Official STAR WARS Saga Discussion Thread: Part 5 (1 Viewer)

[TravisR]

...and my IMAX 3D ticket for Star Wars in 2015 (at the same theater) was $23.

Man, I thought I was getting screwed at $19.

 

[dpippel]

My experience of ticket prices is that they don't necessarily correspond to inflation - my IMAX 3D ticket for Avatar in 2009 was $15, and my IMAX 3D ticket for Star Wars in 2015 (at the same theater) was $23.

At my IMAX (Harkin's Arizona Mills 25 in Tempe, AZ) an adult ticket for Avatar IMAX 3D in 2009 was $15. In 2015 I paid exactly the same price, $15, for TFA. It would seem that theater price increases are regional in nature to some extent.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Man, I thought I was getting screwed at $19.

I try to minimize the damage by using AMC Stubs rewards money when I can. There are also those AMC Gold passes that you can get at a discount (about $8 each), and then even when the theater tacks on a $6 IMAX surcharge to use the coupon, it still comes out well below the face value price.


At least with IMAX, I'm getting reserved seating, usually a better behaved audience, and IMAX has pretty good quality control. The rare occasions where something has gone wrong at an IMAX showing, if you email the Chief Quality Officer email address that's shown onscreen after every screening, they'll really step up and do whatever it takes to fix it. I don't like to complain too much, but I feel that for $23 a movie it better be perfect, and if it's not, they'll give me a pass for a future screening.


For the $15.50 that the theaters charge for 2D or the $20 that they charge for a non-IMAX 3D showing, you don't get reserved seating and there's more of a chance of there being asleep-at-the-wheel projection and an audience that doesn't behave, and theater staff that's non-responsive to issues or complaints. So at this point, the extra $3 ends up being worth it just to make sure the movie is actually shown properly.


But yeah, I wish it were less. I used to see movies I liked more than once in the theaters, and now it's very rare that I get to do it. All of the Marvel movies on 3D Blu-ray are cheaper for me to buy than to see in IMAX, and for just about everything else, be it 2D or 3D, it's cheaper to buy the disc brand new on street date than it is to see it in theaters. So instead of seeing something three times in the theater, it's now usually once on the big screen and then as many times as I want at home.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

At my IMAX (Harkin's Arizona Mills 25 in Tempe, AZ) an adult ticket for Avatar IMAX 3D in 2009 was $15. In 2015 I paid exactly the same price, $15, for TFA. It would seem that theater price increases are regional in nature to some extent.

I gotta move...

 

[Chuck Mayer]

I was using the ticket prices from the BO Mojo adjuster, so I'm certain there are quite a few "margins" unaccounted for. Living in DC, I usually pay high teens for IMAX 3D. I can't remember the last time I paid under 10, but I guarantee it was a movie I saw before 11AM.

Again, just doing some basic math for trending purposes. For funsies.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

For a quick and dirty look at Star Wars Episode 8 prospects, using the same inflation assumptions for 2017 (9.20 a ticket versus 8.43 in 2015) and adjusting the respective drops I mentioned before (TPM to AOTC or TPM to ROTS - since ROTS climbed a bit from AOTC):


Episode 8 will make almost 1300M if the drop is consistent with AOTC

Episode 8 will make 1500M if the drop is consistent with ROTS


While I think TFA is better received than TPM, I think a larger factor is how HUGE TPM was (which TFA matches). The international market has grown quite a bit as well. One thing that hurts Star Wars is that it still "splits," making almost half of it's gross domestically. That wasn't nearly as big a deal ten years ago, but it really matters now. Star Wars performs very well overseas (TFA is in the very rare B club), but it performs all out of proportion domestically. The US goes crazy for it, and the rest of the world treats it like a modern megablockbusters.


Overseas 1B club (adjusted):

Furious 7

TFA

Jurassic World

Deathly Hallows 2

Age of Ultron


Skews VERY recent, because I think that market is booming.


Oversea 1.5B club: Titanic (probably 2B adjusted). (Seriously, tangentially looking at Titanic's performance, it is INSANE)

Overseas 2B club: Avatar


The good news for Star Wars. It is upper echelon overseas, and I think it keeps it. I think it'll have normal drops domestically (like AOTC and ROTS from TPM), but I think it mostly holds its overseas audience. That will bias the BO towards overseas, but keep the net overall drop for Episode 8 at or better than my ROTS prediction above. Rogue One will give us a better sense of that. And it has a much more diverse cast, so that may help overseas as well.


But yes, still below an Avatar sequel.

 

[TravisR]

Oversea 1.5B club: Titanic (probably 2B adjusted). (Seriously, tangentially looking at Titanic's performance, it is INSANE)

Not to go too off topic but I think Titanic was the highest grossing movie in almost every country on the planet. And it did that at a completely different time in the importance of the foreign box office.

 

[Robert Crawford]

My experience of ticket prices is that they don't necessarily correspond to inflation - my IMAX 3D ticket for Avatar in 2009 was $15, and my IMAX 3D ticket for Star Wars in 2015 (at the same theater) was $23. Inflation would dictate that the amount of inflation would have raised the ticket price to about $16.60 - theater prices haven't been consistent with inflation in my experience, they've gone up far faster. A 2D ticket in 2009 would have been $9-10 by me in 2009; now, a 2D ticket costs $15.50.


I think the more interesting numbers to look at are number of tickets sold (if such numbers are even available) - that gives a much better idea of how many people are actually paying to see these things.


I don't think it's unreasonable to expect ticket prices to go up $1.20 in two years. I don't like it as a customer, but that's exactly what's happened in my area. Looking at my purchase history online real quick, I see I paid $20.50 for an IMAX 3D ticket in February 2014, and I paid $23 for one in January 2016 at the same theater. Going for 2D showings, I see I paid $14.50 for a 2D movie in December 2013, and $15.50 for a 2D movie in December 2015, again, same theater. So it looks like prices have been consistently going up $1-2 per year in my area.

At the nearest true IMAX theater I have here in mid-Michigan, such a ticket would cost $10.50 for matinee and $12.50 for evening showing.

 

[questrider]

For the two times I saw The Force Awakens in IMAX 3D (true 1.66:1 IMAX with a 70' x 43' screen) in an outer suburb of Chicago I paid $13.50 on a weekday and $16.50 on a weekend/holiday.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Jeebus! At my nearest true IMAX theater (in Atlanta), it's $19.06 for a ticket after 12 noon (they don't even have a 10am or earlier showing now that the holidays are over).

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I knew I was paying a premium living in NYC, but I didn't realize it was that much of one!

 

[Patrick Sun]

It's highway robbery down in the ATL for premium movie-going experiences...

 

[TravisR]

I knew I was paying a premium living in NYC, but I didn't realize it was that much of one!

I figured if I was paying $19 for an IMAX in the Philadelphia suburbs then a ticket in New York City would be like $73 or so. What makes the Philadelphia area so wealthy (gullible?) to have to pay so much more than the folks in the mid-west pay is beyond me though.

 

[Tino]

$20.21 here in the NYC burbs.

 

[Tim Glover]

TFA now just on one screen here in lowly Monroe, LA.....All good things must come to an end.

 

[TravisR]

Anyone near Philadelphia: the local 35mm guys are playing the original original trilogy on August 21 at noon! http://www.ticketfly.com/search/?q=exhumed+films EDIT: SOLD OUT

I've got my ticket but I'm trying not to get my hopes up because I think LFL might kibosh the screening (as has happened to them in the past).

 

[TravisR]

Anywhere near Philadelphia again: A second screening of the original original SW trilogy has been added for the weekend of August 28 at noon. http://www.ticketfly.com/event/1131229-exhumed-films-original-star-philadelphia/

I'm still figuring it'll get cancelled but I've got tickets to both screenings nonetheless.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I'll be amazed if those screenings go ahead (advertising this far in advance seems to be asking for trouble), but I'll keep my fingers crossed that it happens!

 

[TravisR]

More than 10 years ago, they tried to play the SEs and Lucasfilm even kiboshed that. A friend of mine knows one of the guys that runs the screenings and apparently, it's good to go now that Disney owns it. Until I hear the 20th Centruy Fox fanfare playing, I'll still be highly skeptical. Now that I think about it, even if the first weekend plays, I'll still expect the second weekend screening to get shut down.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

More than 10 years ago, they tried to play the SEs and Lucasfilm even kiboshed that. A friend of mine knows one of the guys that runs the screenings and apparently, it's good to go now that Disney owns it. Until I hear the 20th Centruy Fox fanfare playing, I'll still be highly skeptical. Now that I think about it, even if the first weekend plays, I'll still expect the second weekend screening to get shut down.

The last time I saw any version of "Star Wars" theatrically was in 2014 -- the Film Forum in NYC was doing an Alec Guinness retrospective, showing every film that Guinness ever made, and the only movie that they had any issue getting ahold of was (surprise, surprise) "Star Wars". In the end, the studio provided a 35mm print of the 1997 special edition, but it was apparently a nightmare for them to even get that.

It's surprising that the studio doesn't allow these movies to be shown in repertory. There are several movie theaters in NYC that show midnight movies on weekends, so if you live here, you'll have multiple chances to see Jaws, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Robocop, Blue Velvet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jurassic Park, Alien, Fight Club, The Shining, Pulp Fiction and others each year - probably once each quarter. There's no good reason for Star Wars not to be a part of that scene.