The Movie Business Challenge

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In his blog today, Mark Cuban offers a challenge: solve the problem that haunts him the most and he’ll give you a job. “Its the holy grail of the movie business. How do you get people out of the house to see your movie without spending a fortune. How can you convince 5 million people to give up their weekend and go to a theater to see a specific movie without spending 60mm dollars. … Its not unusual to spend 8, 10 , 12 dollars PER PERSON that goes to a movie in the opening weekend.” He points out that movie marketing often costs many times what a movie makes back in from its theatre run.

Here’s my entry: It seems to me that the easiest way to get more people in theatre seats while spending fewer marketing dollars is to give away free movie tickets. Make going to the movies free. As long as you pay the theatre owners’ half of the admissions they’ll be fine with it. In fact, they’ll be thrilled because free movies will doubtlessly raise attendance and therefore concession sales. You just have to make sure that your later revenues from licensing and DVD sales, etc. will make up for the initial outlay. As an alternative, you could make admission to a movie free the first week it’s out and then hope positive word of mouth will drive the box office after that.

Jul 24, 2006 | Comments

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