For once, you can afford a ticket and concessions.
You read that right; this September 3rd is the newly minted National Cinema Day. For this special day, 3000 theaters across the country, including the likes of AMC, will offer tickets for the low price of $3. And it’s not just the theaters, as major film studios are also involved. So, chances are that you’re near a participating theater.
“After this summer’s record-breaking return to cinemas, we wanted to do something to celebrate moviegoing,” said Cinema Foundation president Jackie Brenneman. “We’re doing it by offering a ‘thank you’ to the moviegoers that made this summer happen, and by offering an extra enticement for those who haven’t made it back yet.”
Granted, you’d be forgiven for thinking the whole thing is antithetical. After all, both theaters and studios took some massive blows to their bottom lines during the COVID lockdowns. But when you consider the fact that the streaming sphere is suffering parallel effects to tech right now (lesser or not), it makes a bit more sense. They want you to go back to theaters, as that’s where they make a better profit than streaming. After all, your $10-$20/month may make a nice bonus for films they’ve already produced, but there’s definitely less to go around on first run or made for streaming content from that subscription fee.
And, they may not be wrong. As Top Gun: Maverick and Dune have shown, people are willing to return to theaters. At least, they will for the right movie. Moreover, studios may be waking up to the fact that short (~45 day) theater windows may have been shooting them in the foot. So getting people to stop fearing the water may be their best course of action, and offering tickets for less than a third of their normal price is some enticing bait. Not to mention the fact that theater chains are more than happy to lay that bait down; Regal may be going through Chapter 11 restructuring, and it’s hard to imagine the others doing too much better at the tail end of the worldwide mess. We’ll see how effective it is in time, though.
Source: Engadget
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