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Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

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Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#21
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm finding that more and more, when I impulsively go to the theater and try to buy tickets at the door... I always find the only tickets available are horrible, like in the front row to the side. You want like F-6 and F-7 and get A-2 and B-2. And if I even accept this, the people in the choice seats invariably show up right when all the trailers are wrapping up. so - people buy tickets ahead of time, and it might be…

wait... I don't think I've ever experienced assigned seats in a movie theatre. Is that a thing?

[deleted]

Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#22
I remember I went to a small showing once as a kid. It was just our group and 1 lady in the theater.

We got to small talk and the lady mentioned she had once been the only customer for a showing and told the projectionist that she didn’t want to be a bother and could come back and another day.

The projectionist had apparently replied that it was no bother - they would roll the movie even if no one showed up!

Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#23
post #7

This is cool. Something about dropping everything to go see a movie in an empty theater is sort of tempting.

The only film I saw in an empty theater was 'The Death of Stalin'. That was kind of odd but a decent film regardless.

Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#24
I have been quite a heavy patron of AMC theaters these past few years since COVID ended. I have seen A LOT of movies play to empty theaters. I used to actually peek at many of the rooms when I left my movie and so many were downright empty.

Its the norm and its probably why their stock is trading at $1.45 as of this writing.

Its a dead (not dying, dead) entertainment option. When you are competing for the same 24 hrs in a day with TV, Youtube, Gaming, Streaming, TikTok, Instagram and many others the theater is bottom of the barrel for young people today.

And don't tell me its because people are disrespectful or the commercials are too long. These are a problem but Alamo Drafthouse tried to tackle this and they ended up in bankruptcy. AMC would also be bankrupt today but it's saving grace was the meme stock frenzy they had a few years back. Probably bought them a few more years but that ride might be coming to an end.

Currently they fill the rooms for the pop movies like old established franchises but that only comes along every couple weeks at the most and the rest of the time the place is not really busy. This is a bit different in the big cities but AMC has overextended themselves with too many locations in the rural and suburban US.

...Also this app is not displaying accurate data (I assume they are pulling from AMC's API). My local theater is listing no results and I cross checked and there are movies currently listed that have 0 seats booked so the app is counting incorrectly for at least one theater.

EDIT: After I wrote this, the site auto updated with new data. Now I see some screenings but it is still inaccurate because it is still missing movies from that theater...maybe they are scraping instead of using the API? This is a simple problem if using the API (I wrote my own home cooked app): just iterate through all theater ids, find the ones with 0 bookings and display that list.

Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#25
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm finding that more and more, when I impulsively go to the theater and try to buy tickets at the door... I always find the only tickets available are horrible, like in the front row to the side. You want like F-6 and F-7 and get A-2 and B-2. And if I even accept this, the people in the choice seats invariably show up right when all the trailers are wrapping up. so - people buy tickets ahead of time, and it might be…

wait... I don't think I've ever experienced assigned seats in a movie theatre. Is that a thing?

When I grew up in LA 20+ years ago, seating was way more casual. Now everywhere seems to want assigned seating. I think this is in part because so many theater chains now offer a "premium" dining experience. It's yet another reason I rarely go to theaters anymore, on top of most of the film offerings being crap.

Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#26
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait... I don't think I've ever experienced assigned seats in a movie theatre. Is that a thing?

I've never been to a theater without assigned seats. Maybe it's a regional difference?

Regional where...? Never seen this in the Northeast.

Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#27

I have been quite a heavy patron of AMC theaters these past few years since COVID ended. I have seen A LOT of movies play to empty theaters. I used to actually peek at many of the rooms when I left my movie and so many were downright empty. Its the norm and its probably why their stock is trading at $1.45 as of this writing. Its a dead (not dying, dead) entertainment option. When you are competing for the same 24 hrs…

It's not the ads, but they're not helping. I still like to go to theaters, but am thinking if not going anymore because I can't really take it. I don't go to AMC since not in the US, but where I go you can't even skip them because you never know how long it will be. I sat once for literally 40 minutes. It's also crazy expensive. So they need to do these things to stay afloat, but they're driving away the last people that still want to go.

It's just dead in its current form, you're right about that. To make it work they need to reinvent themselves. But it's hard.

Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#28

Do enough people buy tickets in advance now that this really indicates anything of value? I'm old and have never pre-purchased a movie ticket in my life. I assume a lot of people do, but the few times I've been to the movies lately, it seems people are buying tickets at the theater.

> I'm old and have never pre-purchased a movie ticket in my life. I’m old and have always pre-purchased tickets, even in the 90s, as that’s the way to get better seats.

You sure about the 90s? Not saying it was impossible, but must have been extremely rare. Arclight was one of the first theaters to do assigned seats in 2002. AMC only started trialing in 2008, but didn't start rolling it out until 2016 in NYC.

Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#29

Do enough people buy tickets in advance now that this really indicates anything of value? I'm old and have never pre-purchased a movie ticket in my life. I assume a lot of people do, but the few times I've been to the movies lately, it seems people are buying tickets at the theater.

I exclusively buy tickets online, and whatever seats show up as empty online are empty when we show up.

Yeah, unless it's just me, and on a whim, which doesn't happen often, I'd always reserve online.

Re: Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold

#30
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most European countries you only get reserved seats at big multiplex cinemas, stuff like Cinestar, NOS and so on. On the European Cinema network [0], reserved seats is a long gone concept. So not always a given that seats can be reserved online for cinema, depends on ones location. [0] - https://www.europa-cinemas.org

I've been to several European Network cinemas and always gotten reserved seats

I can assert that none of those I usually go have reserved seats, what they do have is reserved tickets.

I guess it depends then.

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