How Hollywood Gets Its Soul Back the Sequel

This link is a good break down of the fears that business Hollywood has over Paramount taking Warner Bros.  It's the same fear when Disney took Fox.

The WGA in another article is condemning the merger because it will result in less jobs.  This is true but both articles don't address the problem underlying current business practices.

You've got to get people to want to come to the theatre.  Ticket prices are a barrier.  The quality of the experience is another.  Finally the content being projected is the last.  If these three things get fixed the people will come back.  

Think of this like hotel chains competing with Air BNB.  Make the experience better than some strangers extra room or house.  

The ticket prices are tied into the overall economy which can't be controlled.  But what can be controlled is the budgets in which Hollywood produces content.  We seem to be vascilating between micro budget movies and blockbusters.  No middle ground.  That ground has to come back.  Once the studio has its investment back the rest is gravy.  This in turn helps the theatres keep their costs down and the ticket prices can be adjusted.

Fixing the theatre experience seems to come down to two things.  The first is refreshment cost.  These food prices are high because only after a certain point do the theatre exhibitors get their share of the profits.  The shorter the theatrical window the smaller the return.  People don't see a good return on investment when paying for sub par food for the duration of the movie.  

I am torn about this because I think the theatrical experience should be special.  Unfortunately too many people turn this into their living room and decorum is out the window.  You can mitigate this with ushers enforcing behavior but that can be a big ask these days.  At the very least ushers need to be able to at least confirm everything is working properly with the tech and the house lights and the sound.  

The last part of this equation is the content itself.  Behavior when watching something in public is different when watching it in private, or at least it should be.  The theatrical experience should reward this.  I think we are going to head there in the future and right now these are the growing pains of evolving the theatre experience into something special.