Posted by RickJWagner 7 hours ago
I checked what was playing and:
2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.
$86 dollars.
Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
So the theatres stay alive by selling concessions.
I'd wager everyone here complaining about prices would also wax poetic about how theatres don't "pay a living wage" to the kids scooping popcorn and would immediately drive home in their $100k Rivians or Teslas so they can give a one star review on Yelp or complain on Reddit about the bathrooms or floors being dirty or sticky.
These same people wouldn't bat an eye at paying $14 for a food truck grilled cheese and leave a tip.
You can't have it both ways.
This seems weirdly condescending, especially since I think these two things are very related.
There are two types of $14 food truck grilled cheese in my experience:
The first type is usually found at farmer’s markets or free city events where the cheese will be local and artisan, and the bread will be local and artisan, and it’ll be pretty freaking good, and remind you that you can make incredible food with simple ingredients.
The second type is where there’s a captive audience, like a music festival or a brewery patio. This is no free market: you are hungry, and you’re about to be exploited.
I find American society increasingly reflected in the second type of $14 grilled cheese. Movie theaters, sporting events, music events, video games, tipping culture, hidden fees, etc. etc. Exploitative business practices to extract profit at the expense of the customer. It’s like walking around being shown the middle finger at all times. And people complain about the breakdown of the social contract…
Popcorn cost basically nothing to make at home, especially if you buy the raw kernels and pop them yourself, and I can rent a 4k version of a movie for like three dollars on Amazon. My 85" 8k TV cost me $1200 (refurbished, but still). For the cost of going to the theater with my wife 15 times, I can buy that TV to watch movies but also use that same TV for many other things.
Even cheap shitty TVs are pretty ok nowadays, certainly better than the stuff when I was a kid, and after I have to question the point of going to an expensive physical theater where there's a risk of some teenagers talking over the movie and I can't pause if I need to use the bathroom. The theaters might not like it, but regardless of whether its fair, they are competing with TVs now.
I prayed it wasn't urine.
I liked that theater because it was super cheap (like seriously $1.50 for a ticket because it showed out of date movies). One time when she and I were watching The Purge, I hear this kind of squishy noise from right behind me.
I turn around, and a guy is getting a handjob. I motion to my wife that we need to move a few seats over.
You know, The Purge isn't the worst movie ever but I gotta admit that it's not a movie that ever really turned me on either. To each their own, I suppose.
From that point forward we always called that the Handjob Theater.
If all of those things are true, then the conclusion is that theaters can’t operate in a way that wins my business. That would be unfortunate, but it’s not contradictory. It also seems to be that pretty much true, as I see a movie in a theater maybe once a year.
After all, they move 1s and 0s at the end of the day. No screens or customer-facing capital equipment to maintain outside of DCs.
I believe they wrote that it is consistent to find sufficient utility from a $14 grilled cheese sandwich and also find insufficient utility from a whatever price movie theater experience.
It isn’t written out, but when people complain about the price of anything, they are complaining the price to utility ratio. Not exactly profound stuff, but that is basically what it is, most people don’t get a sufficiently better experience in theaters in today’s world.
The extension of my logic to Netflix would be, if I think their prices are too high and that causes me not to subscribe, and their prices are so high because they need to pay very high salaries, then there’s just no way that Netflix can exist in a form that I would subscribe to.
Presently, we watch foreign movies at home 95% of the time and maybe a Hollywood production when they manage to find their roots and create something worth watching.
As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.
I don’t have that high expectations of sound/video as many people will point out that streaming kills the quality but for all its worth still much better than what I need to enjoy a movie.
EDIT: I was going off of memory, but matinee/child/senior pricing is apparently $9.75 at the theater I usually go to, evening is $13.25 (I never go in the evening, had forgotten what that price was). They have a two drink and popcorn combo for $22.10. So the worst case of evening prices (again, not considering IMAX, just regular screens and seats) for two with that combo is $48.60. That's not cheap, but it's not $86 either. And if you're willing to share the drink and go to a matinee you can cut the price to $34.80. This is a Cinemark, a pretty big theater chain.
7 dollar tickets I haven't seen since elementary school
IMAX opening week is a lot, $25-35. After a while it can drop to $20 or so. Regular is more like $20-25 opening week and drops to $12-15.
I don't bother with popcorn and soda, it's grossly over priced. Like $10 for a small popcorn the size of a pint. I buy a 0.5L bottle at the grocery store next to the cinema and some M (our M&Ms), maybe $10.
Though lately I've been going a lot to the local cinemateque. Not only are tickets around $7 regardless, they mostly show classic movies so seldom worse than the new stuff. They show popular movies too, recently saw Heat there, first time I saw it at the big screen since the premiere. Still packed a punch.
The minimum wage for a cleaner is 46k per year ($23\h). And your boss better not try any shenanigans, because you're most likely unionized and shouldn't really be messed with.
I've found $18 ticket for opening week for Hail Mary in my city. Most of them were at $23, but that's for the premium sall, with shaking seats or other fancy stuff.
So a person with a job looked down upon in most other countries can still get one ticket for an hour of work.
Reason I've felt compelled to reply was because cinema tickets always felt cheap to me in Norway, compared to more like 2h of work for minimum wage worker in Poland where I originally come from. Compared to any other prices like $15 for a beer at a bar or $30+ for a bottle of vodka in the alcohol shop* they just always felt like a steal. YMMV OFC.
*Interesting trivia: The alcohol shop is called Vinmonopolet and it really is a monopoly. The only company allowed to sell alcohol above 4.7% is run by the state. They have shops in towns, and if you live far from one (like most of northern Norway past the polar circle) you're most likely getting your alcohol from homebrew mafia instead.
IMAX opening week is a bit more but are comparable to mid-range concert tickets. And it really is a big screen, so can definitely be worth it.
The snacks and drinks at the cinema is wild though I think. As a comparison the M's they sell are twice the price and half the size of that from the grocery store. I get that they want to make some money on it, but 4x the price is just too much for me.
The market-clearing price is nearly zero except for some new releases. Oppenheimer was sold out in its first weekend, for example.
Anyone who went to movies before about 1999 remembers them being a lot more popular.
And then wonder why people don't go to the cinema and wonder if they can increase the amount of ads to compensate...
Although, I’ll admit I go way less often than two years ago when I was full time WFH. Which begs the question if I just went for a reason to leave the house
I haven't been to a movie in a theater in at least 10 years.
For any normal movie I'd rather just watch it from my couch. But for the once in a while, over the top, blockbuster I'll still go to a theater.
I enjoyed each one in the theater but I tried watching Avatar: The Way of Water at home and despite having an entire media room devoted to good sound, proper lighting well calibrated projector and such it was not all that great. The movie fell a little flat without the theater experience to go with it.
I saw the limited run in advance to the 3rd one coming out in theaters again and it was good in that setting, as a reference point for my experience
That's not to say that all movies in this category are *only* worth watching in the theater like Avatar is. For instance I would have still enjoyed the recent Dune movies either way but they were a lot better with all the pomp & circumstance.
Or maybe it's just a horror/Marvel thing. Weapons and Endgame had a similar audience feel to Sinners and Black Panther.
Definitely not during Chris Nolan films. It's hard enough to hear his dialogue when it's dead silent.
We almost never go to regular theaters anymore. IMAX feels worth it for something like F1 or Top Gun where it’s all about the visual spectacle, otherwise meh.
We go to Alamo Drafthouse a lot tho. A little pricey but the experience of watching a movie in comfy seats over a fairly decent restaurant dinner is fantastic for certain kinds of movies. Peaky Blinders was the most recent. Tommy Shelby paired with a good cocktail or two, fantastic.
Also I don’t know how Alamo achieves this, but people there are really good about noise and other bullshit. I think it’s because they do in fact kick people out for being annoying.
I'm not sure who is going to the theater or why, but I hope they are enjoying themselves!
The silver screen has a contrast ratio in the hundreds. A $300 consumer TV now looks significantly better than the blurry, muted, and muddled projector image.
Then the audio at theaters is always totally blown out and overly bassy and siblant. Fine for action, I guess, but it makes listening to dialogue exhausting.
And unless you get your favorite seat, you have to watch the movie skewed. God forbid you get a seat in the front and have to crane your neck the whole hour.
Meanwhile I can stay home, not deal with driving 20 minutes and interacting with the public, pay less, eat better food, get blitzed with friends, talk with my wife, have better visuals and audio, etc. Other than nostalgia, there's just no reason at all to go to a movie theater. It's become kind of outdated in an era of modern TVs to me.
Tickets are a bit more for IMAX.
Less than an hour outside Philly. The theater is recently renovated too and has nice recliner seats, and everyone has their own armrest.
So, we’re looking at $53. Which is $33 less than wherever you’re at.
I also don’t know how standardized prices are across all AMC venues. So while Pokopia costs $70 everywhere, the same may not be true of theater tickets and concessions.
But yeah, it’s typically why we try to avoid theater concessions, because they’ve always been overpriced
But in my days it was around 12€ for a ticket, popcorn and a coke. And there were cinema days with special deals. Or cheap sneak previews.
I would never go when paying for me and my SO is equivalent of one of my subscriptions for a year.
That is how it was explained to me when I said something similar
The communal experience is special
On top of that most people don't have the attention span to sit through a film without opening their phones - film is supposed to be about capturing your attention not just entertainment
Otherwise watch it on your laptop for all I care
My last week may be an indicator. I've watched zero TV or movies but have spent about 40 hours helping a small colony of scrappy hard working beavers survive on post apocalyptic earth. Steam got my money, Hollywood didn't.
While the streaming business led to a growth of the movie industry, pre Covid and pre strikes at least, it's difficult to compete when millions of people can produce good content for low prices.
On top of that, it doesn't help that movies stopped innovating, 2025 box office was entirely dominated by prequels and sequels.
I don't care about avengers, I really don't, the first bored me enough.
But it isn't. China and India are going gangbusters. Japan is thriving and doing strong work. Nigerian cinema is projected to hit 3 million ticket sales for the first time this year. The UK--is at least stealing work from Hollywood with tax breaks. Korea had a rough patch, which they turned around by doing more mid-market films.
The US studios problems are unique, which at least suggests that the answer lies in the failures of their leadership. Perhaps their long project of abandoning original mid-market films to push bloated huge special effects heavy franchises was ill-advised. It's almost Like having a portfolio of 10-20 reasonable original bets is better than investing everything in a single expensive "sure-thing" sequel it increasingly seems like no one actually wants to see.
So I agree that Hollywood has stopped innovating, but am dubious that any other problems has much to do with Youtube (as much as I enjoy YouTube).
I suspect the problem with AAA games is the same one movie studios face; mass-market appeal and profit-driven-design degrades the experience.
Indie / small studios have an infinitely easier time going to market than one would with making a film or especially a TV series.
You just make an account on a platform, sometimes submitting some additional information and paying a small fee, and that’s it. You may not even need actors like for text based games (Shovel Knight, Balatro etc)
Movies is so much more. And the cost of production is higher.
Also, the other big thing to realize is by far what games many people play is dominated by a handful of highly successful live service games. I have friends who only play Fortnite and have for a long time. They don’t play much else other than a few casual games when they take small breaks from Fortnite.
It’s not universal but there is a reason they’re always top of charts for revenue. Millions play every day.
The one other thing I’ll say is that seemingly unlike other media there is enough sufficient customer diversity that one business model doesn’t completely choke off all other types. Look at Expedition 33 for example
With the high quality cameras and drones at approachable prices, it's amazing to watch individuals create videos at such high quality but also has a bit of that DIY vibe that makes it more relatable and enjoyable.
My current fav is watching 4X4 overlanding videos of people driving along some stunning landscapes.
If anything the substitute has been TV. Gaming is big, sure, but that doesn't appear to crowd out time reserved for watching media. I expect that the marathoner gamer who plays for hours daily is a comparatively smaller demographic.
I mean, the NFL, at root, is in the business of entertainment also, and it makes more than Hollywood as well all in.
But why would Hollywood care?
Which might be raised in relation to gaming as well, but I'd argue that gaming elements share much more in common with cinema, particularly in the contexts of world design, character development, backstory, and of course, CGI.
Not true. Most media conglomerates own both video game and movie production. The big players like Disney, Sony, Comcast, Universal, etc all have ownership stakes in video game companies and most TMT funds invest in both as a same bucket.
"Silicon Valley":
As more high-tech companies were established across San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area's two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the term "Silicon Valley" came to have two definitions: a narrower geographic one, referring to Santa Clara County and southeastern San Mateo County, and a metonymical definition referring to high-tech businesses in the entire Bay Area.[citation needed] The name also became a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises, and thus inspired similarly named locations, as well as research parks and technology centers with comparable structures all around the world.
To be fair, barely anyone (in global terms) watches the Super Bowl.
You are correct though - [0] claims 171M for TGA with [1] claiming 125M for the Superb Owl 2026.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025
[1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
According to Streams Charts, the ceremony peaked at 4.4 million concurrent viewers—the most in its history and a 9% increase from 2024—including 1.4 million viewers on the official YouTube broadcast (an 8% increase) and 1.8 million on Twitch. On YouTube, the ceremony peaked at 2.4 million total concurrent viewers (a 9% increase), including a record 8,600 co-streams.[6] More than 16,500 creators co-streamed on Twitch—a record for the show, representing a 50% yearly increase—with total unique viewers and hours watched each increasing 5% from 2024.[6][114] On Twitter, posts about the show increased by 12%, with more than 1.79 million posts from December 10–12, while the broadcast and related videos received over 60 million views.[6]
If we are ranking on streams however, does this take into account streams of parts of each media? For example streams of Bad Bunny's halftime show, streams of important plays, versus streams of individual awards being presented?
I don't actually care either way, much, since I don't like American football, don't generally like team sports, and don't spend time gaming, but somehow I think the comparison between the two in online streams throws the metrics off.
Partially, but a massive issue has been the offshoring of Hollywood [0].
UK, Canada, EU states like Ireland and Poland, and others match dollar-for-dollar in subsidizes to incentivize local production, and factoring in lower salaries are able to outcompete even Georgia.
After COVID and the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, production completely left Hollywood.
Film production is high risk and expensive, so margins really matter, so the double whammy of the COVID shutdowns and then fhe WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike became existential.
California has been trying to reincentivize onshoring [1], but it's too little too late. Hollywood even lobbied the Trump admin [2] for a 100% tariff on foreign produced films [3] which more diversified media companies pushed back.
[0] - https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/research-and-reports...
[1] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/gavin-newsom-hollyw...
[2] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/hollywood-lobbying-...
This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change.
One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous.
The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.
Combined with streaming, there's just an overabundance of "good enough" content at everyone's fingertips. The moat that protected big-budget feature films is gone. You don't see a trailer for a movie and salivate and wait for it to come out, it just blends in to the stream of 5000 other things you can watch right now.
It doesn't feel fully democratized because if it was, you'd see more indie things in this same format competing with "big budget" movies on the same playing field.
Might be an anecdote, but I've noticed several friends and family unable to focus on a movie and lately even on a tv show without pulling their phones every few minutes.
I mean, "want to" is one thing, but the numbers show what they end up doing. Instagram and TikTok, like video games as someone else mentioned, have taken a significant share of the "entertainment hours" budget. I feel like the impact of the low-to-no-budget content creator is undeniable (this traces back to ebaumsworld and early YouTube, it was just internet dorks then, now it's been industrialized. Gen Z probably wholeheartedly prefers this type of content).
My point was that content creation has been democratized -- unfunded individuals can now compete -- not that making traditional Hollywood-style movies has been. It's gone so far they've been phased out, the entire premise is largely untenable at this point. That specific sector was actually somewhat more democratized in the late stages of the heyday, when a Hollywood movie called Dude, Where's My Car was made, and indie films did flourish because the industry was healthy enough to support them.
I think it's virtually all demographics below 70.
My 60/70 years old family are all too distracted by the phones to watch a movie, and so are millenial friends.
All the successful Marvel movies are completely based on the characters.
Look at Captain America: The First Avenger. It's a pulpy world war 2 film, really. If you took Captain America out it would still be a fun film. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a spy thriller
Ant Man is a heist movie, like Oceans 11. Guardians is a sci fi comedy.
After a while they started to all just become "Marvel Movies" and that's the point they stopped being nearly as fun imo
Batman and the different actors and directors over the different versions of the franchise is another example.
It could be that in 20 years the Oscars are like the Jazz awards (the Grammys? - I listen to Jazz but I can't name a single Jazz Grammy winner)
Hollywood is a factory town at the end of the day, and we all know what happened to most factory towns in America. This one is just getting there a few decades after the others.
That is just not the case with acting, where the end product being differentiable is part of the inherent value of the product.
Also, it's probably true that SAG's loss of industry power has very much to do with the loss of the power of movie stars in general.
Getting paid for being on-call seems straight forward to me.
In theory the union is the only org capable of standing up to the streamers' buying power, but it has to make sense within a business model where consumers pay one monthly fee for content. I'm not even sure what that really looks like in the end.
Maybe it's also that the FTC allowed all this monopolization to happen, and turns out that having three media companies in the US is bad.
People always think unions are magic when I saw in my small town where I grew up in South GA was that when union demands got to onerous - factories just picked up and left.
Just like software engineers scream unionization when tech companies can just expand departments overseas and as a bonus, they don’t have to worry about H1B shifting policies
It's hard to compete with millions of videomakers, some of them extremely skilled and able to produce interesting content on a budget.
I don't think so.
Part of the downfall of movies -- blockbusters movies anyway, the kind where being a box office hit matters -- is that they have seemed produced like AI slop even before AI. Making it easier to produce more slop isn't going to fix this.
Then there's one thing making noise in my brain. It's not polite to say it, but here it is anyway: should movies be democratized? And art in general? Maybe people without the means of making art that reaches millions shouldn't be enabled by AI. Maybe it's ok that not everyone can produce this kind of art. Maybe the world is saved from a crapton of, well, garbage. More than what's currently being produced, anyway.
As for non-blockbuster art, it's already democratic. Everyone can grab a phone camera or a paintbrush and create art for their friends and family. And that's ok.
Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.
What I object to is this notion that everyone should make art, and that AI empowers them. As in (and yes, I've read this, I'm not making this up) "people without writing skills can now write novels". That seems wrong to me. People without writing skills (or drawing, or movie making) should not be making those things.
I can't help but think this "AI empowerment" will make it even easier for studios to produce more garbage at an unprecedented pace. And they won't have to even let actors age gracefully and die; now we can have Tom Cruise (or whomever, pick your poison) forever.
And what's actually happening with AI? Someone mentioned in another submission that 7500 new books _per day_ are being released on Amazon Kindle. The wave of low quality AI submissions to HN was so severe that the HN mods had to restrict them. Whatever democratization is actually happening is drowned out by those taking advantage of the low cost of AI slop for profit.
What I meant is that I don't see truly indie-produced feature films reach the zeitgeist anymore.
I don't mean AI slop, but the next gen of creative tools that will allow people to make cool and creative and compelling stuff without the backing of 100's of millions of dollars.
It seems like movies are just another cyclical creative industry and this has already happened multiple times before- with each new technology and distribution platform there's the potential to get a wave of creative output that wasn't possible before.
Another aspect could be that the hollowing out of the top / polarization of the industry is another catalyst.
It could be enough that people who don't work on 100's of million dollar budget films get funding to do the next 1 million dollar film that looks great and is amazing.
That's more analogous to the SaaS startup boom that happened in the previous gen of tech startups. Initial costs went down and platform access went up.
Before the pearl clutching starts - yes I’m Black.
Maybe they shouldn't. Maybe word of mouth from among those in your circle of friends that have good taste is enough. I'm not sure that blockbuster cinema reaching millions is tenable, or a good thing.
As for "watching content"... yuck, I hate the word "content".
Summary: it's okay to talk about "content" if you're a "content plumber" like some kind of backend video engineer or sysadmin, someone whose job is to help the bits get to the viewers and doesn't need to care what the bits represent. It's not okay if you're a director, actor or viewer, someone who's actually interacting with the the specific piece of content.
looking at the last 4 years of world events, I think some people already have some nostalgia for a shared cultural experience, instead of everyone being in their own algorithmically and socio-culturally / demographically segregated bubbles. Or maybe it's just looking back with rose colored glasses shrug
I can imagine back then eagerly awaiting a new release. Now, who cares. Some depressing trauma story of someone I can't relate to or rehashed superhero flick. Yawn.
Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity.
For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.
Books are a great example - even popular books will now have a readership in the tens of thousands, at most. Nobody makes money - it’s an art, not an industry.
- Box office optimizes for novelty, streamers optimize for "don't churn" - very different criteria for investment.
- Disney cannibalized the box office with Marvel Star Wars, which killed the mid market and killed innovation. This is your point. Disney's success and tentpole successes in general killed innovation and diversity and made the market more winner-takes-all. Comedy movies barely exist anymore. There are few $50-75M films now. Little original content. Now films are engineered for maximum audience penetration and maximum box office revenue. This changes how films are written and who they are written for. The answer is "everyone", and that means "safe", "predictable", and "repeatable". No gambles. Everything else has to fight for table scraps.
- End of ZIRP puts us back in 2000. Money used to be free. Now it's expensive. It's not as easy to underwrite productions anymore. Less innovation.
- Dopamine machines fit into your pocket and suck up time and attention. Gaming is also huge now. Less people going to the movies because plenty of alternatives exist.
- The $400 80'' plus Netflix versus the expensive theater, concessions, and rude people have made theaters unattractive. Theaters are where film margins come from. Without that revenue, expensive movies will be scaled back.
- Labor costs less in Europe and Asia, even with ample tax subsidy. The LA and American jobs and infrastructure are drying up. These are lifelong careers that are ending.
- Global audiences want global stories. American culture isn't local, and local talent can now make high quality productions. Asia is turning out banger after banger.
- Youth want youth mediums. Movies feel slow and boring. TikTok is where it's at.
- AI is now a thing.
All of the fundamentals have changed.
I will debate one point you raised:
> most-attractive people
Most people prefer to look at attractive people. It's an almost universal preference. Tried and tested throughout time. In film, those attractive people also need charisma.
Obviously.
The original Top Gun (1986) was describe at the time as the US Navy's most successful recruiting campaign ever, noted in this 2004 account citing 1990 correspondence with then Secretary of Defence Dick Cheney: <https://archive.org/details/operationhollywo00robb/page/180>. Similarly endless war, cowboy, biblical, and rom-com films of that period.
It can, sure. However, I will not pay to be lectured to on topics I have no interest getting lectured on. I'll keep my money, they can keep the sermon. Let's see who has more to gain from listening to the other. If they want my money, what I want to hear/see matters a whole lot more than what they want to preach to me.
They simply forgot the golden rule: he who has the gold -- makes the rules. Let them rediscover it.
Attendance drops at movie theatres is irrelevant. Most people have watched movies and tv shows at home for years.
Hollywood will be fine.