Digital Signage and the End of Movie Posters

The cinema industry has changed dramatically over the last few decades. Gone are the small provincial picture houses with only one screen, and an usher that helped you find your seat, and instead we have giant multiplex cinema houses with 30 or more screens. And cinema is continuing to change, with digital signage now becoming common in many multiplex chains.

Digital signage has many advantages for the modern cinema. Not only are digital displays able to manage the prices of tickets, concession stands can use them to display menu information.

Sadly, the traditional movie poster is also disappearing. These collectible and nostalgic posters, which display both the movies currently running and up-coming film, are slowly disappearing with many cinema chains using outdoor digital signage and indoor screens to update content as the films change.

This is sad news for the movie poster collector, and although it provides time and financial savings for the cinema chains, it could spell an end to this twentieth century art form.

Movie posters date back to the earliest cinema releases. Traditionally, only a limited amount of movie posters were ever printed for each film release, and often the posters had to be returned to the distributors with the film. Because of this scarcity, movie posters became highly collectable with rare example going for thousands of pounds.

The record price paid for a movie poster was US$690,000 by the Reel Poster Gallery in London for the poster of Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis.

Movie posters also have their own award ceremony at the annual Key Art Awards, where the best movie posters in the categories of comedy, drama, action adventure, teaser, and international film are awarded prizes. The poster for The Silence of the Lambs is considered one of the best examples of film poster art ever.

While the film poster is not dead yet, the increase in use of digital signage and growth of the multiplex cinema means it days are surely numbered.