Cineworld preparing to file for bankruptcy

We get six Odeon tickets a year with our current account. Every single time we've been someone around me has picked up their phone to check for "vital" correspondence during the film. As well as all the other food/drink/ talking related disturbances that always happen.

Add that to the fact that it would otherwise cost £19.50 each plus the cinema carpark isn't free, it's no wonder that every time we go there are very few people in there. Last film we saw was Bullet Train on release day and no more than 15 people in there.

I love the cinema experience and I have a decent TV and sound system at home, but the ridiculous cost and the morons stops me from going more often.
 
It's about time. The Cinema experience has been flogged to death and has become such a "premium" experience it costs a small fortune to go.

It's more expensive than it should be and for that reason it will fail. When I was a kid and first went to the cinema the snacks and drinks were limited but we're cheaper than outside the cinema. The prices to buy stuff for the cinema now are twice the cost that outside the cinema. It's clear proffertering and a business practice that needs to be stopped in the western world.

It won't be missed by me.
 
Kyo said:
Same watching a good movie at the cinema is a unique experience that's very hard to replicate. There is no distractions like mobile.phone or pad. Your focus and attention is entirely on the movie which takes immersion to another level.

I watched RoboCop for the first time in the big screen a few weeks ago and it was amazing. Must have watched that movie over 100 times as I was too young for the pictures but that viewing was the best by a mile.
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I agree, I still think there is a place for cinemas in the future, but I don't see them remaining huge big setups with every city have two or more 10-screen cinemas.

Instead, like your second paragraph, I see them becoming splitting into two groups - Larger ones which just show Block-busters (as Streaming has taken all the low cost films away) or smaller, more niche cinemas which do things like reshowing older films which are far more popular and far more likely to bring in customers than the vast majority of films released currently.

I wonder if, for example, Cineworld had a 4 week run where every cinema in their chain ran a big advertising campaign called "The Month of Memories" where they showed films like Aliens, RoboCop, Predator, Terminator 2, Star Wars Ep4, Titanic, Iron Man, Ghost etc all at the same time (i.e. films people would love to see in the cinema again) and then compared the money made vs a 2-4 week period of normal film showings I think they'd have done well, well depending on the cost the distributers wanted to charge to get those films of course.

I've always thought that the idea that "once a film leaves a cinema after a few weeks it never comes back" was a very silly business idea personally.
 
Cinema is just a big screen with loud speakers. The main problem is crap films, people talking, sniffing and eating loudly, car parking. Then there's the cost :eek:

Hopefully VR improves enough to try and recreate it somewhat.

In the mean time, I'm more than happy watching movies on my OLED :D
 
I suspect there are also quite a lot of screenplays and pitches that would normally end up in the cinema being picked up by Apple, Netflix, Amazon etc. to fill their services with new content. Sure, some of those movies wouldn’t have been picked up anyway but some would have ended up in the cinema.
 
I went to see Dune at the cinema because I felt it warranted it but other than that havent been for years - for all the reasons mentioned above.

Cinema is great - as long as its virtually empty (which obviously is unsustainable as we are seeing).
 
robfosters said:
Blame the tech companies too. Home AV equipment is so advanced and affordable for many these days that the experience at home can be fantastic. I haven’t been to the cinema for a long time, but is the actual PQ of cinemas better than the UHD and HDR you get in a good TV?
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Ironically some cinemas are no better than 2k and 5.1 :p But it really depends where you are. A great 4k/Dolby Atmos/Dolby Vision etc. is hard to beat with any home setup.
Kyo said:
Same watching a good movie at the cinema is a unique experience that's very hard to replicate. There is no distractions like mobile.phone or pad. Your focus and attention is entirely on the movie which takes immersion to another level.
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Exactly. I find it interesting that a lot of streamers movies are rated poorly on here, and in the same breath the person is like "oh but I was playing on my phone" or "I was doing the hoovering". A great cinema/film-watching experience requires 100% attention with no distractions. It doesn't have to be an action blockbuster, it can be an emotional indie movies. Some of the latter have been some of my most defining cinema experiences recently, for example.
TheOracle said:
Cinema is just a big screen with loud speakers.
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But it's not though, as above. It's way more than that.

This could be a massive shame for us.. We were due a new 8 screen Picturehouse to open "soon" locally. It's actually been a running joke as our town has been without a cinema for 14 years. We now have a nice indie one which I'm a member of (but yet to try), so Picturehouse already lost the initiative there. If nobody buys Picturehouse out from Cineworld and it never opens it's going to be a massive white elephant in the town centre. Ridiculous :(
 
ianh said:
I agree, I still think there is a place for cinemas in the future, but I don't see them remaining huge big setups with every city have two or more 10-screen cinemas.

Instead, like your second paragraph, I see them becoming splitting into two groups - Larger ones which just show Block-busters (as Streaming has taken all the low cost films away) or smaller, more niche cinemas which do things like reshowing older films which are far more popular and far more likely to bring in customers than the vast majority of films released currently.

I wonder if, for example, Cineworld had a 4 week run where every cinema in their chain ran a big advertising campaign called "The Month of Memories" where they showed films like Aliens, RoboCop, Predator, Terminator 2, Star Wars Ep4, Titanic, Iron Man, Ghost etc all at the same time (i.e. films people would love to see in the cinema again) and then compared the money made vs a 2-4 week period of normal film showings I think they'd have done well, well depending on the cost the distributers wanted to charge to get those films of course.

I've always thought that the idea that "once a film leaves a cinema after a few weeks it never comes back" was a very silly business idea personally.
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Basically half of the problem isn't so much the cinema as such, just most movies being released these days are ****.
 
Normally the only reason I go to Cineworld is to watch films on the Imax, and then only for films which you really need to go to the cinema to watch, like Avatar, Dune and Top Gun Maverick, and even then it's far too expensive, especially the food and drink. Also at peak times parking was a pain.

I am actually going to Cineworld next week to watch the Star Trek The Movie Director's Edition on the big screen, which would be the first time I've seen that film on a big screen since it released in 1979! I hope they don't go bust before then!
It is a fundamentally different experience seeing a film at a cinema. The closest I can get is watching films in a virtual cinema in VR, and even then I don't have the massive sound system. I remember watching the Tom Cruise War Of The Worlds and the tripod sound was so low and loud I could feel my bones vibrating. Can't get THAT experience at home! (At least not without disturbing the whole street).
 
I've been once this year. In a different country than the UK.

Last year I went to see Bond and the car park (shared with an Asda) only allowed 2 hours parking. I mean. Wtf? Not even an option for cinema validation or pay for an extra hour, just flat out 2 hour max stay. Film was almost 3 hours long even without ads.

The cinema is something I enjoyed when living in a town/city when I could walk or get public transport, now it takes me 25 mins there and back and I just CBA when I can watch it on a decent TV with my dogs curled up next to me.
 
I mainly stopped going to the Cinema due to they stopped having the 10 minute break or whatever time it was half-way through the movie and having to sit in there uncomfortable seats for a solid 2+ hours :mad: :(
Surely they loss a lot of money due to this as well as in the break loads of people used to pile to the Cinema shop
 
I love the cinema. Its basically the only thing i go to the city for.

But there really hasn't been anything good in a long time. There's been stuff to see with my free tokens but nothing to pay for.

Its on the cards though. Its on its way to extinction.


Its not just cost of the ticket


Food, driving, parking, time, so expensive for families.

Or you can get it home for a fraction of the time/hassle.
 
Me and my girlfriend regularly visit the 4dx/IMAX. We typically wait until the film we're seeing has been out for atleast four weeks, then it's generally only a handful of people sat in with us. As someone that frequently visits the cinema I'll be greatly saddened if cinemas cease to exist.
 
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