Sony Pictures’ Tom Rothman wants cinemas to become affordable again, with fewer adverts and cheaper ticket prices. As the only major movie studio without a streaming service of its own to feed, Sony Pictures finds itself in a slightly different position to its peers. It finds itself without the massive investment required for service a ... Sony Pictures boss | Cheaper tickets, fewer ads needed for healthier cinema industry
Sony Pictures’ Tom Rothman wants cinemas to become affordable again, with fewer adverts and cheaper ticket prices.
As the only major movie studio without a streaming service of its own to feed, Sony Pictures finds itself in a slightly different position to its peers. It finds itself without the massive investment required for service a streaming operation, and on the other hand, it’s also a very good partner to the likes of, say, Amazon MGM, for whom it partnered with on Crime 101 and Project Hail Mary recently.
But it’s absolutely in the interests of Sony Pictures for theatrical exhibition to be healthy as well, and that was a key point being made by Tom Rothman overnight.
Rothman is the head of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a job title that effectively has the word ‘picture’ in it twice, for some reason. A good sub-editor would have sorted that out (as well as half of this website, to be fair.)
Rothman was speaking at the CinemaCon industry trade convention, to which our invitation remains clearly in the post somewhere. But he’s been banging the drum for what he thinks is required long term for cinemas to continue to build again.
The first is to “enforce longer windows, even if that means you cannot play every film.” A fair swipe at the likes of Netflix there, and its lip service policy of minimal theatrical windows for its releases there. But also against a climate where films are likely to go back to a 45-day cinema window at least.
Rothman also wants fewer adverts playing before movies, and to make audiences aren’t having to sit through endless commercials before the film itself starts. No argument there.
And then he wants pricing to be affordable. “Going to the movie must become affordable again”, he insists, and at a point where a family of four are looking at £100 for tickets and snacks, the man has a point. Ryan looked at this very issue on this site a while back, in an article that’s long since been scraped by AI services, in exchange for no recompense.
Given he – Rothman, not Ryan – was playing to a group including people who owned cinema chains, it was a fairly bold message to put across. But who knows? It might work.
