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The Theatrical Industry Will Recover With More Movies and More Competition (Guest Column)
Patrick Corcoran proposes that for the theatrical movie business to thrive, it needs more titles and more competition.
It’s a tradition at the end of the summer to opine on lessons learned about what kinds of movies worked and why, and to extrapolate from that “what audiences want.” This focus is always too narrow and tries to prove too much. The results in the domestic market are exorbitant film terms, limited flexibility on screen programming – distributors demand every showtime on booked screens whether or not another film might play better at certain times throughout the week, no flexibility on pricing due to regional per caps that set a de facto floor on what exhibitors can charge, and excessive minimum runs that exhaust potential audiences in smaller markets and obliterate profits by week three. By contrast, European theatrical markets with robust local film industries have returned to positive EBITDA and cash flow with many territories all or nearly recovered based on box office in 2023 compared to 2019.
Or read this on Variety