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Comment by thrusong | Hacker News Reader

One of the most frustrating things for me regarding ticket prices is that no theatres in my hometown (Winnipeg, Manitoba) offer matinee pricing anymore.

I'm guessing this is possibly because of the Cineplex monopoly since they bought out Famous Players.

I get so pissed off with paying $16 to see a movie by myself in an empty auditorium during the day when it used to be $8 a seat. What happened to supply and demand?

As for the whole Netflix = consumable content thing, I completely agree. Maybe they come up with a good first season because of big data... there's no overall plan where to take the story and usually the follow up seasons are terrible.

Look at a show like Santa Clarita Diet- I'm positive that show had absolutely no idea how to explain anything or how to wrap it up.

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Yikes, $16, that's terrible. Movies in Cambridge, MA (includes many indie and foreign selections) can be had for $9 if you go to a matinee, or buy in books of 25, or patronize a local restaurant. They also have give away free ticket giveaways about once a month. The theater on the opposite side of town has a $4.75 matinee every Tuesday.

When I was a kid in the mid 70s movies cost $3.00 in the Midwest. Westegg says that inflation is up 10x since then. Any movie less than $20 is actually a bargain. However, my dad's salary was 7,000x a movie ticket (Midwest CS professor before salaries exploded).

When I was a kid in the 90's, I could see a movie for $1.50 in the evenings or $1 for a matinee ... in the midwest. They weren't first run movies, but rather movies that were in between their time in the movies and when they went to video. I'm guessing a few of them might have been on HBO during that time frame, but it really didn't matter.

Some years later, that theater quit doing the second run movies and switched to regular movies. I feel kind of lucky that it was after I moved away and had basically quit going to theaters anyway.

I'd probably go more often if things were of similar cheapness. The low cost also meant that I'd be more willing to see comedies and take chances on other movies that don't truly benefit from a large screen and sound system. I also wasn't all that out of sorts if the movie wasn't very good since even at that time, it wasn't much money.

I truly think the advantage of movies in the 70's and early 80's was the lack of popular home video. If you didn't see the movie, you missed out. And I think that helped afford somewhat higher prices, though they didn't need to charge less for second showings as they used to do (Disney cartoons, for example).

You make some interesting points regarding the current exhibition business. Before, Hollywood had a monopoly over the cinemas. Between 70 to 90 per cent of ticket sales would go to the studio of the film, hence the expensive food.

But, when the industry switched to digital projectors, the studios offered the VPF (virtual print fee) where cinemas got to keep a big chunk of the ticket sales to offset the cost of the projectors.

You could equip a 35mm film booth for as little as $7500 using old gear. Brand new was about $50,000 while digital projectors debuted at $100,000 and up.

Now, the theatres are keeping more of the ticket sales (50-70%) and they're charging for all sorts of "innovations" or upgrades (3D, ultra giant screens, fake IMAX screens, Dolby Atmos sound). All in 20-year-old multiplexes from the late-90's/early-00's expansion boom.

Did you have to pay a surcharge for stadium seating? Surround sound? Cupholders? No.

I think the current cinema chains are ripe for disruption.

I still see movies for $6 a pop in central Massachusetts. (They just recently increased their price from $5.) You can't see movies there when they first come out, but they serve beer and cheap burgers.

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