I love Hollywood, I really do. But studios and theaters have screwed with me for the last time. I've seen maybe four movies this year (including two I reviewed). Setting aside for a moment that the movies were generally pretty bad (or okay at best), I had to pay upwards of ten bucks to see them. Then, after that particular gouging, I had to sit through ten -- 10 -- commercials! A couple of them were moderately entertaining, but I really, really hate commercials. Being basically held captive and forced to watch them is just plain bad business practice. And I can see it's going to get a lot worse:
Domestic revenues at movie theaters may fall below $9 billion for the first time since 2001 after averaging $9.3 billion over the last three years. Factoring in higher admission prices, the number of tickets sold is expected to finish at about 1.4 billion, the lowest since 1997.
So revenues are tanking. How will they make that up? Charge more? I doubt it; people will stay away in droves if they do that. No, they'll add more commercials. And as fewer people put up with that, and stay home to use Pay Per View or Netflix (and as TVs get better, that's a pretty good option), that's a vicious cycle. So I'm done. I may still go when a movie is reviewable for my site, but that's it. I have a DVD player. I can wait.
