck theaters making any money!

IE - Movie studios get 95% of the ticket sales first week, 75% second week, 50% third week, 35% fourth week etc as is, and now this guy is saying movie studios get almost all the revenue for three weeks, and after that, fuck the theaters?

You know why he wants it on blu-ray etc after 3 weeks? Cause he doesn't want movie theaters to get any cash, that's why, cause fuck the people on the bottom rung of your business chain!
Click to expand...

In all honesty outside of a place that only shows slightly older movies for cheap how often do you see new movies in a theater after 3 weeks? I can say that around me damn near never is the answer to that. After 2 or 3 weeks fewer people are going to see the movie and so the theaters have pulled them and replaced them with movies that people actually see. They make money off raping you on food, and they can make more off of keeping movies in there that they might only get 5% of the ticket sales but have 75 people per showing and being able to sell food to a fraction of them.

Lets just look at this mathematically. I am not going to go look up stats so I will make up some that seem reasonable to assume, Lets assume that they make $5 off each person that buys food, that 15% of the people seeing a movie buy food, tickets on average cost $10 a person, and a single screen plays a movie 4 times a day. My number of people are based on about what I have noticed over the year with how full a theater is based on what week I go see a movie.

First week a movie comes out lets say 70 people go to each showing - $37.50 profit per showing from tickets, $52.50 from food, so $360 per day per screen.

second week lets say it drops down to 40 people per showing - $100 from tickets, $30 from food, so $520 per day

third week lets say 15 people per showing - $75 from tickets, $11.25 from food so $345 per day

week 4 and above it say you would be getting down to about 5 people per showing - $32.50 from tickets, $5 from food, so $150 per day

Looking at it from a standpoint like that, the movie studios might be making their largest amount during that time frame, but so do the theaters. Because while they might be taking a larger cut, you have less people. This is why unless a movie is really popular after about 2 or 3 weeks it is down to a week where you might have 1 showing a day, and then it is gone. Because the money for both sides is there during the first couple of days. People that want to see the movie will have seen it by then, everyone else is waiting for it to come out on DVD / digital.

SGA76 said:
Look, I rarely go to movies at the theater anymore.
$15 a ticket
$8 for a medium soda
$7 for a small popcorn

Wait... It gets better.

THEN, you get to try to enjoy the movie while some jackass talks to his/ her buddy either in theater or on phone or someone stands up in front of you and starts screaming at the screen like the picture is going to respond.
Then there's the "Anti-piracy" measure, where parts of the picture randomly disappear a couple dozen times so they can track which region the movie is getting pirated at.

Hey assholes, just ditch the theater and let me sit at home in my LayZboy recliner, with my OWN popcorn and soda, WITHOUT the idiots, and enjoy the movie in front of my big screen with full stereo surround.
Why?
Because the world is full of idiots without courtesy that could give two shits if they ruin a $30 trip to the theater for everyone else.
Click to expand...

And that is what they are talking about here. You won't get it on day one, but will have a little bit of a delay. But within 10 years he is expecting that you will see movies go to a home rental for you to watch from your lazyboy instead of at a theater after a few week run instead of this few weeks in a theater then a few month wait before going out on DVD or digital.
 
The best option to still watch a movie is at home. One of the best overlooked inventions of all time is the PAUSE BUTTON. Life happens, door bell, phone, gotta poop etc., etc. I cant rewind in the theater. Its really the BIGGEST reason i don't visit the theater any more.
 
dderidex said:
Phrased that way, it will certainly appeal to industry types and offend geeks. You *could* phrase it differently and most geeks would nod their heads in understanding (while you'd cook the brains of the industry types beyond repair).

Here, lemme try...



...see? Perfectly sensible when viewed that way, which is all he's really saying.
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Depends.

If he literally means what he said (locked to viewing screens), that's also possible using DRM (will be developed if needed) I guess.
 
MavericK96 said:
How do you get that it would have cost them money when these proposed ticket prices are about 50% higher than current ones?
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Because it took Avengers a month (31 days) to break 550 million domestically.

Because Avatar had 6 CONSECUTIVE weekends, earning over 100 million.
It passed the 1 billion mark on the 19th day of its international release.
The film was in theaters roughly 4.5 months.
It's current ticket grosses sit at just under 2.8 BILLION dollars (with a re-release).

So, with a 21 day release to theaters, you're talking about cutting it's ticket revenues by roughly 60-65%
 
ShamisOMally said:
"On the 18th day, these movies will be available everywhere ubiquitously and you will pay for the size"

Yeah! Cause fuck theaters making any money!

IE - Movie studios get 95% of the ticket sales first week, 75% second week, 50% third week, 35% fourth week etc as is, and now this guy is saying movie studios get almost all the revenue for three weeks, and after that, fuck the theaters?

You know why he wants it on blu-ray etc after 3 weeks? Cause he doesn't want movie theaters to get any cash, that's why, cause fuck the people on the bottom rung of your business chain!
Click to expand...

Nobody wants to go to movie theaters anymore to smell the bystanders farts and listen them talking to the phone during the movie.
 
I don't understand why more people don't visit movie theaters. $10-$15 seems like such a reasonable price to pay to watch a movie I've been eagerly anticipating on a tremendous screen and sound system. And unless I hit the lottery, I can't afford anything close to it in my own home. The experience isn't exclusive to epics, blockbusters or visual marvels. For me, if any movie is worth seeing is worth seeing in a theater. (Even if some are only worth matinee prices ;) )

Of course I'd like to go back to $5-$7 tickets. I'd like to go back to $1.25/gal gas, too. But theaters appear to be having a hard enough time turning a profit even with today's prices.

Anyhow, I like the idea that CEO's idea. Paying $15 through the Google Play store to watch a movie on a 5" screen seems ridiculous. I know a lot of people that watch TV shows and movies on their phones. Not one of those people pay for that content. If content providers want more money, they need to cater to mobile watchers. They need to choose an appropriate price for the end user's experience.
 
SGA76 said:
Look, I rarely go to movies at the theater anymore.
$15 a ticket
$8 for a medium soda
$7 for a small popcorn

Wait... It gets better.

THEN, you get to try to enjoy the movie while some jackass talks to his/ her buddy either in theater or on phone or someone stands up in front of you and starts screaming at the screen like the picture is going to respond.
Then there's the "Anti-piracy" measure, where parts of the picture randomly disappear a couple dozen times so they can track which region the movie is getting pirated at.

Hey assholes, just ditch the theater and let me sit at home in my LayZboy recliner, with my OWN popcorn and soda, WITHOUT the idiots, and enjoy the movie in front of my big screen with full stereo surround.
Why?
Because the world is full of idiots without courtesy that could give two shits if they ruin a $30 trip to the theater for everyone else.
Click to expand...


I tend to go to brew and view type places. This way, instead of burning money on a box of nasty popcorn, a $5 bag of M&Ms with like 3 M&Ms in it or hotdogs that've been on the roller for most of the last month, you get halfway decent food.

One place deliberately prices their tickets low ($8) and offsets that with a minimum food charge of $5. It's an old, converted General Cinema, and it's not the classiest place (they're going "memorabilia and nostalgia".

Taking my co-workers out for a post end-of-fiscal-year trip to a slightly nicer place today.
$10.50 for the tickets, $4.50 for the online booking fee. And the food at the place is good stuff. Maybe not 5-star restaurant, but better than McDonalds or TGIFridays and the pricing isn't stupidly outrageous.

I don't go downtown for movies much anymore. And I live half a mile from an IMAX theater if I GOTTA go IMAX.

Note: I also stick to standard 2D movies. The 3D crap is a giant gimmick and only serves to give me a migraine and eye strain.

So yeah, I still come in at about $20-25 a head for ticket+food. For a truly clean and spacious theater, decent food and a modern projection system? That's fine.

And before you accuse me of living in the boonies, I'm just outside of Chicago.

If it's costing you $30 to go to a show with a bucket of shitty popcorn and piss-warm soda, I'd suggest you may be going to the wrong places.
 
In the UK, I pay £13/month for a Cineworld Unlimited card - this grants me unlimited admission to films all month and includes 25% off all concessions if I want.

Usually I just buy a drink and popcorn, so the trip to the movies for myself and my girlfriend costs us £5 a pop. We worked out last year given the films we saw that we saved £220 in ticket and concession fees.
 
AFD said:
Exactly this. Just looked into buying a digital movie for the first time (checked Amazon, Google Play, VUDU & Sony) and the damn movie was almost $20 to buy in HD.. DRM'd and tied to a particular service. Fuck that.

$15 bluray w/DRM-free digital copy (or clear-cut legality to rip my own) would be perfect.
Click to expand...

The nice thing with vudu is you can get a "digital copy" of a blu-ray you buy for $2 with their "disc to digital" service. If you have a DVD & want an HD copy it's $5.

If you do a 10 disc conversion it's 50% off (last I checked)
 
The Donut said:
In the UK, I pay £13/month for a Cineworld Unlimited card - this grants me unlimited admission to films all month and includes 25% off all concessions if I want.

Usually I just buy a drink and popcorn, so the trip to the movies for myself and my girlfriend costs us £5 a pop. We worked out last year given the films we saw that we saved £220 in ticket and concession fees.
Click to expand...

I'd see more movies it was that cheap. A typical movie trip with my wife is:

$10 tickets * 2 = $20
Large popcorn & soda = $13 (some people do a combo for each person so that would be $26)
3-4 hours of babysitting = $45-$60

It's almost $100 to go to the movies!!!

Or we can go to target & buy 3-5 blu-rays or have a year of amazon prime service for the price of one "date night" (with no dinner).
 
Charging for a movie ticket by the size of the screen is an interesting idea. Though I think a movie ticket should be based on a film's budget, $20 for a $200M big budget action film or $1 for a low budget $1M artsy film for example. I'd gladly pay more for a high budget film if I could save money on the lower budget films too. But what do I know, I'm just a guy that is going less to movies these days because of high cinema ticket prices.
 
Chas said:
And here's where you screwed up.

He's talking about ACTUAL SCREEN SIZE (not resolution). You're talking about resolution (480p), not screen size.

So you'd pay more to see it on a 27" 1920x1080 monitor than you would on a 20" 1920x1080 monitor.

If they wanted to base it off normal resolutions, SD, HD, SHD, great. I can see paying more that way, as HD and SHD streams require higher bandwidth.

But this luddite jackass wants to charge basedly solely on the dimensions of the screen.

Never mind that resolution has been thoroughly decoupled from screen size for years now.

This makes his idea probably the dumbest, craziest possible suggestion.

It's so dumb that he's overblown my quota for idiocy this quarter.
Click to expand...

Doh! :eek: My bad on that. Since I'm running 2560x1440, I wouldn't be happy with the price, though I watch more movies on my TV (which is 1080p).
 
Robstar said:
I'd see more movies it was that cheap. A typical movie trip with my wife is:

$10 tickets * 2 = $20
Large popcorn & soda = $13 (some people do a combo for each person so that would be $26)
3-4 hours of babysitting = $45-$60

It's almost $100 to go to the movies!!!

Or we can go to target & buy 3-5 blu-rays or have a year of amazon prime service for the price of one "date night" (with no dinner).
Click to expand...

I forgot: If I go to a nice theatre in downtown chicago for an indie movie, tack on $20-$30 for gas & $10-$20 for parking and another $30 at LEAST for babysitting.
 
What do they charge if I watch it on my iphone 1366x768 but then pause it & output it to my tv (1920x1080) ?
 
For a few reasons.

As time marches on, technology keeps pace. That 75" TV and that Phone might be capable of the same resolution. Sure I can't crowd people around my phone and watch it but who says that I will be doing that on either of them.

This negates the possibility of buying it for the smaller device and playing it on the bigger device. What's price then? Also reason one because quality does matter.
 
I'm okay with this as long as it's by image and audio quality. If people want their surround-resolution-whatever for their silly home theater junk so they can impress themselves or others into thinking it was worth buying a 6-million feet 8000k screen and speakers that are loud enough to make everyone else in their apartment complex hear their icky sex scenes, they should have to pay the price for congesting the Internets for everyone else.
 
And the liberals in hollywood say the bankers are greedy.

These are the people that can't just sell you a blu ray for $5 but instead force you to buy the BluRay/DVD/UltraViolet/Soundtrack for $49. These are the people that sue grandmothers, children, and family pets. So if you think they'll sell you a movie for $4, you're out of your fucking mind.
 
Because a movie rendered at 1080p and played on a 55" TV is entirely different from a movie rendered at 1080p and played on my phone's screen.

How about instead of fragmenting the content-delivery ecosystem even more, you, I don't know, make it easier and less complicated for people to pay for and watch the content they want.

This is a dumb idea.
 
The size of the screen that I use to view movies is quite frankly none of anyone's fucking business, and the fact that tools like this fucktard think they are entitled to that info on some level is both insulting and disturbing.
 
Chas said:
Looking back.

A plan like this would have cost The Avengers roughly 1.1 BILLION in ticket revenues.

This plan would have also cost Avatar roughly 2 BILLION in ticket revenues.

Maybe this flash-in-the-pan metric fits for Dreamworks films. But his harebrained scheme would cost the industry billions of dollars in revenue every year.
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What you're missing is how much of the ticket price goes back to the studio vs. how much is kept by the theater. The first week or two the studio gets ~75% of the ticket price but then it drops down to like 25% after around a month. This varies somewhat but basically the studios get most of their cut in the first three weeks even if the movie keeps doing well after that time.
 
BloodDonor said:
Can we pay by quality of a movie... ie: that movie sucked... ill only pay 50c
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My first job was at a movie theater and FYI we did give out refunds to some people who came to complain that they hated a movie. Occasionally even if they came after the movie was over, but usually only if they left the movie before it completed. (I didn't work at the customer service counter so I didn't handle these refunds, but I often saw managers doing so.)

Then again that was back in the 90s, so it wouldn't surprise me if they've stopped doing that.
 
does that mean if I wanted to watch a movie on a 4:3 format? I could get charged less? (just throwing out crazy situations since the retard mentioned screen size)

Why not charge per pixel? or how about on the runtime of the movie?

Screen size or resolution size... what the hell does it matter? a movie is a movie, and either way they have been (and will still continue) to charge too much for one. Depending on what format, how many devices, what quality, all that jazz, it will change the price I'm willing to pay. (willing vs what they wind up doing always seem to be off by a large margin)

If the price turns out to be the usual wallet rape level -- i'd expect to have day-0 movies, at home, full HD, any device, to watch as many times as I wanted. We all know something like that will never happen though.
 
collegeboy69us said:
Why not charge per pixel? or how about on the runtime of the movie?
Click to expand...

No, they should clearly charge by viewing angle. You must submit a written report after each viewing describing exactly how far you sat.

It bothers me that companies are using technology to try and restrict us in every possible way, but it doesn't surprise me at all.
 
SGA76 said:
Look, I rarely go to movies at the theater anymore.
$15 a ticket
$8 for a medium soda
$7 for a small popcorn
Click to expand...
Nothing says you need popcorn and soda to watch a movie, every time you pop in a movie do you pop up a fresh batch of popcorn? If yes, then sounds like you've already been brainwashed by the industry that makes you believe you're really getting the experience if you're eating and drinking at the same time as watching, and that just sitting there and taking in the movie isn't good enough ;)

Also $15 for a ticket? Don't see it in 3d IMax Dolby anal probe experience version.
 
Robstar said:
I'd see more movies it was that cheap. A typical movie trip with my wife is:

$10 tickets * 2 = $20
Large popcorn & soda = $13 (some people do a combo for each person so that would be $26)
3-4 hours of babysitting = $45-$60

It's almost $100 to go to the movies!!!

Or we can go to target & buy 3-5 blu-rays or have a year of amazon prime service for the price of one "date night" (with no dinner).
Click to expand...

Haven't you figured it out though? Women are expensive :D

But bravo on leaving the kids at home ;)

Lets see my experience
2 tickets $14.99 by swinging by CostCo and picking up their movie passes
candy and soda, swing by Target buy 3 $1 boxes of candy, a few bottles of soda $5
3-4 hours of babysitting, drop kids off at parents, or cousins, or someone who's more than happy to look after them because I live near family.

Less than $20 for a date night with the wife? SOLD!
 
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