It's Expensive to Watch a Movie but It's Worth It

The drastic decline of moviegoers is a major concern for the film industry. It's quite shocking that so few people watch movies in theaters anymore. To put it in perspective, Jay Epstein mentioned that "in 1948, 65%, (90 million Americans) of the population watched movies compared to only 10 percent of today's population (30 million Americans)"(Epstein 1). The box office in 2005 has significantly declined in the third quarter by about 7% compared to 2004 and by about 10% in admissions (CNN Entertainment 1). Even though people still watched big budget films like Spiderman 2 and Star Wars, films don't seem to draw people into the theaters anymore.

The increase in movie ticket and concession prices turned many away from the cinema. The average cost of seeing a movie is about $6.31 compared to the cost of $.36 in 1948 or even the price of $4.35 in 1995 (NATO 1). With the rising cost of movie tickets, people start to wonder if the movie that they'd usually go see is really "worth the money to watch it." Naturally, the high price to see a movie creates even higher expectations of it. The cinema's "true money maker", concessions, tend to cost anywhere from $3-5 for soda or popcorn. Candy's not cheap either, usually costing about $2-3. The average profit of movie theaters like Regal Cinemas from concessions is about $2.45 (IBIS World 1). Basically every time you step into a movie theater, you're going to lose $9 so how many movies can you really afford to watch?

The rise of other sources of entertainment hasn't made it any easier for the movie industry. Theaters used to be one of the only sources of entertainment for people in the past, but the rise of computers, videogames, and the internet have also made it significantly harde...

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... financial loss to the consumer, the industry can't really do anything about it. To make the high-quality movies that people crave, the industry has to pay at least $53 million dollars to entertain its audience as well as split some of its hard-earned money with the cinemas and actors. The industry needs the audience just as much as the audience needs the movie industry. When people aren't watching movies the industry doesn't make as many movies, less movies are distributed to the television and rental industries, and ticket prices go up to compensate for that. Not watching films just manages to eliminate a form of entertainment, hurting the general public in the long run. Last, you wouldn't be able to use alternate forms of entertainment to download movies from the internet if someone didn't put in the money, time, and effort into making a movie for you to download.