The CEO of one of the high-tech companies I worked for in my career used to say that a company needed to re-invent itself every three years to avoid becoming obsolete. While I have found that to be good advice, someone needs to tell the movie theater business because they are becoming obsolete very quickly.
We used to go to the movies nearly every weekend. Sometimes we would eat at the mall food court before going in. We saw movies of all kinds. Since the pandemic, however, we have been to a movie theater only four or five times. In five years. And that was only because we wanted to see something on the really big screen. From the empty lobby we saw, ours was a typical experience.
A New Way of Thinking
Instead of innovating, changing the model, improving the experience and doing their best to make moviegoing attractive again, the industry is going in the opposite direction.
Why? I don’t know for sure but I think the culprit is the old “doing things the way we’ve always done them,” but on steroids. Theaters have to stop thinking, “How can we get people back in the theater?” and start thinking, “How do we get people to want to go to the movies?”
Ease of Access to the Movie Theater
Bill Maher has demonstrated how technology changed the simple process of retrieving one’s car from a parking valet, making it both unnecessarily complex and off-putting to the customer. The same dynamic applies here.
Going to the movies used to work like this:
- Go to the theater.
- Buy a ticket from the ticket counter.
- Buy popcorn at the concession stand.
- Give the ticket to an usher.
- Walk in and find a seat.
Simple. Why? Because no technology was involved. Now, however, going to the movies works like this:
- Download an app.
- Set up an account with User ID and Password.
- Select your movie time.
- Purchase a particular seat from those available.
- Pay for the ticket.
- Go to the theater.
- Get your ticket authorized at the concession stand and buy popcorn.
- Walk in and find your assigned seat.
Five steps have expanded into eight steps. Granted, you only do the first two steps once, which leaves six instead of five. But the process still feels more complex. Before you can even leave the house, you have to fiddle with the app. Remember your UID and Password. Prove you’re not a robot. Hope the app doesn’t glitch somewhere and leave your purchase hanging. Etc.
The Movie Theater Customer Experience
One of the pleasures of going to the movie theater was sharing the experience with others. Sometimes you went with friends or just met someone you knew on the popcorn line. We would chat with the ticket seller at our cineplex because we shared a love for science fiction movies. On the way out, we might talk to the people around us about what the ending meant or what a character really did.
The process above eliminates three person-to person interactions, replacing employees with software. These days the theater is nearly empty with few people in the corridors or the seats.
It can be fun to laugh with everyone else in the theater, scream at the same jump scare, or experience silent awe with hundreds of others. The experience just isn’t the same in an empty theater.
Moving the Movies
Like us, most of those folks have moved the movie experience into the living room. We have replaced old sets and small screens with big wall-mounted TVs. Some have added excellent sound systems. Why go through all the hassle of going to the theater when you can experience the movie without paying a lot of money for tickets and snacks, getting a babysitter, driving in the rain or waiting for a subway.
In the last five years, we have saved a lot of money by staying home and making our own popcorn. I think many people have done the same.
The movie theater industry has its work cut out for it. To succeed, they have to figure out what can make people want to come back to the theater. It won’t be easy. (Hint: make better movies.) But if they fail, movie theaters will go the way of New York City after the zombie apocalypse.
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I first wrote about this in 2021 during th epandemic. As far as I can tell, not much has changed.