Recently I've been seeing frequent articles about the decline of the film industry's profit due to internet piracy. Piracy has been a problem long before the internet was in every home, yet when they don't see a result they like piracy gets blamed. How many people would rather see a film on the big screen? I know I do. I love going to the movies. At 10.50 a pop the only time we go anymore is to see huge special effects films like Pirates of the Carribean. I have a theory that there are two reasons why the film industry's profits are decreasing. First the status marker in Hollywood is paychecks, which now are 20 million plus for the biggest stars. There is absolutely no reason that an actor needs a 20 million dollar pay check for a project that they spend 3 to 4 months making, and 1 or 2 months promoting, which breaks down to 3.33 million dollars a month. They make in a month what most people would love to make in a year or 5. Why do they get these paychecks? All it takes is one person to ask for it, and one more to give it to them. Now everyone who's big "deserves" 20 mil a picture. Noone in the industry will ever question it, because the actors are making a lot of money, and the execs are making just as much. Their inflated paychecks, have forced ticket prices higher and higher. Of course we should all be happy to "only" be paying 10.50 for between 90 minutes and 3 hours, to be graced with their images.
The second problem is that unlike every other business in America there is a flat fee on all products. Why does Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest cost 10.50 a ticket with a budget and production value of 225 mil, while Little Miss Sunshine has the same ticket cost with a production value and budget of 8 mil. Both films are doing very well at the box office, but if ticket prices for the latter were say 8.50 (the average ticket price 5 years ago) people who may not want to pay the ever growing current ticket prices would have another option and on say a less successful smaller picture may go see it based on price, and start increasing ticket sales in the less mainstream films, while people will still pay 10.50 for a huge blockbuster such as Star Wars or 'Pirates'.
The industries greed is slowly killing tearing them down, because it has blinded them from the common sense business 101 aspects of there multibillion dollar business. The rest of us can see it, but lets face it this is just another case of the emperor's new clothes. I personally love film to much to watch the industry implode, so I am imploring, the celebritys and the execs, please figure out a valid way to improve the current situation that doesn't include witch hunts and start focusing on the real issues. I know that to actors this will sound terrible, but don't demand 20 mil a picture, in fact it's a strange concept but how about taking 15 million of that and paying for one dollar off the first 15 million tickets of that particular movie, the first few movies where someone did this would get huge boosts in sales, and would slowly start to push ticket sales a little lower, and profits a little higher. You need to realize the execs won't do it, but you are the faces the people see, and while you may only get 5 million, it will increase your popularity among the average Joe's.