George Lucas and Steven Spielberg Predicted Current State of Moviegoing Back in 2013

AMC Theatres announced this week that they are going to be experimenting with "variable pricing” at their movie theaters. They are starting with The Batman and charging moviegoers more money to go see that movie. I’ve seen prices for those tickets go up an extra $1 to $1.50.

It seems like variable pricing may end up being the future for movie theaters, and AMC is leading the charge. Well, back in 2013 filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg predicted that this would be the future of moviegoing. They also predicted a few other things that have come to pass. Lucas said at the time:

“You’re going to end up with fewer theaters, bigger theaters with a lot of nice things. Going to the movies will cost 50 bucks or 100 or 150 bucks, like what Broadway costs today, or a football game. And that's going to be what we call ‘the movie business.' But everything else is going to look more like cable television on TiVo.

"It's not going to have cable or broadcast. It's going to be the internet television."

Spielberg said, “There's going to be eventually day and date with movies and eventually there's going to be a price variance. You're going to have to pay $25 to see the next Iron Man. And you're probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln." Lucas jumped in saying, “I think eventually the Lincolns are going to go away and they're going to be on television."

It’s pretty insane how these filmmakers saw where the movie business was headed because that’s pretty much exactly where we’re at now!