As Australians flock to watching Netflix, Stan and Presto content three Hollywood Studios are tipping over $70M into a new Company whose sole purpose is to drive consumers back to cinema’s.
Walt Disney, News Corporation owned 21st Century Fox’s Twentieth Century Fox, and Lions Gate Entertainment have tipped the money into Atom Tickets, a mobile start up that can organize groups to go to movies and enable discounts for less-popular screenings, a controversial practice in the industry.
In Australia consumers are deserting Cinema’s in droves, with several Cinema chains now working to increase the percentage of tickets sold online.
Atom was co-founded by Matthew Bakal, a film-financing executive, and Ameesh Paleja, a veteran engineer at Amazon.com. “There are not a lot of tech people looking to help theatres,” Mr. Paleja noted. “Everyone is talking about, ‘How do I stream it on the phone?'”
The app can poll several friends’ movie preferences and availability and suggest screenings that meet everyone’s criteria.
People can then buy a block of tickets together but divide payments.
No more rounds of emails and texts, in other words, to figure out who wants to see what movie when and who owes how much money.
Several Cinema groups have said they were open to testing the idea, as did executives at Disney and Fox.
