'No Happy Ending for Movie Theatres', Argues WSJ - No Matter Who Wins Warner Bros. (msn.com) 74
Regardless of who ends up owning Warners Bros., "the outlook for theatrical movies is dimming," writes a Wall Street Journal tech columnist, noting that this year's U.S. box office of $8.3 billion (as of December 25) "is a bit below last year's and well below prepandemic levels of around $11 billion."
Warner has historically been one of Hollywood's largest producers of theatrical films, averaging about 22 releases annually in the pre-Covid years of 2015 to 2019, according to data from Comscore. Its franchises include "Harry Potter," the DC Comics characters and "Lord of the Rings." But the current bidding war between Netflix and Paramount Skydance means Warner's future will ultimately be in the hands of either a streaming giant with a longstanding distaste for movie theaters, or a rival studio that will carry a sky-high debt load and therefore a need to sharply cut costs... [Though later the article cites a Wedbush analyst's observation that the current theatrical slate has already been negotiated through 2029, "so any buyer would have to honor those contracts" with theatrical releases for Warner films "for at least the next four years."]
Investors seem deeply skeptical. Cinemark shares have shed about 18% of their value over the past month, while rival exhibitor AMC Entertainment is down more than 30%. Morgan Stanley recently downgraded Cinemark to a neutral rating, with analyst Ben Swinburne noting that concern over Netflix's commitment to theatrical distribution and release windows "is likely to cap the multiple" on Cinemark's stock.... [T]ime hasn't been on the side of movie theaters for a while now, and a takeover of Warner Bros. won't turn back that clock.
Investors seem deeply skeptical. Cinemark shares have shed about 18% of their value over the past month, while rival exhibitor AMC Entertainment is down more than 30%. Morgan Stanley recently downgraded Cinemark to a neutral rating, with analyst Ben Swinburne noting that concern over Netflix's commitment to theatrical distribution and release windows "is likely to cap the multiple" on Cinemark's stock.... [T]ime hasn't been on the side of movie theaters for a while now, and a takeover of Warner Bros. won't turn back that clock.
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the movies being produced suck. I haven't gone to the theater in decades, but almost without exception every movie ad I see just screams suck. Yes, there are exceptions (A Beautiful Mind and Bladerunner 2049 for example), but on the whole, movies just suck. The stories aren't compelling, the acting is average, and the supposed comedy is boring.
Unless/until Hollywood gets back to making movies rather than using the formulaic crap they've been using, things will not improve.
They have only themselves to blame when theaters go under.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't take this the wrong way, hehe, but you sound like a Gen Xer. Everything you wrote is spot on. Here's the thing. You've pointed out that you haven't been to the theater in decades, presumably back when movies were being made that interested you compared to today. Thing is, the people making the movies are still making movies for the exact same demographic and you've aged out of it.
A huge amount of movies are made for the 15-30 crowd. They are use the same formulaic style and scripts, generally are not all that creative or deep. This approach to movie creation isn't just limited to movies. I'd say video games are in the exact same spot and so is a lot of music. Restaurants, music venues, lots of activities of the sort, are all geared towards this demographic. For all the singles and DINKS.
I have a theory for why this happens. It's all about expectations and effort versus reward. Let me explain. The expectations of a 40+ year old versus a 15 are enormously different, especially when it comes to media/games/internet. You can give a 15 year old pure garbage dressed up with shiny and they'll eat that shit up and ask for seconds and thirds. The 40 year old knows what shit looks like and also on top of that has certain quality of life thresholds that must be met. In short, it's a lot harder to separate a 40 year old and their money then it is to get that money out of a child or their parents.
It's much more profitable to serve up bullshit to kids that can just squeeze their parents for money to give over to the machine.
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I agree with everything you wrote, but when "serving up bullshit to kids" in a theatre isn't profitable anymore (the point of this entire discussion), it would be time for the theatres to try and reach new audiences. They could show old movies, even black and white things in public domain, or arthouse, genre, foreign movies, things which have a very minimal cost in royalties compared to their usual Hollywood, but would attract 40+ viewers, or hipsters, or art students, and increase the food sales, which is
Re: Duh (Score:2)
Re: Duh (Score:2)
I saw many movies at the cinema in 2025 that I really enjoyed including Captain America, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four, Mission Impossible, Jurassic World, Now You See Me: Now You Don't, Tron Ares, the Springsteen biopic and more. The only reason I haven't seen avatar yet is that I am on holidays and plan to see it back home at the cheap cinema.
And I am old enough to have grey hairs in my beard...
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And there's the problem. Absolutely none of the movies you mentioned I had/have any interest in seeing. They do absolutely nothing for me. The closest would be Tron, but having seen the previews I realized it would be a shell of even the second Tron movie and made simply for the sake of using the name.
Re: Duh (Score:2)
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My GenZ daughter doesn't have much interest in movies as an entertainment format, she likes better short form entertainment, like 24 min episodes from TV and very short clips from social media.
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Not really. Our kids are bailing out of it too.
Just the other day I was at Christmas party by friends with two boys - 17 and 15. We spent the afternoon playing Teken 3 on a PS1 simulator, playing music and discussing Minecraft visual enhancement mods. The last thing these kids saw and greatly enjoyed was Shingeki-no Kyojin.
They quit on cinema after seeing the old Indiana Jones films with dad, and then seeing the last abomination of that franchise.
Myself, I just celebrated the 10th anniversary of my boycott,
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"Thing is, the people making the movies are still making movies for the exact same demographic and you've aged out of it. A huge amount of movies are made for the 15-30 crowd."
There are more 15-30's people now than there were in GenX 15-30's time. If aging out is the issue for GenX, why are sales still not higher?
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Sorry, the Bladerunner redo was a loser, too. Original still great.
Tickets (Score:5, Interesting)
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Given the prices they charge I'm surprised they're not making a profit. And that's my contribution to theories about why theatres are losing business, friend of mine worked out that for the price of taking his family (two adults, two kids) to see a film once in a theatre it was much cheaper to "buy" (well, rent) a copy of the movie on BluRay and watch it whenever he wanted, all without having to deal with getting everyone to where it was screening, parking, etc.
Same for me, it's cheaper for me to buy the
No shit (Score:1)
So nobody under 60 (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a major crisis coming that we don't talk about. When the baby boomer generation dies off, which is soon, they aren't going to leave much inheritance because what they don't spend on RVs and mimosas is going to get spent on America's healthcare system.
And because we have paid anyone from the rest of the generations so poorly for so long they just don't have enough money to keep a consumer economy going.
This is on top of all the automation that's been ripping apart middle class jobs and AI which is going to rip through the white collar space.
I don't think 40% unemployment is impossible. But there's going to be strong resentment between people who are basically unemployable due to automation and AI and people who are still needed to work. So it's not like we're going to build some kind of luxury gay space communism Utopia or whatever.
My money is on world War 3 which eventually goes nuclear after we hand launch codes over to religious lunatics. Hopefully the superintelligence species of raccoons and/or beavers that replace humanity have a better run at it than we did
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https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2... [bls.gov]
Looks like people in the 40-60 range are spending quite a bit.
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Not rsilvergun, at 47YO he is completely broke but that's because he hasn't worked in more than 15 years now and relies exclusively of government welfare to live his miserable life.
He got let go from his call center agent job where all he had to do was to repeat things written on cue cards to his customers but he began telling his customers the same rants he posts here instead so they had to fire him.
Instead of getting proper mental health treatment, he decided it was better for him to post on Slashdot all
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Wait, is he from Singapore or not? Do they have welfare there?
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Gen Xers also have a lot of debt: https://money.com/generation-with-most-debt-gen-x/ [money.com]
You're making a mistake (Score:1)
What I'm talking about is things like movie tickets, restaurants, travel and other things that aren't bare minimum survival and that our entire economy requires q
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None of that refutes the data. And read it again, you'll find that actual "younger people" (18+) are not spending anywhere near as much. You just got your data wrong, no need to dig that hole any deeper.
Okay but then that doesn't help you (Score:2)
Young people might have a brief period of time when they are forced to spend more on necessities and have less dis
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Glad to see he has stopped focusing on the Jews for all his problems.
There was no happy ending (Score:4, Interesting)
Warner Brothers/Time Warner/Warner Discovery was choking on its own vomit which is why it was on the selling block in the first place. Why did anyone expect a good outcome?
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Hardly. Warner Bros content creation division is hugely profitable which is why companies are fighting over wanting to buy it and overbidding in the process. They are on the selling block due to taking on an insurmountable debt load though the Discovery purchase.
Why did anyone expect a good outcome?
Your post is non-sequitur. You claim the content is bad, then the *good* outcome would be not having it in the movies. Your point is making the complete opposite of what is being presently discussed, that the *good* outcome would be Warner Bros not
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The insurmountable debt was exactly why the company was going broke.
We have a movie theater at home (Score:5, Interesting)
If movie theaters want to survive they need to do what they did back when TV was first invented, offer an experience you can't get in your home. Back then TV pushed movies to go wide screen and "big", offering an obvious difference to the small little square screen in your home, and it worked for decades until technology caught up. Some new technology, like holographic movies or some similar cool thing, that you could get in a theater but not at home (for a while) would need to be ginned up for movie theaters to survive. A reason, in short, to go all the way to a theater and spend that $11 per person needs to appear.
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Giant TVs are cheap relative to the average high income country, why pay $11 USD to see a movie with a bunch of other people, outside having a bunch of kids you need to distract for an hour and a half (the big theater hits were mostly kids movies this year), when you can get the same experience in the convenience of your own house for cheaper?
there is still some reasons to go to the movies. You hear not only with your ears but also with your body (i.e. the sound system is superior, even if you have atmos at home). Also, some movies with high production values are better viewed in the Cinema.
Then, there is also iMAX and VistaVision (think, the brutalist) movies nowadays.
Finally, sometimes you want the "social experience" of going to the movie theater for watherver reason.
But I concur with you, nowadays there is very few precious movies I go to th
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Add half an hour of driving and parking, 10+ mins of getting herded through the crowds at the entrance, with delays designed to make you buy overpriced popcorn, 30 mins of adverts for new movies, half an hour again of driving back.
All of that at a fixed time of the day, while at home you can watch a movie (from the disk or via streaming, not broadcast TV) at a time of your choosing, including pauses.
Wrong kind of movie company (Score:4, Funny)
There are other companies that have happy endings. Vivid Entertainment, Wicked Pictures, and similar.
Re: fuck theaters (Score:2)
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100" tv's
If you're happy with 100" TVs then don't go to the theatre. The theatre is for those people who correctly identify that literally no amount of money you spend in your living room can match the cinema quality. Literally no amount. Even standards which sounds the same (like Dolby Atmos) are very different between the cinema and your home sound system with the former not available for consumer purchase.
As for snacks, just don't buy them?
As for people on their phones, maybe done live in a shithole where people
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If you're happy with 100" TVs then don't go to the theatre. The theatre is for those people who correctly identify that literally no amount of money you spend in your living room can match the cinema quality. Literally no amount.
It's true. With the speakers I have at home, there's no way I can blow out my fucking eardrums like the idiots at the movie theater are trying to do. On the other hand, I can easily make the picture match what they have at the theater. All I have to do is turn down the color saturation.
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No one is blowing out your eardrums because they are idiots. There is a defined standard for volume that cinemas abide by. Being a little snowflake is your problem.
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There is a defined standard for volume that cinemas abide by.
AHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA
[the audience is listening]
AHAHhaAAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA
What happens if regulators say no? (Score:2)
What happens to Warner Bros if regulators say no to both Netflix and Paramount? Would Warner Bros be able to survive?
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What happens to Warner Bros if regulators say no to both Netflix and Paramount? Would Warner Bros be able to survive?
Yes they will. All this sale saga started with an unsolicited bid (by Paramount). They were not actively selling themselves. They wanted to put themselves up for sale ONLY after they completed the separation of the Movie Studio and TV stuff.
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What happens is someone buys a few million Trumpcoin, cancels a bothersome comedian or reporter, and suddenly the deal is approved.
Re: What happens if regulators say no? (Score:2)
Even trump cant force the EU to approve this deal if they say no...
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Why is what the EU thinks relevant? Even if these were European companies, the TikTok treatment could be applied, until they were no longer European companies (or no longer operating in the US.)
Re: What happens if regulators say no? (Score:2)
All 3 companies (Warner Bros, Paramount and Netflix) have subsidiaries in various EU countries and are most definitely subject to EU competition laws. Whether the EU blocks things outright, imposes conditions or allows it to sail right through is the question.
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And why wouldn't the TikTok treatment work to force them to divest those subsidiaries?
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Why is what the EU thinks relevant?
I am not sure paramount, or netflix, or warner would like to stop operating in the EU. Which is what would happen if the EU regulators said no, and they went on with a merger anyway... ditto for the UK, japan, india, korea, brazil or china....
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They can be forced to withdraw from one or more markets.
You're stuck in last year's free trade paradigm. Now, the paradigm is Iron Curtain.
Movies suck nowadays (Score:3)
I'm sure the decline in attendance has nothing to do with the fact that movies suck and ticket prices are at what would be extornist rates for young people? Except they have nothing to extort people with. Make better movies, reduce ticket and snack prices. People will start going to the theaters again.
Or, hear this out... (Score:2)
The Warner people convince the NetFlix people to release NETFLIX's MOVIES on a longer theatrical window, while the Warner movies get a slammler one, leading to a harmonized theatrical release Window, slightly smaller than Warner's window pre-merger, but SIGNIFICANTLY bigger than Netflix's pre-merger window.
The only fly in this oniment is that, if Netflix's folks are wise, there will not be a "Netflix movies" side and a "warner movies side". It should be one and only one, fused studio. And maybe the volume o
Movie theaters have always sucked (Score:1)
Bad views from more than half the seats.
Jerks talking on the phone. Or to their seatmates.
People getting up on front of you to use the toilet or get a snack.
People eating their snacks loudly and/or messily.
Ads for an arbitrary length of time before the film actually starts.
Ample opportunity to pick up bed bugs and lice.
And oh look, a 40" flat screen in my own living room that shows the same thing, with a pause button.
So theaters are dying, and so it physical media (Score:2)
With fewer BR/4KBR releases, and fewer places selling what is released, and fewer players available, and now theaters dying out, it's like the studios don't want you to consume their content unless you subscribe to their streaming platforms. I don't see this as a good strategy on their part.
I don't need a bunch of subscriptions, so I don't have a bunch of subscriptions. That's not going to change. I don't believe I'm alone.
The best will survive (Score:2)
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In cities with a large enough population ...
I live within driving distance of one of the few 30+ true 70mm capable IMAX theaters in the entire world. They will survive (for the experience is glorious, if the film is formatted for it) for a while, but few directors still target those productions and those audiences. The Cameron's, Nolan's, Spielberg's are a dying breed. Film (not movies, but film) will be worse off for those other theaters demise, but such is the reality of affordable home theater experiences (for most, a good TV is "good enough")
Theaters are dinosaurs... (Score:3)
...that deserve to fade away.
Some may survive as art houses or restaurants/bars with entertainment, but the home theater is the best way to watch stuff.
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no one cares about WB, even Ellison (Score:3)
The goal is to control CNN.
maybe part of it (Score:1)
It could be that part of the problem for movie theaters conceptually is that they are consensual public events. There's a strong element of the social contract to movie going; we agree to share a space to ostensibly enjoy a thing together.
Unfortunately, the technological impetus compelling us to do so has faded: we no longer need gather physically in one room because only collectively can our purchasing tickets that way fund the equipment and space capable of displaying that production at is highest quality
New revenue stream (Score:1)
So Theaters need a new revenue stream, I think that is a given. the technology has evolved to the point that I can sit at home with DTS certified equipment and a 100" panel or an even larger projector screen and enjoy movies for thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands of dollars. I can pause them, my drinks are cheaper, and there are no morons on their cell phones. If you have a family of 4, that home investment is paid off in 15-20 movies, plus you can game on it and watch anything you like.
Would you p
It's Just Technology (Score:2)
People complaining that "movies suck these days" are simply experiencing survivorship bias from old movies. There was plenty of dreck produced in every era of cinema going all the way back to the "golden" pre-war days. But after 20-30 years, the bad stuff goes down the memory hole and we remember the classics of the era. It's not the content that is failing movie theaters.
The real issue is simply Technology. Until the 1980s, the movie theater was the only realistic option if you wanted to see a movie. Once
Love the theater, hate the commercials (Score:2)
I love, love, love watching movies on a big theater screen. Except the last time I went, the theater showed 30 minutes of previews for blood & gore horror movies. (The movie I was seeing was a comedy/drama, not horror.) Who the hell comes up with these ridiculous preview pairings? After the third knifing I was ready to walk out.
Making Movies Is Too Expensive (Score:2)
The studios need to stop making movies with methods that cost so much. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If you get a quality script for, as an example, a Star Wars movie, you could literally film it in someone's grandma's yard on a Betamax camcorder with a bunch of kids enacting it with the toys and action figures, and I'd turn out to the theater for that. Especially if you pass the savings onto me in the form of ticket prices. Obviously I'm exaggerating a little, but you take my point, I'm sure.
theater survival (Score:1)