frankly speaking

Disrupting Hollywood

I took my five-year old to the movies today. I spent $30 combined on tickets and two small popcorns. Here’s the problem, I really don’t have a problem paying that much for a movie, but I know a lot of people that do.

Maybe not this year, and probably not next, but at somepoint, the movie business is going to become more broken that it already is. The masses simply won’t be able to afford to pay $50 to see the next blockbuster. Something has to change.

The technology for that change is already in place. Broadband penetration reaches most rural areas these days. With a couple clicks of my mouse in fact, I could have simply avoided paying the $30 and streamed the movie right from my laptop to my big screen. But, I consider myself somewhat ethical, so I paid to go see it.

Here’s the point - Hollywood needs to realize that there’s a much bigger market potential by streaming first run movies directly into people’s homes rather than forcing them to get a babysitter for their kid, pay for parking, pay $10 per ticket, $30 for snacks and an untold amount of patience for having to sit in a dark auditorium with complete strangers.

To their credit, some movie executives have realized the value of allowing their customers from getting first run movies directly in their homes. Recently (while it was still in theaters) I was able to watch “Margin Call” from the comfort of my home. Sure, I paid my cable provider a premium for watching the movie - a cost I would happily pay for first run movies in the future.

This idea isn’t unique at all; Mark Cuban first floated it a couple years ago (and to his credit, most movies from his production company are streamed via cable companies while they’re in theaters). All someone needs to do is convince the rest of the Hollywood execs of how much they can benefit (read - profit) by taking the same approach.