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Message: <blockquote data-quote="embee" data-source="post: 8159693" data-attributes="member: 7026827">Theaters are losing out to streaming technology because they spent the last two decades spending on capital improvements. In 1999, they switched to digital projection pursuant to George Lucas' demand to do so in order to be eligible to exhibit The Phantom Menace. Then there were continual upgrades to sound to maintain THX certification, expenditures to install a mini-IMAX screen, FreeStyle soda machines, and renovations for installation of improved stadium seating, not to mention infrastructure improvements to allow eTicketing. This also involved paying out fees to Fandango and other third-party ticket sellers (they get a cut of the exhibitors' cut), and losing revenue due to studio-favoring shifts in the revenue (again, starting with The Phantom Menace and which Disney has started using again, beginning with The Last Jedi). Disney didn't get 50% of that movie. It got 65%.  On top of this, the operating costs kept growing. Rent, payroll, maintenance, electricity. In the best of times, exhibitors had about a 4% profit margin. Now, take that optimal environment where the exhibitor turns a 4% profit and turn off the revenue stream. No income for 9 months. They still owe rent. They still have to maintain equipment. But they don't take money in. I'm not saying they were doing well. Movie theaters are in the same situation as coal mines. Their decline really began around the time that Disney and WB started laying down the new 65% split. And COVID put a bullet in the heads of the theater chains. Streaming is the studios' solution to COVID in an attempt to recoup their investment. And yes, that will quite possibly kill movie theaters. AMC is likely to run out of operating cash in the next few months. Regal might not see 2022. But streaming isn't killing theaters - COVID and studio consolidation are.</blockquote>

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