An idea whose time has come ?
Making movies is an expensive proposition and so is watching movies for that matter. In LA the avg cost of a movie ticket is 10 dollars and from what I remember a multiplex ticket in Bombay costs around 200 bucks. That’s a lot of money for what will always be the core audience of films ie the youth. As a consequence of such high prices I’m not able to watch a lot of films theatrically even though I’d dearly love to. Instead I wait for the DVD release so that I can get it on my Netflix or borrow a screener from my friends who work in the Industry. I also occasionally end up buying DVDs with my last purchase being a little known thriller called “The Young Americans”.
Now when it comes to my decision about which film to watch in the hall the deciding factor is whether the film has enough production value and a larger than life canvas that it would be foolish indeed to not watch it on a giant screen. A film like “The Dark Knight”, “Wall-E” or even “Jodha Akbar” for that example. As a consequence of this philosophy I have yet to watch a lot of films which are low budget indie stuff which I would love to see but have to wait for a while.
There is another option also available to me and that’s a second run theatre which is only a couple of blocks away from where I live. Second run means that the theatre gets the movie prints 2-3 weeks after general release. What happens is that after the initial weeks the number of screens being played in the big theatre chains get reduced and the extra prints are sent to the second run theatres where the show the films for quite cheap. This particular theatre shows films for 5 dollars which is an acceptable price for me at least.
Happily enough the theatre also shows a lot of first run Hindi films and it saves me making a road trip to Artesia even if I do pay the full price for the film which is 8 dollars. They also show a lot of foreign and indie stuff and hold special screenings of old classics. I was as happy as a pig in shit when last month they showed a brand new print of “Blade Runner”, the first time I had ever watched it on a big screen.
Now here is my idea and I dunno how practical it is in India but at least in NYC and LA there are a lot of places which practices this business plan. Let’s take the example of a film like TDK. Cost around 200 million to produce and market with just domestic rentals in excess of 500 million. A film like this cost me 11 bucks and I would have gladly paid double that. Actually a lot of people did to watch the film in IMAX.
Now on the pther end of the spectrum I saw a trailer for a little indie film shot on digital based around the lives of Ethiopian immigrants. Personally I have zilch interest in the subject matter but the trailer looked interesting and the ticket only cost 4 dollars. I didn’t end up going to watch it for one reason or another but it got me thinking. Supposing that film was made on a budget of 100k then it would just need to make 250k for it to be declared a hit.
A very crude rule of thumb in judging whether a film makes it money back or not is that if that for every rupee or dollar spent it needs to make 2 and a half times the amount coz distribtution and marketing costs are so high. As an example “Tropic Thunder” is still in the red coz just the production budget was 90 million and it hasn’t earned back enough to be declared a hit.
Now every film isn’t Tropic Thunder TDK or even Rock On which is the last hindi film I saw. I was just wondering whether it would be a good idea to have staggered ticket rates for films depending on their budgets. It would probably be a logistical nightmare and the finances would take some serious figuring out but I think that it might be a stopgap solution to safeguard the interests of indie cinema. A certain amout of protectionism if you will.
There are a lot of films I want to see but won’t pay 10 dollars but 5 dollars is an acceptable amount for me to watch a chamber drama without grand production values. It sure beats the hell out of waiting for the DVD release or downloading it off the internet. The theatre near my place is profitable enough for me to think that just perhaps this is a sustainable business practice in the Indian metros at least where there are enough patrons of quality indie cinema.
Of course I could be totally wrong but I do think that a hypothetical film starring stalwarts like Naseer , Om Puri and KK Menon might find a much larger audience if the multiplex ticket was priced at Rs 100 instead of Rs 200, at which price Singh is King is a much better proposition for the majority of the audience.I have nothing for or against SIK as I haven’t seen the film but honestly if a family were to go out and pay a thousand bucks SIK does seem more attractive on paper at least.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I think your idea has great potential. Just now saw the collections of Mumbai Meri jaan a lil over 4 crores and the movie is a flop. Now I saw the movie with 3 other friends paying 800 bucks for it. The theater was 60% occupied on a first day night show. Last week collections dropped by 60%. The major reason is nobody is ready to pay 200 bucks for MMJ eventhough the reviews are good. Had it been 100 or something I am sure the movie must have sustained till the third week too and raked in more money.
Another idea which had huge potential was budget multiplexes but the soaring rentals killed the momentum.
Hey you raised a issue which needs to be focussed upon.Here in mumbai they screen foreign at so oddtimes and such rates college going youth like me can,t afford it and ultimately i have to download or pirated cds of the movie.
I am glad I don’t stay in Bby…Good seats in theatres in Hyderabad still cost around 100 bucks only…
In Delhi, morning shows can be as cheap as Rs 75. I think there’s one multiplex which charges Rs 80/ticket on Thursdays. So it may not be logistically impossible to have staggered rates.
Multiplexes overcharge audiences by default imo. I saw TDK at PVR last month, and the sound was utter crap. The sound system at Siri Fort Auditorium can give every multiplex a run for their money, as I found out during Osian.
wat makes matters worse is tat, first week ticket rates are rs.250/- and rs.300/- in multiplexes; so as to boost up the collections of big-starcast movies.
i had to see OSO, SiK and TZP @ these rates. only from 2nd week onwards the ticket prices drop to rs.150/- [so called nominal rates]. and tats not all, add the pepsi+popcorn :(
Aren’t multiplex tickets in India priced according to the time of the day and the production value of the movie?
Isn’t the system you are proposing already in place in India?