As the box office rebounds and heads to, perhaps, its strongest year since Covid, film distribution legend Chris Aronson has a note of caution for theater owners and studios: Don’t get cocky.
“I’ve always been pro-choice when it comes to the consumer. I completely believe in giving the consumer what they want,” Chris tells me on this week’s episode of The Rushfield Lunch. “If they want a premium experience, the industry should be able to offer them premium experiences.”
Those premium experiences drove the opening weekend grosses for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. But what Chris hopes is that theaters don’t just prioritize the upkeep of premium large-format screens, like IMAX, over the quality of the other auditoriums.
“Air travel is a necessity for many, a luxury for some,” Chris says. “Going to the movies is an elective, out-of-home choice. And as such, the industry cannot afford to have one of their experiences be bad in order to force customers to go to something better. That, to me, is analogous to going to a restaurant and having a bad experience. If you have a bad experience, whether the service is terrible or if the food is bad, you’re likely not going back to that restaurant.”
Chris has been on my short list of dream guests since I started this weekly confab. He’s a legend for his big swings, outspoken manner and incredible history in this world. After serving at MGM and then Fox, he presided as distribution czar of Paramount from 2019 until earlier this year — when he departed the studio to become an independent consultant, and board member and advisor to Rentrak Theatrical, the entertainment analytics company he founded in 2010.
Among the more notable parts of his legendary run were his incredible entrances every year at CinemaCon — he even rode a chariot out to the stage a couple of years ago to herald Gladiator II — where his address was the most looked forward to part of the event.
Suffice it to say, I wasn’t surprised Chris had incredible perspective on the filmed entertainment business, and where things are headed — including his wish for flexible pricing, akin to how seats behind home plate at Dodger Stadium cost more than those in the upper deck. It’s one of the options he thinks could get people to the theater more often, without dipping the overall quality of the experience from auditorium to auditorium.
“Supply and demand dictate that if you have limited supply and great demand, you should be able to charge more,” he says. “If you have less demand on the regular experience, perhaps a lower ticket price might make sense (for those screens), which might spur additional moviegoing and remove price being a barrier from going to the movies.”
The one-price-fits-all formula has been in place for longer than Chris and I have been around, he notes, but maybe it has run its course.
“If we made a documentary out of our conversation and put it into theaters, the ticket is gonna cost the same as a ticket to The Odyssey,” he says. “And that doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to me, and I dare say it doesn’t make sense to you either.”
