Night Owls

OffByOne and Punchcard put their fingers right on the real situation there... It is so easy to get dazzled by big shiny dollar amounts in the headlines, but high ticket prices and currency swings do not mean more actual human bodies are sitting in those folding seats. When you have a film running three full hours, the physical clocks and the daily schedules simply will not let theatres push through an endless stream of people, no matter how many extra showtimes they squeeze into the midnight hours. Once that initial rush of dedicated fans clears out over the first couple of weekends, the daily foot traffic is bound to taper right off. Real endurance over four or five months is what fills ledgers to the top, not just a frantic sprint out of the gate. It will be very interesting to see what the actual attendance tallies look like once the dust clears in May, but the math is a tough mountain to climb. Hope everyone going this coming week has safe travels to the theater!

The physical limits of daily theatre schedules will indeed prove decisive once the opening rush subsides.

those scheduling limits make total sense, you just can't cheat the clock no matter how big the hype is.

Quite right. We shall simply wait for the audited receipts before jumping to conclusions.

Audited receipts are the only honest measure we have, my friend... You can already see how the numbers get pumped up early on when you look at the news from overseas this morning. Over in China, pre-sales crossed sixty million dollars, but the regulators there had to step right in and slap a cap on ticket prices because theatres were charging crazy markups for premiere seats - up to 360 yuan in some spots! That right there tells you how these opening records get built up on paper. When you jack up the price of admission by double or triple for a midnight showing, of course the dollar total looks like a mountain! But a single person paying three times the usual rate to squeeze into an auditorium at 2 a.m. is still just one body in one chair. Once those price gouges are capped and the midnight frenzy runs out of steam, the regular daily turnstiles have to do the heavy lifting... and that is where the real test begins. Let us see what the books say when normal prices take over.

Sure look, let the auditors do their job once the dust settles and we will see.

TheyKnow wrote:Once those price gouges are capped and the midnight frenzy runs out of steam, the regular daily turnstiles have to do the heavy lifting

TheyKnow makes a valid point regarding the Chinese price caps, though audited figures will soon settle the matter.

That intervention by the regulators in China is a sensible development. When premiums are allowed to float upwards unchecked, the gross revenue figures cease to reflect regular customer volume. It merely tells us what a handful of eager people are prepared to spend to be first through the doors.

Once those price limits take hold, the bookkeepers will have a much clearer view of ordinary admissions. A ledger full of midnight markups and inflated surcharges may produce an impressive total in the morning newspapers, but it does not tell you whether an ordinary cinema in Leeds or Winnipeg will still have people queueing on a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of June.

My grandson tells me our local multiplex has already scheduled screenings starting at six o'clock in the morning next weekend. That strikes me as a rather gruelling way to spend an early Saturday, but I suppose enthusiasm has its own timetable. We shall let the film distributors count their opening returns, and see how the figures stand after a few ordinary weeks of business.

That really gets straight to the heart of the matter, Punchcard... When folks are willing to shell out top dollar at the break of dawn or in the middle of the night, it shows sheer dedication, but that kind of sprint just cannot replace regular families turning up week after week. If a picture needs three hours out of someone's day, casual folks with busy lives are going to think twice before making the trip twice! The audited logs down the road will tell the genuine story once the die-hard rush burns itself out.

Indeed. A three-hour outing is quite an investment of an afternoon for an ordinary family with chores and errands to run. We will see how patient the general public proves to be once the early excitement fades into routine summer business.

Punchcard wrote:A three-hour outing is quite an investment of an afternoon for an ordinary family with chores and errands to run.

Chores, yard work, grocery runs, getting the kids to ball games... all that real life stuff adds up fast on a weekend, my friend. When a film demands over three hours of sitting still, not to mention previews and getting parked, you are really asking people to write off half a Saturday. The die-hard crowd will gladly shuffle their whole lives around to see it the minute the doors unlock, but ordinary folks have budgets and schedules to balance out. Once you factor in babysitters or buying popcorn for three youngsters, a long trek to the cineplex becomes a rare treat rather than a weekly habit. That is why those long-tail legs are so tough to hold onto after the fan rush clears out. Avatar kept drawing people in because folks who hardly ever went to the theatre kept trickling in month after month through word of mouth. We will see if general audiences have that kind of staying power when June rolls around, but I have my doubts.

Aye, that really puts it in perspective! Fans like me will gladly queue at dawn, but coaxing regular families out once the hype cools down is a whole different kettle of fish. If the casual crowds don't keep turning up into the summer, those legs might get cut right out from under it.

TheyKnow wrote:Once those price gouges are capped and the midnight frenzy runs out of steam, the regular daily turnstiles have to do the heavy lifting

Strictly speaking, the comparison depends on admissions rather than casual enthusiasm. The Chinese intervention capped standard markups at ten per cent, or thirty per cent for VIP auditoriums. Such measures curb headline inflation immediately. When initial surcharges fall away, ordinary weekly attendance must carry the total, which remains mathematically improbable given the runtime.

The arithmetic always catches up with enthusiasm eventually. When you look at the weekend returns from the theatres down south just reported today, it was remarkably quiet because patrons are evidently holding their wallets until the big event arrives next week. That tells me people have finite entertainment budgets, both in cash and in spare hours.

Once the opening weekend rush sweeps through and everyone who simply had to be first has had their turn, the theatres will have to rely on standard admission prices and open calendars. With warmer weather approaching, people often prefer being outside in the garden or taking the children to the park rather than remaining indoors for nearly two hundred minutes. If the casual patrons decide one visit is plenty, those empty seats in week four or five will become quite noticeable.

My grandson reminded me this morning that I must not peek at any movie discussions online this coming week, so I shall mind my manners. We will see what the accountants report after the dust settles.

Punchcard wrote:We will see what the accountants report after the dust settles.

Grand. You can crunch numbers all week, but we will know soon enough when regular business takes over.

Quick heads up: routine database maintenance is scheduled for Wednesday night around 2 am GMT, so the board will be down for ten minutes.

-- Kev (mod)