Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are responsible for some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters. They're now warning moviegoers: you may have to pay $150 in the near future as a result of Hollywood's mega-mistakes.
Impending doom has been a big moneymaker for Hollywood for years. Now some of the industry's biggest names say those very same blockbusters could mean impending doom for Hollywood.
Paul Dergerabedian is president of Hollywood.com, an online site that tracks the movie industry.
"If there's too many big blockbuster failures in a row, that could really hurt the industry and change it forever," said Dergarabedian.
He points to big budget failures like Disney's "John Carter" as examples of how one box office bomb can cost a studio $200 million.
Spielberg has said as a result of too many pricy bombs, studios may have switch to tiered ticket prices, charging more for high-demand, big-budget movies.
Dergarabedian says a similar idea was kicked around in the mid-1990s.
"There was talk about that for the big epics you would pay more, and for the smaller, more character-driven or lower-budget films you would pay less at the box office. That idea never really took off," said Dergarabedian.
Talk to people on the street and any plan to boost ticket prices gets an overwhelmingly bad review.
But in a way, tiered pricing is already under way. Tickets for 3-D and IMAX films cost more, as do luxury and dine-in theaters.
And with Brad Pitt's big-budget zombie movie due out this summer, Paramount is offering a $50 "World War Z" "mega-ticket," which provides a pre-release screening and digital download of the movie when it's released to home video.
Moviegoers seem a bit more accepting of deals like that.
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