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I believe they love the narrative of the story and I can promise these screenings will show a quality family movie with the opportunity to heavily market Apple TV+ on the big screen for a lot less than a 30 second Super Bowl spot. With a ton of goodwill to go with it. From families to theater owners, everyone wins.

That’s quote a lot of words to say that literally adds nothing of value to the discussion. I already said it was a good movie. Multiple times. It being a good movie and the timing of a Best Picture nomination and free screenings is not a coincidence.
 
They should pay people to watch it. Utter glib trash.

Try the original: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3547740/
From IMDB:

"This movie caused some outrage in the French Deaf community because it casts hearing actors in several of its main Deaf roles. In in Rebecca Atkinson's Guardian op/ed, "La Famille Bélier Is Yet Another Cinematic Insult to the Deaf Community," one Deaf actress likened the casting of hearing actors as Deaf characters to the highly offensive practice of blackface and said, "the actors sign like pigs. It is as if they were foreigners who can't speak French properly." In the American remake, CODA, this was rectified; all of the Deaf members of the main family are played by actors who are also Deaf in their real lives (Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur, and Daniel Durant)."

I'm deaf, sign fluently, and I agree with this assessment. Fed up of seeing gibberish signing in media. Saw Coda last month & loved it, especially the father.

You say the French original is better. It might be better shot and a better film overall (likely is), but I'm guessing you don't sign fluently otherwise you'd be groaning & shuddering every time there's a shot of someone mangling LSF (Langue des Signes Française, aka French Sign Language).
 
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For those wondering how movie theaters make money it’s their heavily marked up concession sales: drinks, popcorn, candy, etc. For blockbusters like Avatar movie theaters pay more than ticket sales to distributors to run the film. After a few weeks the % theaters pay starts to fall (in line with attendance). Apple isn’t paying anything to theaters to show Coda, as movie theaters make their money on concessions.
 
For those wondering how movie theaters make money it’s their heavily marked up concession sales: drinks, popcorn, candy, etc. For blockbusters like Avatar movie theaters pay more than ticket sales to distributors to run the film. After a few weeks the % theaters pay starts to fall (in line with attendance). Apple isn’t paying anything to theaters to show Coda, as movie theaters make their money on concessions.

what if people go in to watch a movie and do not buy anything!? why do they increase ticket prices so ridiculously then?
 
From IMDB:

"This movie caused some outrage in the French Deaf community because it casts hearing actors in several of its main Deaf roles. In in Rebecca Atkinson's Guardian op/ed, "La Famille Bélier Is Yet Another Cinematic Insult to the Deaf Community," one Deaf actress likened the casting of hearing actors as Deaf characters to the highly offensive practice of blackface and said, "the actors sign like pigs. It is as if they were foreigners who can't speak French properly." In the American remake, CODA, this was rectified; all of the Deaf members of the main family are played by actors who are also Deaf in their real lives (Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur, and Daniel Durant)."

I'm deaf, sign fluently, and I agree with this assessment. Fed up of seeing gibberish signing in media. Saw Coda last month & loved it, especially the father.

You say the French original is better. It might be better shot and a better film overall (likely is), but I'm guessing you don't sign fluently otherwise you'd be groaning & shuddering every time there's a shot of someone mangling LSF (Langue des Signes Française, aka French Sign Language).

While I completely understand your POV , you are more like doctors who see wrong medical info in a movie or a cop seeing wrong procedure in a crime movie , the fact that deaf rate is like 0.04% of people so I do not think the movie makers of the French version cared enough to make it authentic to such small group.

I also heard that sign language is different per language, so a sign language of Russian deaf people can't communicate with sign language of deaf Indian people. So I heard...
 
what if people go in to watch a movie and do not buy anything!? why do they increase ticket prices so ridiculously then?
Some people don’t buy concessions, but the cost is so high it makes up for the people who don’t. As far as ticket prices go, it’s whatever the market will bear, movies are expensive to make & distribute and those companies all need ever larger profits to stay in business.
 
For those wondering how movie theaters make money it’s their heavily marked up concession sales: drinks, popcorn, candy, etc. For blockbusters like Avatar movie theaters pay more than ticket sales to distributors to run the film. After a few weeks the % theaters pay starts to fall (in line with attendance). Apple isn’t paying anything to theaters to show Coda, as movie theaters make their money on concessions.

While concessions have higher margins, ticket sales are still a very important profit source for theaters as they account for a much greater portion of the revenue total on average.
 
While concessions have higher margins, ticket sales are still a very important profit source for theaters as they account for a much greater portion of the revenue total on average.
Not at the start of big blockbusters they don’t. Indi stuff sure, but how movie theaters make money is far less about ticket sales than it is in selling popcorn, drinks, food, & candy.
 
Not at the start of big blockbusters they don’t. Indi stuff sure, but how movie theaters make money is far less about ticket sales than it is in selling popcorn, drinks, food, & candy.

According to the article below, about 62% of theater revenue comes from ticket sales and 31% comes from concessions. The rest is advertising, video games, etc.

"In 2018, 62% of AMC's total revenue came from admissions. Thirty-one percent was from concessions. But AMC was able to keep almost 84% of that concession revenue as profit, compared to just under 50% that they were able to keep from admissions. Basically, if you spend $1 on food, AMC keeps $0.84. But if you spend $1 on a ticket, it keeps only $0.50."

Using these figures, if a theater generated $100,000 in revenue for a given period, $62,000 would be from ticket sales resulting in around $31,000 profit while $31,000 would be from concessions resulting in around $26,040 profit. Ticket sales would be more profitable on average.

 
While I completely understand your POV , you are more like doctors who see wrong medical info in a movie or a cop seeing wrong procedure in a crime movie , the fact that deaf rate is like 0.04% of people so I do not think the movie makers of the French version cared enough to make it authentic to such small group.

I also heard that sign language is different per language, so a sign language of Russian deaf people can't communicate with sign language of deaf Indian people. So I heard...
Hi MacBH928, yes, different countries have different sign languages, just like with spoken languages. All the same linguistic factors that influence the evolution of spoken languages also influence signed languages.

Sign languages don't always follow national spoken languages either - ASL (American Sign Language) is very different from BSL (British Sign Language).

Yes you're right, the French film makers didn't care enough. But the American makers of CODA cared enough to cast deaf actors and get the language right. It's not just about the details. When over half the dialogue of the movie is in a particular language, it's silly to cast actors who have no knowledge of the language they're supposed to be using and had to take lessons in how to use it. There are plenty of excellent French deaf actors who could have done the job.

PS I am loving the recent surge in sign language in media.The Witcher, the Eternals, and several others all have Deaf actors delivering their lines fluently. A friend of mine was in the recent Dune movie - he is the Harkonnon who is immune to the Bene Gesserit 'Voice' as Paul and Jessica try to escape in the winged helicopter. It's funny because he has no signed lines, only one or two spoken lines. But because the book states the character is deaf, the movie director took the trouble to hire a Deaf actor for that scene. I admire that attention to detail.
 
Hi MacBH928, yes, different countries have different sign languages, just like with spoken languages. All the same linguistic factors that influence the evolution of spoken languages also influence signed languages.

Sign languages don't always follow national spoken languages either - ASL (American Sign Language) is very different from BSL (British Sign Language).

Yes you're right, the French film makers didn't care enough. But the American makers of CODA cared enough to cast deaf actors and get the language right. It's not just about the details. When over half the dialogue of the movie is in a particular language, it's silly to cast actors who have no knowledge of the language they're supposed to be using and had to take lessons in how to use it. There are plenty of excellent French deaf actors who could have done the job.

PS I am loving the recent surge in sign language in media.The Witcher, the Eternals, and several others all have Deaf actors delivering their lines fluently. A friend of mine was in the recent Dune movie - he is the Harkonnon who is immune to the Bene Gesserit 'Voice' as Paul and Jessica try to escape in the winged helicopter. It's funny because he has no signed lines, only one or two spoken lines. But because the book states the character is deaf, the movie director took the trouble to hire a Deaf actor for that scene. I admire that attention to detail.

may I ask, if you are American, how did you know the French sign language used in the movie was incorrect? I assume you only know the American sign language
 
may I ask, if you are American, how did you know the French sign language used in the movie was incorrect? I assume you only know the American sign language
1) I'm not American :)

2) Many Deaf people know multiple sign languages, just like many hearing people know multiple spoken languages. This might be more common outside the USA. I know several languages both spoken & signed to varying levels. (reading / writing only for the spoken ones.)

3) The actors only started learning signing a few months previously. It's impossible to become fluent in that amount of time. In the signing in the film the eye contact, accents, grammar, emphasis, role-shifting etc all have issues that are noticeable to fluent signers.

I wouldn't know but I'm told that for hearing people, you can tell if another person isn't fluent when speaking - even if you don't know their language well - because they have issues with their word formation, stumble over pronunciation, miss out letters, put pauses and emphasis in the wrong places and so on. To me as a deaf person they would look like a fluent speaker, but you as a hearing person probably would hear the issues in their speech very quickly.

Bonus factoid: ASL is quite similar to LSF for historical reasons - they only started diverging a couple hundred years ago.
 
1) I'm not American :)

2) Many Deaf people know multiple sign languages, just like many hearing people know multiple spoken languages. This might be more common outside the USA. I know several languages both spoken & signed to varying levels. (reading / writing only for the spoken ones.)

3) The actors only started learning signing a few months previously. It's impossible to become fluent in that amount of time. In the signing in the film the eye contact, accents, grammar, emphasis, role-shifting etc all have issues that are noticeable to fluent signers.

I wouldn't know but I'm told that for hearing people, you can tell if another person isn't fluent when speaking - even if you don't know their language well - because they have issues with their word formation, stumble over pronunciation, miss out letters, put pauses and emphasis in the wrong places and so on. To me as a deaf person they would look like a fluent speaker, but you as a hearing person probably would hear the issues in their speech very quickly.

Bonus factoid: ASL is quite similar to LSF for historical reasons - they only started diverging a couple hundred years ago.

I didn't know there was accents in sign language, I thought accent is a difference in sound. I also didn't know ASL existed for hundreds of years , I thought its a new method developed in maybe the 40s to communicate with the deaf.
 
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