Screen Size Could Determine Your Movie Price In The Future

For the most part, movies cost pretty much the same across the board, with a couple of dollars off here and there. However is it fair that a movie that we can watch on our gigantic televisions cost the same compared to watching it on our phones? After all with our phones, the experience is somewhat limited in terms of audio and visual quality.

Well it turns out that perhaps the price of your movie could be based on the medium in the future. Or at least that’s the future that DreamWorks Animation’s CEO, Jeffrey Katzenberg, envisions. According to Katzenberg, “A movie screen will be $15. A 75-inch TV will be $4. A smartphone will be $1.99.”

It seems somewhat far because if I am going to watch a movie on my phone, I should not have to pay the same price as someone watching it in their home with a great home theater setup and a massive television, right? However this model might prove difficult because how will the system be able to tell the exact size of the screen you are watching it on?

Piracy at the moment is rampant and users are able to rip content from all sorts of sources, streaming, television, and even the old school method of secretly recording in cinemas, so who’s to say a user can’t pay $1.99 and then trick the movie into playing on a 55-inch television instead?

That being said it is still an interesting idea and Katzenberg believes that this is the pricing model that will eventually become an industry standard. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but what do you guys think? Would you mind paying less to watch it on a smaller device like a smartphone or tablet?

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: dreamworks, Movies