Make Moviegoing Casual Again

Films like George Clooney and Brad Pitt's 'Wolfs' might be theatrically viable again if audiences viewed them as cheap and convenient spur-of-the-moment outings.

Having finally watched Wolfs, yeah, it’s aggressively “fine, whatever” that coasts on the charisma of its two stars. 80% of the movie is George Clooney and Brad Pitt, playing rival fixers, sniping at and trolling each other for no good purpose beyond the abstract notion of these two legendary movie stars throwing barbs. Jon Watts’ low-key comic thriller picks up in the third act when they are forced to work together as reluctant partners. Like too many streaming films, the Apple production is very much dialogue and exposition-driven. It sometimes resembles readers’ theaters, as if they expect folks to watch while playing on their phones and thus reiterate key plot points and character beats for those who missed it the first time.

It’s casually amusing as a casual watch, which sadly makes it ideal for a non-theatrical title in our current era. Whether it is big enough, important enough or *good* enough (subjectively speaking) for a wide theatrical release misses the point. Apple’s thin skin over negative box office punditry is a different conversation. Wolfs is a casual film made for casual viewing. That it’s thus “unsuitable” for theaters underscores a systemic change in theatrical moviegoing. We all know that a large segment of the moviegoing populace stopped going to the movies to go to the movies in the mid-2010s and that a global pandemic alongside a push to direct-to-consumer viewership has only increased the notion of theatrical moviegoing as “for tentpoles and FOMA events only.”

The industry (exhibitors and distributors) can emphasize events and try to create can’t-miss events (of all shapes and sizes, natch). Meanwhile, they can and should take steps to make theatrical moviegoing a more casual, spur-of-the-moment activity again. This is not a simple question with simple answers. I was thrilled to see theaters investing over $2.2 billion over the next three years in turning multiplexes into glorified entertainment centers and (far more importantly) making tangible improvements to the auditoriums (especially the not PLF theaters) to theoretically ensure a minimum level of immersive audio/visual theatrical quality. Another critical element is not closing theaters that are not pulling their weight but ensuring that far more of the country has a local multiplex or two within convenient driving distance.

I have roughly ten high-quality multiplexes from multiple chains (AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Studio Movie Grill, Cinepolis, etc.) within 25 miles, with five 15 minutes away. Yet a shocking number of “major cities” or population centers lack a convenient multiplex. I often wonder if this is where much of the PVOD revenue (of which studios take 80%) comes from. Meanwhile, everyone laments high ticket prices and concessions, which have risen with inflation while wages have remained stagnant for decades. When it costs (depending if you splurge for PLF) $60-$80 plus $20-$50 in concessions to take a family of five to see a movie on Friday night in Akron, Ohio, it isn’t nuts to wait 19-47 days to spend $20 to rent that movie at home.

However, most of the COVID-era breakouts have been all-quadrant tentpoles, be it franchise or IP flicks like Avatar 2 or Wonka, event film toons like Inside Out 2 and The Super Mario Bros Movie or “for older audiences but you won’t scar your kids” flicks like Dune Part Two or Deadpool & Wolverine. The new battlefield is convincing everyone else (teens, young adults, grown-ups, date night couples, etc.) to attend The Fall Guy, Challengers and Civil War. The success of National Cinema Day, “Cheap Ticket Tuesday” and the “year of MoviePass” (August of 2017 to August of 2018, when a slew of $10-a-month subscribers saw a variety of non-tentpole films) argue that the ticket price is indeed a barrier to casual theatrical consumption.

Even if it’s psychological, lowering or removing the ticket price makes a difference. That suggests a more aggressive embrace of subscription services, especially ones like Cinemark’s Movie Club that offer rollover credits, which can be applied to concessions. Perhaps there’s a place for flexible pricing or (as I’ve frankly long suggested) heavily subsidized tickets connected to concession sales. That’s doubly true for kids’ titles, but I digress. Whatever the “solutions,” the long-term goal should be for a film like Wolfs to be entirely acceptable to general consumers as a low-cost ($5-$7 a ticket), low-effort (a five-to-ten minute drive), lazy Saturday afternoon theatrical outing. Because making such films theatrically-worthy to moviegoers is crucial in making them potentially profitable to those who produce and release them.