Eli5: movies are created to be seen on a big screen in a theatre. Why aren’t classic movies more often released into theaters?
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The number of screens and hours to show something on the screens are both finite. Theaters aren’t interested in paying to license a classic movie which will take up potentially valuable screen time that could otherwise be used for current popular movies, which they were going to license anyway.
Generally it isn’t worth a theatres time or money to show a classic movie, simply because there isn’t enough interest in a random classic film to buy a ticket and fill a theatre. However in many cities you can often find theatres that do replay classic films, typically following some theme or logic, which build enough of a following that they came close to filling the theatre.
Because people don’t pay to go see them.
There are few older movies getting limited re-releases from time to time, but basically only James Cameron gets people to pay money to watch his movies again and again in Cinema.
For other movies they are usually lucky if they pay for the cost of the re-release itself and as such studios are not very inclined to have them.
Alamo Drafthouse cinemas often show older movies for a limited run, maybe only once a day. They’re showing Dawn of the Dead for the next week, if you consider that a classic.
A lot of smaller regional theaters often show old movies and some bigger ones might have like a movie a week that’s not a new release but generally speaking most of the time their slots are full with current releases. Luckily my local theater does old movie viewings every week and I got to watch Akira in a cinema a month ago which was sweet
This happens but it’s niche. The town attached to my med school showed classic films all the time at one theater that clearly gave no shits about making money.
Because most people will only pay to see a Transformers movie or a Marvel movie… that’s it… over and over again.
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