Train companies charge the earth because they have a captive market, essentially. For the kind of people who need to use a train, they have no alternative. It's no surprise that people with cars rarely use the things. Cinemas on the other hand face meaningful competition with DVD's which are being released ever sooner as well as video on demand services like the all conquering netflicks.
Cinema in general is going no-where. Cinemas as they exist today however could very much collapse with less warning than you think. You'll notice most Cinemas belong to one or two major chains at most, are all over the place and are usually huge buildings. Simple matters of costs and taxes could, if they attempt to expand at the wrong time (which means taking on huge debts to be paid off in the future), the whole house of cards could fall down. The appetite for films would still exist, so you'd still get some holding on, maybe the healthier branches broken up and sold off to continue, but it's not impossible that Cinema multiplexes could go the way of the drive-in. Of course, that's a worst case scenario and it's all very unlikely. It's also not likely to be because they up the price further however. That'd probably do enough to get people to stay away, sure. I just don't think they're deluded enough to actually push for it.
Thing is, Mario Bros was absolutely terrible. Kids knew that perfectly well, back in the day. That's pretty directly why it flopped, because it needed to actually do well but instead it survived on the bare minimum income you could expect, pretty much trading entirely on it's name. See also Green Lantern, I guess.
The thing about the risk averse nature of movie studios is that this basically means reboots and sequels and always has done. It has increased as the budgets have increased, but past a certain point you have to bow to the pressures of the audience. Which is to say, it isn't enough for a film to be safe
on paper. As an example, High budget, cgi filled disney promoted summer action movie based on fondly remembered literary classics? How could that possibly fail!
It almost directly led to the resignation of a senior Disney executive and single-handedly plunged them from profit to loss.
Conversely, this film also came out that year.
It's also based on a book, one that was described as unfilmable I believe.
It scooped up numerous awards and vast truckloads of cash.
Simply put, the studios don't always directly care about film quality, but they do care about success. The thing is, a good quality film is more likely to bring in better profits, so many major studios may surprise you. They may not always understand what makes a good movie, and when it comes to some executives their efforts can lead to exactly the opposite, but that's beside the point.
