There’s a movie I’m going to see this weekend – F1.
I’ve been waiting for this movie for months.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie in a cinema.
And I make movies for a living!

Ask yourself – when did you last go to the movies?
Then ask yourself – are you going to the movies as often as you did before COVID?
I’d say the answer is – no.
The attendance figures support this.

Attendance in 2024 Compared to 2019 (pre-COVID):

• January: Down 33%
  • February: Down 17%
  • March: Down 14%
  • April: Down 38%
• Overall Attendance: Approximately 68% of 2019 levels
• Global Trend: Cinema ticket sales fell 8.8% worldwide from the previous year. 

Attendance at the cinema has fallen by one third since COVID.
That’s huge.

And anecdotally, walk into any multiplex and they’re often near empty. Go see a movie and unless it’s opening week of a blockbuster, you’re most probably one of only a handful of people in the cinema.

I’m a filmmaker. I’ve been making movies for forty years. I love movies. I used to go to the movies a minimum of two times a week. Often more. Sometimes I’d go see a movie and then when it was finished I’d go back out to the ticket stand and buy a ticket for another movie and watch that. Two movies back to back. Those days are gone. Now I’m lucky if I see two movies a month.

Why?
Why aren’t I going to the movies anymore?
Why aren’t a lot of people going to the movies anymore?
Here’s my view on it:

• There’s nothing I want to see –

When I look at what movies are playing on any given week, there’s hardly anything that excites me enough to drag me away from my big screen tv at home, with my sound bar and rear speakers, and my Netflix and Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime.

The studios keep churning out the same old stuff – franchise comic book movies and cheesy animation movies and sequels that ran their course several iterations ago. Where are the intelligent dramas? Where are the brilliant thrillers? Where are the heart-tugging laugh out loud romantic-comedies.

They’re on Netflix.
Or Apple TV+
Or Binge / HBO.

Most times when I want to go see a movie, there’s nothing for me to see. Now yes, I’m an older demographic. But I loved Barbie. I loved Elvis. I loved the Dune movies. I loved the Avatar movies. Smart beautifully crafted movies that say something and that need to be seen in a cinema.

I’ll be there opening week for F1, The Movie – not that I expect it to say anything of great political or social relevance. But it will be a spectacle and will need to be experienced in a cinema. If the Coen Bros ever make a movie together again I’ll show up for that too. But basically, on any given week, there’s virtually nothing playing that would drag me off my couch and have me go out to a cinema.

• The cinema experience is grubby and unwelcoming –

Where’s the box office? You know, that place where you go to buy your tickets.

There used to be a separate place where you used to buy your tickets, most times with a list of the movies playing and session times on a board at the back of the ticket stand. So if your first choice wasn’t available, because it was sold out or you’d missed the start of the movie, you could quickly scan the board and choose another movie. And chances are there would be another movie I’d like to see.

Now you buy your ticket at the concession stand. It stinks of popcorn – and you often have to wait behind a family that’s buying drinks and choctops and cartons of popcorn for several children.

It takes forever…

This is where the cinema experience starts.
And it only gets worse.

The cinemas themselves are often filthy. Spilled popcorn on the floor, half drunk bottles left in beverage holders on the seats, lolly wrappers littered underfoot. Many cinemas now often don’t have the staff to clean up between sessions.

More often than not, the person who sold you your ticket, and your tub of popcorn, is the person who comes in when the movie’s finished and cleans up the cinema.

The seats themselves are often old and cracked and someone told me there was mould in the seats of one chain cinema he went to recently. The floors are often sticky from where someone has spilt a drink. The carpets are tired. The bathrooms… well, I just hope the person who sold me my popcorn washed his or her hands.

Then of course there’s the actual experience of watching the film.

People texting or checking their emails or messages within your line of sight of the screen. Their lit mobile phone screen drawing your eye away from the movie. People talking. Laughing during poignant scenes.

Then there’s the cinemas that keep the film’s volume level low because of complaints that it’s too loud. Then there’s the cinemas that keep the volume too loud because people have complained that it’s too low.

Endless ads before the feature starts. And in some cinemas in America you can have a full restaurant meal while you’re watching the movie. I don’t go to the movies to sit beside someone chomping into a hamburger and slurping down a Pepsi.

It’s no wonder so many of us choose to wait till the movie hits streaming so that we can watch it on our big screen tv at home. The floors aren’t quite so sticky

• I’ll just wait till it hits Netflix –

It used to be that the “window” between when you saw a movie in the cinema and when you saw it on Netflix or some other streaming platform was months. Now in some instances it’s weeks. Sometimes during the promotion of the cinema release, if the movie has been largely financed by the streamer, it’s advertised as a Stan Original or an Apple TV+ film.

In other words, you know up front it’s going to turn up on that streamer, and probably quite quickly after the theatrical release. There’s got to be an absolutely compelling reason why you’d want to see it in the cinema rather than wait a couple of weeks to see it at home.

• it’s so expensive going to the movies –

It’s damn expensive to go see a movie.

I just checked the prices to go see F1 – the movie at a midweek session, 6:00pm for a family of four – two adults, two children. This is at the Event George St Cinema, Sydney.

Factoring in ticket prices, 3 regular sized cartons of popcorn, two ChocTops and two Cokes, the prices are:

Ticket price: $32 per adult / $26.50 per child. + booking fees.
Popcorn: $10 regular size
ChocTop Ice cream: $7.70
Coke: $7 regular size
Parking: $30

TOTAL COST: $212.80

I don’t know about you but at a time when everyone is watching what they spend, that’s a big chunk of change. How many families can afford that regularly? For a special occasion, maybe- such as a kid’s birthday – or maybe a film that the kids are desperate to see – but $200+ for a family night out at the moves? That’s not a once a week thing, that’s for sure.

• It’s an effort now to go see a movie –

It used to be that going to the movies was no big deal. It’s what you did, regularly. But COVID changed all that. COVID reset our behavioural patterning. And COVID also made a lot of us go out and buy big screen TVs with cinema home theatre sound systems.

The technology advancements in home entertainment systems, along wth the rise of the streamers, along with the reduced “windows” between a theatrical release and a platform release has created a perfect storm for the demise of the cinema going experience.

Couple that with Peak TV, where you have some of the world’s greatest cinematic filmmakers, such as David Fincher, Ridley Scott, Steven Soderbergh, Michael Mann, Jane Campion now turning to TV production making compelling dramas and thrillers, and you have even more reason to stay home, sit on your couch and reach for the remote.

A change in bevaourial patterning is hard to shift.

• How to bring audiences back into the cinema –

Make movies that people want to see in the cinema –
Give movies time to build word-of-mouth – keep them in the cinema longer.
Make the cinema going experience more welcoming –
Make it cheaper –

All of the above are easy for me to suggest, hard to implement. But if something isn’t done soon, cinema will go the way of circuses. There used to be small family-run circuses tour cities and towns regularly. They were generational – the circus families went back generations.

They’re now gone.
Now we only have the big spectacle circuses.
It’ll be the same thing with cinemas –
they’ll exist only for the blockbusters.

There was a story in Variety last week stating that a large poll of exhibitors, cinema owners, believed that there’d be no more cinemas in 20 years. That’s pretty frightening for those of us who love going to the movies.

But habits have changed. Yes, sure there’ll be the occasional FI or new James Cameron epic which will spike the numbers for a while – but ask yourself this: what sort of movie would make you want to go see it in a cinema nowadays.

Cinema is the best way to see movies in their full sound and image glory. With the added benefit of sharing the experience with others. This is something precious and delicate and must be preserved at all costs.

As for me, I’ve already bought my tickets to F1. even though I know it’ll be coming to Apple TV+ soon, because it’s an Apple TV+ production. Even so, I want to see it on the largest screen possible, with the best sound possible. And that’s in a cinema!