Digital Movie Theaters: Too Little Too Late?

In my New Information Technology class we’ve been discussing digital cinema. As part of this topic we’ve looked at the movement toward digital projection in movie theaters. With this summer’s agreement on the technical specs for the equipment and systems to project movies digitally (see http://www.dcimovies.com/press/07-27-05.tt2), the serious implementation of digital movie theaters is underway. Recently Christie/AIX, the funding arm for Christie digital projection, began the rollout of, a planned, 4000 digital theaters across the next couple of years (see http://www.dcinematoday.com/dc/pr.aspx?newsID=329). This has been followed by, first, Disney and then Twentieth Century Fox quickly jumping on board to provide movies in the digital format needed for digital theater projection.

So, finally, the film industry is ready to let go of a 117 year old method of projecting movies. That is, some are ready. While filmmakers like George Lucas and Jim Cameron are serious proponents of shooting movies digitally, there are many who aren’t quite ready to let go of exposing celluloid. The savings, though, on the cost of movie prints and their distribution has made digital distribution and theaters a significant cost-cutting strategy.

In discussing the benefits of digital theaters, my students pointed out that while this benefits the theaters and studios, what’s going to be the benefit to theater goers? If the movie industry is saving money are they going to pass it along by lowering ticket prices? This is a key point. If there’s no perceived benefit to the ticket buyer, the students feel the conversion to digital theaters does little to get them to go to the movies. The movie industry saves money in distribution, but over time, if attendance continues to decline the industry continues to lose revenue. We’re already down to only 9 % of Americans describing themselves as regular movie goers according to a 2004 Ipsos poll reported on by Paul Hodgins in the Orange County Register (Sept. 29, 2005). The question then is what can the movie industry do to keep theater attendance alive?