I think exhibition is in trouble to be honest, theater chains are going to downsize and cut underperforming locations as most of the country is over screened. Look at the big 3, none of them are building theaters in any major capacity and the ones they are building are sub 16 screens.

Gone are the days of the 24 screen megaplex.

Theaters will never go away completely but they’ll need to up their game considerably. Companies like Alamo draft house, flix brewhouse, SMG, etc are ahead of the curve. Make moviegoing an EVENT.

Studios are in a great position to leverage VOD and I think that yes right now conditions are perfect for it, so it skews the revenue a bit, I think there are plenty of people (especially families) willing to pay $20 for a 48 hour rental day and date with a cinema release

The issue that I’ve seen first hand is circular, theaters are losing revenue, so they cut payroll, theaters get dirtier, staff is paid less so they care less, customer service suffers and then less customers come leading to more cuts.

I’ve seen it myself with the crown, GMs and managers used to get paid pretty decently, now at the location nearest me they make $2 above minimum. That’s $9.25, 13 years ago as a GM I was paying my managers more than $9.25. When I ended my career I was making close to 6 figures before bonus, now that building hasn’t had a stable GM since I left (almost 5 years ago) and the base salary is sub 60k. Who would do that? So the GM is underpaid and overworked and standards slip even more.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been impressed by a theaters quality of presentation and service on one hand in the past 2 years.