Kevin Smith Thinks That “Movies Are Too Expensive” Right Now

In ComicBook.com’s latest edition of “Things Kevin Smith Said” we have Kevin Smith’s thoughts on the movie theater industry following a string of underperforming blockbuster franchises, like DC’s The Flash, Paramount’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts or Disney’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. According to Smith’s take on the industry, people simply do not have the budget to keep heading out to the theater. 

“Bad movies will be with us forever, like cancer, like that’s not it: It’s not like movies suddenly got bad,” Smith explained to his Fatman Beyond podcast cohost Marc Bernardin. “It’s different. An audience has been trained now to like wait.” 

As for why people are choosing to wait more time (for streaming or home video) to see movies? Smith says:

d”Number one, movies are too expensive. I’ll be honest; as an exhibitor, I’m going to say that, because I’ve been to other movie theaters and I see their prices… I think the price of movies is high, and I also think that… the shrinking theatrical window definitely f*cking hurt… home viewing has become preferable. Why would you want to go out when you can watch something in our own home, on a nice giant TV with a picture quality that’s pristine… The Flash came out on June 16th? The Flash is hitting streaming July 18th… a movie that was just in movie theaters… You’ve got an audience that’s like ‘Why would I bother going out?’… It has nothing to do with bad movies or woke movies – it has everything to do with how people have been retrained to ingest films during COVID and after COVID.” 

Our own ComicBook Nation podcast examined what happened with the summer movie blockbuster box office, noting that: 

The issue is that studios and analysts are still going by the big-bang first-week release and quick drop-off expectations of pre-pandemic blockbusters… Conditions are different now, sure: home streaming releases are too prevalent; the thought of dealing with other people in theaters too off-putting; the obvious germ/disease concerns sparked by COVID haven’t faded -and of course, the budgeting necessary for a theatrical outing these days is too much. All understandable reasons for people to now be less inclined to choose movie theaters as a default destination every week. 

More and more in fact, it seems movie theaters are becoming “event” destinations much like musical concerts: where consumers pick a select number of artists/shows they want to see in a year, rather than making concert-going itself a routine hobby. Movie studios need to (and seem to be) taking notice: the market can’t support so much theatrical content anymore -so schedule accordingly.

How do you feel about the current state of movie theaters? Let us know in the comments.