In December 2023, Statista (a global data and business intelligence platform founded in Germany covering 80,000 topics and operating in 13 locations worldwide) published a cinema usage survey in the Philippines.
The survey revealed that only 14 percent of consumers in the Philippines have been to cinemas within the past 12 months, 1 percent in the past week and 96 percent of consumers have accessed media through television for the past 12 months).
Factors
A major factor for the decline in moviegoing is the steep prices of movie theaters per screening, which apparently is now more affordable only to the classes A and upper B with occasionally lower C going to cinemas during special movie fests like the annual Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF).
Another factor is that movies have fallen in the lowest priority of Filipinos, who daily grapple with high cost of living, an escalating inflation (particularly food inflation), the continuously rising costs of gasoline, utilities and services and transport fares.
And yet, incomes have not coped with all these rising costs.
The emergence and widespread subscription of the middle class to Netflix, cable channels and other subscription-based movie apps have also been more attractive to moviegoers, who would rather watch films they have missed in the comfort of their homes in the company of their loved ones.
Efforts by malls operating moviehouses to upgrade and modernize their theaters have only added to the costs of movie watching, which most consumers could no longer shoulder.
The steady slide of moviegoing in the Philippines started with the age of CDs, DVDs and cable television and is now practically being made obsolete by the internet– where people can watch even the latest foreign and local movies for a fee that is way below those charged by physical moviehouses.
Impact
What is worrisome is how this impacts the movie production industry here and abroad.
The Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) noted the decrease in the number of Filipinos watching movies in cinemas and that cinema-watching is now confined to Classes A and B and a small (seasonal, if I may add) portion of C.
FDCP chair Jose Javier Reyes told the Inquirer that the agency has come up with a preliminary survey on the viewing habits of the Filipino audience, and has already sent the result to major film producers and the Cinema Exhibitors Association of the Philippines.
A “more extensive” one will be released in December, he added.
Sadly, the survey revealed that those in the D and E socioeconomic classes are no longer watching movies in the cinemas.
“Actually, even the number of audiences from the C market has decreased. We only have those from C1, and not even C2 and C3. In other words, it has become very limited,” he said.
Which explains why the biggest hits of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) these past years are for these specific markets. “Deleter” was the biggest hit in 2023 as its audiences are those who can afford it.
“That rings an alarming bell because instead of paying P500 to see it in theaters, they just wait for it on streaming apps,” the Inquirer quoted him.
Another information culled from the survey is that “return viewers” no longer exist, added Reyes.
“Back then, when you really liked a movie, you’d see it in cinemas several times. These days, people will watch it once and just wait for it to be streamed. That greatly affected ticket sales,” he explained.
Exceptions
Reyes explained the recent unexpected box-office success of “Un/Happy for You,” starring Joshua Garcia and Julia Barretto, and “Rewind,” featuring couple Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera.
“We are guessing that the audience missed the JoshLia tandem. That’s why it earned P1 billion. We all know that Julia is with somebody else now, but people wanted more of them. Dingdong and Marian have not had a movie in so long. ‘Rewind’ is a family movie—it even has Jesus there—and it was shown during Christmas. It’s the perfect storm,” the Inquirer reported.
Reyes also touched on what he said was “the power of word of mouth.”
He explained: “We are guessing that people went to the cinemas for the JoshLia film because it’s a good story. We’ve also discovered (from the survey) that the biggest promo is word of mouth. You start weak in the box-office, but when word of mouth starts working, people will flock to the cinemas to see you, the paper added.
Photo courtesy: Philippine Star
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