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Culture

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Apr 18th 2005 2:17am





Chinese Theater Improvements Work -- Big Box Office Increase

from the amazing-what-a-little-work-can-do dept

Last month, we noted that the movie industry in the US might want to steal a few pages from the playbook of the Chinese movie industry. While the American movie studios whine and complain that they'll never get people to come to the movies, the Chinese movie industry (where counterfeiting movies is a much, much, much bigger problem than in the US) decided to compete by recognizing that movie-going is a social experience and coming up with ways to improve that overall experience. Would you believe it worked? The latest studies show a huge increase in the box office take in China last year. Movies are entertainment -- but it's not just the content. If the industry worked on ways to make the movie-going experience, itself, much more enjoyable, it wouldn't matter if even they, themselves, made the content available for free download. People can drink alcohol at home, and they do, but they still go out to bars, and pay much more to do so, because it's part of the social experience. You don't see the liquor (or bar) companies freaking out about all this "home drinking."

5 Comments | Leave a Comment

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    dorpus, Apr 18th, 2005 @ 2:26am

    Will it last?

    What happens when Chinese can afford their own large TV screens? Brand new theaters may attract crowds, but Chinese drunkards will piss in cups and ruin the theater quickly.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

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    identicon
    dorpus, Apr 18th, 2005 @ 2:28am

    stale beer

    Most US theaters used to sell beer, but then every place smelled like stale beer. In the 1990s, the new mega-theaters refused to sell alcohol, and raised the standards of the industry.

     

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      Anonymous Coward, Jul 26th, 2005 @ 10:14am

      Re: stale beer

      maybe the us theatres should have worked out how to clean the theatres, thus making them not smell... other acohol serving establishments (ie pubs) seem to manage this ok.

       

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  •  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Apr 18th, 2005 @ 11:10pm

    No Subject Given

    Don't forget that the domestic film industry have beem putting out good movies. A few of those movies have been showing up in theaters here in the US.

    The only question is how much of the increase can be attributed to the improved theaters and how much is from the improved content.

    -cmh

     

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    identicon
    Roberto, Aug 13th, 2005 @ 2:54pm

    Movies

    I don't go to out to the movies because of boorish behavior on the part of other patrons. Too many movies ruined by rude yapping. When I take a stand on something, I stick with it. I bought my last GM car in 1973, and I went to my last movie about 10 years ago.

     

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