He Oughta Not Be in Pictures
Stelios is facing an un-Easy ride with his new foray into cinemas. Those leisured or flexi-working people who have the chance to go to the cinemas in the afternoon must all have wondered at some time if multiplexes are a front for something else.
Those leisured or flexi-working people who have the chance to go to the cinemas in the afternoon must all have wondered at some time if multiplexes are a front for something else. On a recent Friday, I watched a heavily advertised film at the 4pm screening in a London super-movie house on its first day of release and was the only person there.
There's a convention in theatre that the play is called off when the performers outnumber the audience but it's common in cinema for the ticket-buyer/cast ratio to be around 1:100. The reason for these ghost-showings is that cinemas agree a number of screenings with distributors regardless of demand.
But it was one businessman's reaction to such dumb numbers - it's estimated that 80% of the annually available cinema seats in Britain never see a bottom - which led to me standing this week in Milton Keynes, watching Britain's first-ever multiplex - now abandoned - being painted orange. By turning what was once the Point into the first EasyCinema.com, Stelios Haji-Ioannou hopes to apply to movie-going the principles he established with EasyJet, his pioneering low-cost airline.
Stelios's economic case is that cinema is - after the decline of the net book agreement - the last major business in which price has no relationship to demand: you pay as much to see a cold film as a hot one.
By using a fluctuating price system based on average yield - much in the way that a passenger on a jet can have paid 90% less than the person in the next seat - EasyCinema.com, on its opening day yesterday, was offering seats at 20p for nine different movies.
The flaw in all this - perhaps unsurprising to those who have flown EasyJet - is that Stelios's films are very late arrivals. Coincidentally (as it must be, because cartels are illegal), all the big movie distributors have refused to deal with him. So if, in Milton Keynes last night, you wanted to see the week's cinematic biggie The Matrix Reloaded, it was only available over the road at the Xscape multiplex for £6.50.
Give your one little silver coin to Stelios and it's generally second-run stuff - Two Weeks Notice, Evelyn, Darkness Falls - on which critics have not only pissed but cats have now added their splashes on the papers in which they did it.
In the remaking of the aviation business, the bullying flag-tailed carriers were taken to court and the government was able to be encouraging over landing slots. Stelios is on his own in this one, unless he can find enough evidence to bring charges of a cartel. But the huge studios have so far managed to maintain the illusion that multiplex prices remain high and uniform through some mysterious economic special effect, invisible to the cinemagoer's eye.
The six or so quid you save by going to EasyCinema won't be spent on concessions. The old multiplex's pick 'n' mix shop stands empty, the scoops which we are please asked to use hanging limply above empty bins. Stelios had chosen to abandon the ancient British connection between seeing films and eating. Sweets and snacks must be brought from home.
Although Stelios's main interest in low prices is big profits, it's hard not to warm to the social possibilities of what he does. EasyJet clearly permitted family reunions, holidays and small business trips which would not other wise have been affordable. And, with EasyCinema.com, you fantasise about the Milton Keynes single mother with four children who couldn't afford to take them to see The Little Polar Bear at Xscape but can now get the whole family in for a quid.
Let's hope that this cheapo-Odeon can be a palace of such dreams. But, with the ever-bigger video and DVD retail market showing the existence of a movie-going class willing to pay up to £20 a film, you have to wonder if the reason that people didn't go to see Two Weeks Notice when it first came out was not that a studio cartel fixed seats at £6-8 but that a dodgy Hugh Grant romantic comedy isn't even worth it at 20p.
Looking at Stelios's experiment, it was, fittingly, an airline analogy which came to me: Freddie Laker, who tried to beat the aviation big boys 20 years too early. Unless Mr EasyJet can find a lawyer as smart as any in a Hollywood courtroom drama to bring a price-fixing case against the distributors, he's likely, in cinema, to be Laker to someone else's future Branson.
There's a convention in theatre that the play is called off when the performers outnumber the audience but it's common in cinema for the ticket-buyer/cast ratio to be around 1:100. The reason for these ghost-showings is that cinemas agree a number of screenings with distributors regardless of demand.
But it was one businessman's reaction to such dumb numbers - it's estimated that 80% of the annually available cinema seats in Britain never see a bottom - which led to me standing this week in Milton Keynes, watching Britain's first-ever multiplex - now abandoned - being painted orange. By turning what was once the Point into the first EasyCinema.com, Stelios Haji-Ioannou hopes to apply to movie-going the principles he established with EasyJet, his pioneering low-cost airline.
Stelios's economic case is that cinema is - after the decline of the net book agreement - the last major business in which price has no relationship to demand: you pay as much to see a cold film as a hot one.
By using a fluctuating price system based on average yield - much in the way that a passenger on a jet can have paid 90% less than the person in the next seat - EasyCinema.com, on its opening day yesterday, was offering seats at 20p for nine different movies.
The flaw in all this - perhaps unsurprising to those who have flown EasyJet - is that Stelios's films are very late arrivals. Coincidentally (as it must be, because cartels are illegal), all the big movie distributors have refused to deal with him. So if, in Milton Keynes last night, you wanted to see the week's cinematic biggie The Matrix Reloaded, it was only available over the road at the Xscape multiplex for £6.50.
Give your one little silver coin to Stelios and it's generally second-run stuff - Two Weeks Notice, Evelyn, Darkness Falls - on which critics have not only pissed but cats have now added their splashes on the papers in which they did it.
In the remaking of the aviation business, the bullying flag-tailed carriers were taken to court and the government was able to be encouraging over landing slots. Stelios is on his own in this one, unless he can find enough evidence to bring charges of a cartel. But the huge studios have so far managed to maintain the illusion that multiplex prices remain high and uniform through some mysterious economic special effect, invisible to the cinemagoer's eye.
The six or so quid you save by going to EasyCinema won't be spent on concessions. The old multiplex's pick 'n' mix shop stands empty, the scoops which we are please asked to use hanging limply above empty bins. Stelios had chosen to abandon the ancient British connection between seeing films and eating. Sweets and snacks must be brought from home.
Although Stelios's main interest in low prices is big profits, it's hard not to warm to the social possibilities of what he does. EasyJet clearly permitted family reunions, holidays and small business trips which would not other wise have been affordable. And, with EasyCinema.com, you fantasise about the Milton Keynes single mother with four children who couldn't afford to take them to see The Little Polar Bear at Xscape but can now get the whole family in for a quid.
Let's hope that this cheapo-Odeon can be a palace of such dreams. But, with the ever-bigger video and DVD retail market showing the existence of a movie-going class willing to pay up to £20 a film, you have to wonder if the reason that people didn't go to see Two Weeks Notice when it first came out was not that a studio cartel fixed seats at £6-8 but that a dodgy Hugh Grant romantic comedy isn't even worth it at 20p.
Looking at Stelios's experiment, it was, fittingly, an airline analogy which came to me: Freddie Laker, who tried to beat the aviation big boys 20 years too early. Unless Mr EasyJet can find a lawyer as smart as any in a Hollywood courtroom drama to bring a price-fixing case against the distributors, he's likely, in cinema, to be Laker to someone else's future Branson.
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