Speaker 1: Kyoda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Anybody watching
Speaker 2: the Oscars would have noticed a common theme. It was
Speaker 2: probably about when host Conan O'Brien mocked streaming culture with
Speaker 2: a sketch introducing the idea of a building for movies
Speaker 2: and getting people to stream movies in a theater.
Speaker 3: Are you tired of streaming movies from your couch, from
Speaker 3: your kitchen, and from your hand. What if I told
Speaker 3: you there's another way to stream movies in a building
Speaker 3: that's dedicated to streaming movies.
Speaker 1: Welcome to cinema streams.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't the first or the last reference to
Speaker 2: brick and mortar cinemas. Anora director Sean Baker used his
Speaker 2: acceptance speech for Best Director as a battle cry for
Speaker 2: movie theaters, saying they're under threat.
Speaker 4: Distributors, please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases
Speaker 4: of your films. Neon did that for me, and I
Speaker 4: thank you from the bottom of my hope.
Speaker 2: And it's not just the US that's seen less bums
Speaker 2: and seats at the cinema, and said cinema chain silky
Speaker 2: Otter said just last year that the market was about
Speaker 2: twenty five percent below what it was in twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: pre COVID. But is the pandemic the only thing to blame?
Speaker 5: Today?
Speaker 2: On the front page Capital Cinema owner Roger Wiley is
Speaker 2: with us to chat about what could be causing the
Speaker 2: death of cinemas and what can be done to revive them. Roger,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you watched the oscars the other day.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure you probably did, but I noticed a
Speaker 2: lot of references to keeping cinema alive? Did you notice
Speaker 2: those as well?
Speaker 5: I did, indeed, especially with Sean Baker, his comments about
Speaker 5: independent cinema's survival ran pretty true to a kind of
Speaker 5: a worldwide effect that's happening at the moment where cinemas
Speaker 5: are not being supported or not getting the audiences that
Speaker 5: they did pre.
Speaker 2: COVID, Right, So that hit home for you, A, oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, because we're seeing it here in the States.
Speaker 5: Two thousand screens have closed since twenty twenty one. There's
Speaker 5: now there's major kind of chains that are kind of
Speaker 5: feeling that effect as well. So there's more to come,
Speaker 5: which is pretty scary if you're in the cinema business.
Speaker 2: It's been five years since COVID, saw dozens of films
Speaker 2: either delayed or put on streaming services, and movie theaters
Speaker 2: worldwide being shut down. They're still being shut down, as
Speaker 2: you mentioned there. How has attendance been since the world
Speaker 2: opened back up.
Speaker 5: Well, there's definitely a demographic that's not coming back, and
Speaker 5: they haven't come back since COVID, and that's pretty much
Speaker 5: the fifty five plus demographic, maybe a little bit sixty plus.
Speaker 5: They definitely have not come back to the cinemas. And
Speaker 5: what you're seeing now is films that currently aren't being
Speaker 5: made for that demographic. Guither that audience is particularly coming
Speaker 5: back for like festivals like the Italian and they're coming
Speaker 5: back for event kind of based festivals, but on a
Speaker 5: weekly basis, they are not. They're not coming back. It's
Speaker 5: pretty much a that's why we're seeing a raft of
Speaker 5: horror films, quite dark independent films, or the younger cast
Speaker 5: and of course younger kind of genres coming through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we take a moment actually look at the
Speaker 2: kinds of films being made looking back to the early
Speaker 2: two thousands, films like Meet the Parents, in My Big
Speaker 2: Fat Green Wedding, were some of the highest grossing films
Speaker 2: of their respective years. But looking at twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: the only film in the top ten which wasn't A
Speaker 2: Sea Call was Wicked, of course, and that came with
Speaker 2: its own fan base. So is there a change in
Speaker 2: the types of movies that draw crowds these days?
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's it's not the type of movie movies,
Speaker 5: it's the themes that they explore. I mean, independent films
Speaker 5: have been known to be darker, thought provoking, question questioning
Speaker 5: ideas or ideals, or pushing the boundaries of I guess film.
Speaker 5: And currently my thoughts are that audiences are so emotionally
Speaker 5: drained from everyday news, every day everything that's going on
Speaker 5: in the world, that they don't want to come and
Speaker 5: see these films where they they want to escapism. They
Speaker 5: want to they want to go back to the Barbie
Speaker 5: and Oppenheimer Dame's days, where it was kind of it
Speaker 5: was fun to go and see a film that took
Speaker 5: them out of their day to day experiences, which is
Speaker 5: why in the back, when you go to the Depression
Speaker 5: and the Great Depression, that cinema had this huge resurgence
Speaker 5: because it was seen as an escape from everything that
Speaker 5: was kind of taking what was going on on a
Speaker 5: day to day basis. And I think at the moment
Speaker 5: the films that are coming through quite hard. You can't
Speaker 5: just go and escape in the cinema for ninety or
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty minutes. You've actually got to think
Speaker 5: about what you're seeing.
Speaker 6: The movies that we used to make, you could afford
Speaker 6: to not make all of your money when it played
Speaker 6: in the theater because you knew you had the DVD
Speaker 6: coming behind the release, and six months later you'd get
Speaker 6: you a whole nother chunk.
Speaker 1: It would be like reopening the movie almost.
Speaker 6: And when that went away, that changed the type of
Speaker 6: movies that we could make.
Speaker 1: I did this movie behind the Candelabra.
Speaker 6: When I talked to a studio executive who explained it
Speaker 6: was a twenty five million dollar movie, I would have
Speaker 6: to put that much into print advertising right to market it.
Speaker 6: So now I'm in fifty million dollars. I have to
Speaker 6: split everything I get with the exhibitor right the people
Speaker 6: who own the movie theaters. So I would have to
Speaker 6: make one hundred million dollars before I got into profit.
Speaker 6: The idea of making one hundred million dollars on a
Speaker 6: story about.
Speaker 1: Like alove affair between these two people.
Speaker 6: So that's that's suddenly a massive gam in a way
Speaker 6: that it wasn't in the nineteen nineties when they were
Speaker 6: making all of those kind of movies, the kind of
Speaker 6: movies that I loved and and the.
Speaker 1: Kind of movies that were my bread and butter, and a.
Speaker 2: Lot of those kind of mid budget comedy films as well.
Speaker 2: It seems like they're going straight to streaming services. So
Speaker 2: is there not a place in the cinema for those
Speaker 2: kind of films anymore?
Speaker 5: There's not enough of them. That's the problem. That they're
Speaker 5: very few and far between. I mean, that's kind of
Speaker 5: when that sits in the middle of the indie and
Speaker 5: the big studio films, those titles and that's what used
Speaker 5: to get audiences in and I don't there's enough of
Speaker 5: those being made, or the quality of them isn't as
Speaker 5: what it used to be.
Speaker 2: Is there now a huge divide in what we perceive
Speaker 2: to be a streaming film versus one that you just
Speaker 2: have to see on the big screen.
Speaker 5: Well, see, I'm old, I have to see them on
Speaker 5: the big screen. I can't watch film on a streaming
Speaker 5: service I have, but I would prefer to watch it
Speaker 5: on a big screen. I mean, Netflix are producing films
Speaker 5: that are just going straight to the Netflix service, the distributors.
Speaker 5: I've changed the window, so what happens is it'll go
Speaker 5: to the big screen, sort of go into cinemas, and
Speaker 5: then two weeks later it's on a digital platform like
Speaker 5: Netflix or Amazon or Disney Plus. So the window has
Speaker 5: changed from being a four week exclusive in the cinema
Speaker 5: where you had to see it first. That's now been
Speaker 5: kind of eroded, I guess by the by not being
Speaker 5: exclusive for two weeks.
Speaker 2: And do you think cost is putting people off too?
Speaker 5: I think it's the current kind of economic climate people.
Speaker 5: I mean, you've got parking, you've got you know, if
Speaker 5: you're going on a date, you've got dinners, you've got parking,
Speaker 5: You've got all those kind of extra things on top
Speaker 5: of So what we notice is people are buying tickets,
Speaker 5: but they're not spending when they go into the cinema.
Speaker 5: And that's across the board, and that's kind of where
Speaker 5: cinemas make their money, not not on the ticket sales itself,
Speaker 5: but by kind of what people are actually purchasing across
Speaker 5: the bar. We try and keep things accessible. So we've
Speaker 5: got one of the cheapest tickets in town because I
Speaker 5: believe that, you know, I'd rather come through the door
Speaker 5: and at these times and buy product rather than pulling
Speaker 5: the prices up, which is what everybody seems to do,
Speaker 5: which obviously kind of cuts a certain demographic out from
Speaker 5: going to the films see the cinema.
Speaker 2: In terms of the kinds of movies being made. Is
Speaker 2: it a bit of a chicken egg situation because are
Speaker 2: we not seeing these movies because they're not being made
Speaker 2: or are they not being made because we're just not
Speaker 2: going to see them.
Speaker 5: Well, it's a bit of both. It's actually they're not
Speaker 5: being made because people aren't going to see them. So
Speaker 5: there's been a real kind of pivot and two different
Speaker 5: genres like we were talking about before, Like so now
Speaker 5: there's more horror films because there's a younger demographic going
Speaker 5: to the cinema. So they've kind of done a pivolon.
Speaker 5: Let's move away from the kind of romantic comedy. So
Speaker 5: those big films that we're just talking about, it's now
Speaker 5: gone into there's a howld a lot of horror being
Speaker 5: made from a twenty four a neon, all those guys.
Speaker 5: That's what everyone's pumping out. The substance, for example, a
Speaker 5: lot of films of that quality coming through a horror.
Speaker 5: But there's only so much horror you can actually or
Speaker 5: thrillers that you can actually take in.
Speaker 2: Right, do you think we need another big movie franchise.
Speaker 2: I'm only saying this because of the news of the
Speaker 2: James Bond movies being sold to Amazon, and that's a
Speaker 2: real shame, I think, because now Amazon's going to do
Speaker 2: goodness knows what with them, I suppose. But every time
Speaker 2: a Bond movie comes out, it's a spectacle. You want
Speaker 2: to go see it at the cinema. I can't think
Speaker 2: of any other kind of franchises at the moment that
Speaker 2: are similar. Even Marvel movies don't feel like the big
Speaker 2: events that they once were.
Speaker 5: Well, none of the franchises have work. This is the problem.
Speaker 5: And I think that's also There been remakes of a
Speaker 5: remake or an extension of another story, but they haven't
Speaker 5: resonated with the audiences, and they keep pumping these out
Speaker 5: and it's kind of it's eradicating any value that they
Speaker 5: had in these franchises or on these properties without coming
Speaker 5: up with anything new, which is which is a little
Speaker 5: bit silly really, it just needs a whole new angle
Speaker 5: on the jangle pretty much.
Speaker 2: In terms of bums on seats, do you reckon? It's
Speaker 2: getting better slowly and more. What's going to bring people back?
Speaker 5: What will bring people back? See? I don't think anything.
Speaker 5: I think it's too late. Now we've gone through nearly
Speaker 5: close to three years of people getting used to watching
Speaker 5: films at home on their streaming services. We've now got
Speaker 5: a kind of an economic climate that isn't great, so
Speaker 5: it's limiting to how many times people can come to
Speaker 5: cinema and see their favorite cinema and see the films
Speaker 5: that they like to see. I think cinemas actually have
Speaker 5: to start looking at what they can bring to get
Speaker 5: audiences on a different way. I mean, we've started something
Speaker 5: called we Haven't Sounded, but we've had it for a
Speaker 5: couple of years now called Pitch Black Playback, where once
Speaker 5: a month we have these listening experiences in the dark
Speaker 5: where you come in and listen to an album as
Speaker 5: through the Jobbie sound system in the cinema like Radiohead
Speaker 5: the QUM. So each month we kind of feature a
Speaker 5: different artists and that's how we've kind of worked our
Speaker 5: way through these times is coming up with different ideas.
Speaker 5: We've our comedians and trying out new material. It's going
Speaker 5: to think about think outside the square.
Speaker 2: It's a bit sad though, when I hear you say,
Speaker 2: do you think it's a bit late?
Speaker 5: I do think it's a bit late. It's the films
Speaker 5: aren't there to support. Well, the films are there, but
Speaker 5: they're not They're not just not getting the audiences back.
Speaker 5: And I think we need to kind of go back
Speaker 5: to that four week window where you could only see
Speaker 5: that film in the cinema, and that's what you used
Speaker 5: to drive a lot of a lot of people to
Speaker 5: go into the simmers to see the film on the
Speaker 5: big screen before it which was a Netflix or an Amazon.
Speaker 5: Two weeks is too short. Our film needs three to
Speaker 5: four weeks to find us audience alone, so that two
Speaker 5: weeks window is actually killing us.
Speaker 4: So we're all here tonight and watching this broadcast because
Speaker 4: we love movies. Where did we fall in love with
Speaker 4: the movies at the movie theater?
Speaker 1: Watching a film. Watching a film in.
Speaker 4: A theater with an audience is an experience. We can
Speaker 4: laugh together, cry together, scream and frite together, perhaps sit
Speaker 4: in devastated silence together. And in a time in which
Speaker 4: the world can feel very divided, this is more important
Speaker 4: than ever. It's a communal experience you simply don't get
Speaker 4: at home. Parents. Parents introduce their children to feature films
Speaker 4: in movie theaters, and you'll be molding the next generation
Speaker 4: of movie lovers and filmmakers. And for all of us
Speaker 4: when we can, please watch movies in the theater, and
Speaker 4: let's keep the great tradition of the movie going experience
Speaker 4: alive and well.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned before and I find this interesting that
Speaker 2: you say that the fifty five plus age group hasn't
Speaker 2: come back. I would have thought that it's the younger
Speaker 2: age group. I mean, my parents are still avid theater goers.
Speaker 2: My brother and I buy them gift cards for all
Speaker 2: of their local theaters all the time because we can't
Speaker 2: think of anything else, but also because they love going.
Speaker 2: And I don't think it's down to them not knowing
Speaker 2: how to use the apps on their TV or anything.
Speaker 2: I mean, are we seeing less young people or do
Speaker 2: you reckon? There is a chance that these younger generations
Speaker 2: can be lured back to the experience of sitting down
Speaker 2: with your mates, putting away your phone and watching a
Speaker 2: film on the big screen.
Speaker 5: So if you've got kids, take them to the cinema
Speaker 5: because that is the true experience. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: as we grew up ongoing to the cinema with our
Speaker 5: parents and we watched Star Wars on the big screen.
Speaker 5: Hang on, I think the younger it's definitely the younger
Speaker 5: folk that have come back. It's definitely the older generation,
Speaker 5: but I don't think the films are being made for
Speaker 5: them currently.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Roger, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: a sound engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
Speaker 2: behind the headlines.