Kyoda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Anybody watching the Oscars would have noticed a common theme. It was probably about when host Conan O'Brien mocked streaming culture with a sketch introducing the idea of a building for movies and getting people to stream movies in a theater.
Are you tired of streaming movies from your couch, from your kitchen, and from your hand. What if I told you there's another way to stream movies in a building that's dedicated to streaming movies.
Welcome to cinema streams.
And it wasn't the first or the last reference to brick and mortar cinemas. Anora director Sean Baker used his acceptance speech for Best Director as a battle cry for movie theaters, saying they're under threat.
Distributors, please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of your films. Neon did that for me, and I thank you from the bottom of my hope.
And it's not just the US that's seen less bums and seats at the cinema, and said cinema chain silky Otter said just last year that the market was about twenty five percent below what it was in twenty nineteen pre COVID. But is the pandemic the only thing to blame?
Today?
On the front page Capital Cinema owner Roger Wiley is with us to chat about what could be causing the death of cinemas and what can be done to revive them. Roger, I don't know if you watched the oscars the other day. I'm pretty sure you probably did, but I noticed a lot of references to keeping cinema alive? Did you notice those as well?
I did, indeed, especially with Sean Baker, his comments about independent cinema's survival ran pretty true to a kind of a worldwide effect that's happening at the moment where cinemas are not being supported or not getting the audiences that they did pre.
COVID, Right, So that hit home for you, A, oh.
Yeah, absolutely, because we're seeing it here in the States. Two thousand screens have closed since twenty twenty one. There's now there's major kind of chains that are kind of feeling that effect as well. So there's more to come, which is pretty scary if you're in the cinema business.
It's been five years since COVID, saw dozens of films either delayed or put on streaming services, and movie theaters worldwide being shut down. They're still being shut down, as you mentioned there. How has attendance been since the world opened back up.
Well, there's definitely a demographic that's not coming back, and they haven't come back since COVID, and that's pretty much the fifty five plus demographic, maybe a little bit sixty plus. They definitely have not come back to the cinemas. And what you're seeing now is films that currently aren't being made for that demographic. Guither that audience is particularly coming back for like festivals like the Italian and they're coming back for event kind of based festivals, but on a
weekly basis, they are not. They're not coming back. It's pretty much a that's why we're seeing a raft of horror films, quite dark independent films, or the younger cast and of course younger kind of genres coming through.
Yeah, if we take a moment actually look at the kinds of films being made looking back to the early two thousands, films like Meet the Parents, in My Big Fat Green Wedding, were some of the highest grossing films of their respective years. But looking at twenty twenty four, the only film in the top ten which wasn't A Sea Call was Wicked, of course, and that came with its own fan base. So is there a change in the types of movies that draw crowds these days?
Well, I think it's it's not the type of movie movies, it's the themes that they explore. I mean, independent films have been known to be darker, thought provoking, question questioning ideas or ideals, or pushing the boundaries of I guess film. And currently my thoughts are that audiences are so emotionally drained from everyday news, every day everything that's going on in the world, that they don't want to come and
see these films where they they want to escapism. They want to they want to go back to the Barbie and Oppenheimer Dame's days, where it was kind of it was fun to go and see a film that took them out of their day to day experiences, which is why in the back, when you go to the Depression and the Great Depression, that cinema had this huge resurgence because it was seen as an escape from everything that was kind of taking what was going on on a day to day basis. And I think at the moment
the films that are coming through quite hard. You can't just go and escape in the cinema for ninety or one hundred and twenty minutes. You've actually got to think about what you're seeing.
The movies that we used to make, you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theater because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release, and six months later you'd get you a whole nother chunk.
It would be like reopening the movie almost.
And when that went away, that changed the type of movies that we could make.
I did this movie behind the Candelabra.
When I talked to a studio executive who explained it was a twenty five million dollar movie, I would have to put that much into print advertising right to market it. So now I'm in fifty million dollars. I have to split everything I get with the exhibitor right the people who own the movie theaters. So I would have to make one hundred million dollars before I got into profit. The idea of making one hundred million dollars on a story about.
Like alove affair between these two people.
So that's that's suddenly a massive gam in a way that it wasn't in the nineteen nineties when they were making all of those kind of movies, the kind of movies that I loved and and the.
Kind of movies that were my bread and butter, and a.
Lot of those kind of mid budget comedy films as well. It seems like they're going straight to streaming services. So is there not a place in the cinema for those kind of films anymore?
There's not enough of them. That's the problem. That they're very few and far between. I mean, that's kind of when that sits in the middle of the indie and the big studio films, those titles and that's what used to get audiences in and I don't there's enough of those being made, or the quality of them isn't as what it used to be.
Is there now a huge divide in what we perceive to be a streaming film versus one that you just have to see on the big screen.
Well, see, I'm old, I have to see them on the big screen. I can't watch film on a streaming service I have, but I would prefer to watch it on a big screen. I mean, Netflix are producing films that are just going straight to the Netflix service, the distributors. I've changed the window, so what happens is it'll go to the big screen, sort of go into cinemas, and then two weeks later it's on a digital platform like
Netflix or Amazon or Disney Plus. So the window has changed from being a four week exclusive in the cinema where you had to see it first. That's now been kind of eroded, I guess by the by not being exclusive for two weeks.
And do you think cost is putting people off too?
I think it's the current kind of economic climate people. I mean, you've got parking, you've got you know, if you're going on a date, you've got dinners, you've got parking, You've got all those kind of extra things on top of So what we notice is people are buying tickets, but they're not spending when they go into the cinema.
And that's across the board, and that's kind of where cinemas make their money, not not on the ticket sales itself, but by kind of what people are actually purchasing across
the bar. We try and keep things accessible. So we've got one of the cheapest tickets in town because I believe that, you know, I'd rather come through the door and at these times and buy product rather than pulling the prices up, which is what everybody seems to do, which obviously kind of cuts a certain demographic out from going to the films see the cinema.
In terms of the kinds of movies being made. Is it a bit of a chicken egg situation because are we not seeing these movies because they're not being made or are they not being made because we're just not going to see them.
Well, it's a bit of both. It's actually they're not being made because people aren't going to see them. So there's been a real kind of pivot and two different genres like we were talking about before, Like so now there's more horror films because there's a younger demographic going to the cinema. So they've kind of done a pivolon.
Let's move away from the kind of romantic comedy. So those big films that we're just talking about, it's now gone into there's a howld a lot of horror being made from a twenty four a neon, all those guys. That's what everyone's pumping out. The substance, for example, a lot of films of that quality coming through a horror. But there's only so much horror you can actually or thrillers that you can actually take in.
Right, do you think we need another big movie franchise. I'm only saying this because of the news of the James Bond movies being sold to Amazon, and that's a real shame, I think, because now Amazon's going to do goodness knows what with them, I suppose. But every time a Bond movie comes out, it's a spectacle. You want to go see it at the cinema. I can't think of any other kind of franchises at the moment that are similar. Even Marvel movies don't feel like the big events that they once were.
Well, none of the franchises have work. This is the problem. And I think that's also There been remakes of a remake or an extension of another story, but they haven't resonated with the audiences, and they keep pumping these out and it's kind of it's eradicating any value that they had in these franchises or on these properties without coming up with anything new, which is which is a little bit silly really, it just needs a whole new angle on the jangle pretty much.
In terms of bums on seats, do you reckon? It's getting better slowly and more. What's going to bring people back?
What will bring people back? See? I don't think anything. I think it's too late. Now we've gone through nearly close to three years of people getting used to watching films at home on their streaming services. We've now got a kind of an economic climate that isn't great, so it's limiting to how many times people can come to cinema and see their favorite cinema and see the films that they like to see. I think cinemas actually have to start looking at what they can bring to get
audiences on a different way. I mean, we've started something called we Haven't Sounded, but we've had it for a couple of years now called Pitch Black Playback, where once a month we have these listening experiences in the dark where you come in and listen to an album as through the Jobbie sound system in the cinema like Radiohead the QUM. So each month we kind of feature a different artists and that's how we've kind of worked our way through these times is coming up with different ideas.
We've our comedians and trying out new material. It's going to think about think outside the square.
It's a bit sad though, when I hear you say, do you think it's a bit late?
I do think it's a bit late. It's the films aren't there to support. Well, the films are there, but they're not They're not just not getting the audiences back. And I think we need to kind of go back to that four week window where you could only see that film in the cinema, and that's what you used to drive a lot of a lot of people to go into the simmers to see the film on the big screen before it which was a Netflix or an Amazon.
Two weeks is too short. Our film needs three to four weeks to find us audience alone, so that two weeks window is actually killing us.
So we're all here tonight and watching this broadcast because we love movies. Where did we fall in love with the movies at the movie theater?
Watching a film. Watching a film in.
A theater with an audience is an experience. We can laugh together, cry together, scream and frite together, perhaps sit in devastated silence together. And in a time in which the world can feel very divided, this is more important than ever. It's a communal experience you simply don't get at home. Parents. Parents introduce their children to feature films in movie theaters, and you'll be molding the next generation
of movie lovers and filmmakers. And for all of us when we can, please watch movies in the theater, and let's keep the great tradition of the movie going experience alive and well.
And you mentioned before and I find this interesting that you say that the fifty five plus age group hasn't come back. I would have thought that it's the younger age group. I mean, my parents are still avid theater goers. My brother and I buy them gift cards for all of their local theaters all the time because we can't think of anything else, but also because they love going. And I don't think it's down to them not knowing how to use the apps on their TV or anything.
I mean, are we seeing less young people or do you reckon? There is a chance that these younger generations can be lured back to the experience of sitting down with your mates, putting away your phone and watching a film on the big screen.
So if you've got kids, take them to the cinema because that is the true experience. I mean, you know, as we grew up ongoing to the cinema with our parents and we watched Star Wars on the big screen. Hang on, I think the younger it's definitely the younger folk that have come back. It's definitely the older generation, but I don't think the films are being made for them currently.
Thanks for joining us, Roger, thank you for having me. That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also a sound engineer.
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.