Can Theatrical Release Be Saved?
Should it be saved?
My family and I recently attended the much-anticipated release of Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” at our local Cineplex. We arrived on time, settled in with our popcorn…and were subsequently treated to 30 minutes of mundane advertising and a slew of ridiculously loud trailers; many of which were wildly inappropriate and mismatched for a family audience. The movie finally started 40 minutes after the listed start time, but by then I was frustrated and angry. It took all of my strength to stop from walking out and to quiet the now familiar “I could have just watched this on Netflix” refrain that was running through my brain.
To say that the current movie-going experience is sub-optimal would be an understatement. Be it theatergoers talking on their phones (and/or texting), blaring and over-cranked sound or the afore-mentioned advertising, it’s hard to come up with a compelling reason to leave home and go to the theaters. As I always tell my clients, the barrier to entry for your movie isn’t just the $15 ticket price. It’s also the cost of the sitter (for those of us with kids), parking and over-priced concessions…all of which pushes that $15 ticket closer to $100. Not long ago, going to the movies was popular, affordable entertainment but it feels like the modern cinema experience is becoming an increasingly niche business.
On the one hand I can sympathize with theater chains. Many of them went bankrupt during Covid and those still standing find themselves on the brink of financial collapse. The popularity of streaming and its relative cost benefits puts theater chains at a distinct disadvantage, and it doesn’t help that consumers can get an 85 inch flat screen TV and a decent home sound system for very little money. Meanwhile, studios are putting out ever fewer movies and those that manage to garner a theatrical release tend to fall into the same superhero/action/tentpole morass that has left audiences with increasingly fewer choices.
And yet in spite of this, there’s nothing like going to the movies. I fell in love over “E.T.;” laughed so hard at “Ghostbusters” that my friends and I got thrown out and wept openly at “Titanic.” (Yeah, I know. Sue me…) It pains me to think that these experiences are going extinct and that an entire generation is going to know nothing more than watching movies at home and on their phones. So yes, theatrical release movies are worth saving. And we need to save them. But how?
First, theater chains should stop taking advantage of moviegoers just because they’re a captive audience. Limited, targeted advertising might help to even out the revenue stream for theater chains without alienating the audience. And turn down the volume on trailers. The thinking within studios is that an audience is more likely to remember the movie if they grab our attention by cranking up the sound. But if “loud” is all you’ve got, then you have bigger problems than the trailer.
Which leads us back to the script. Here at Story Maverick we believe that story is everything. You don’t need marketing tricks or speaker-shattering trailers to reach an audience if you’ve got a great story to tell. So if you have a script at any stage of development, come see me at www.storymaverick.net and let’s discuss how to make your story the very best it can be.
