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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

#241

Post by tracker1 »

bullfightonmars wrote: post #228
lostapathy wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this varies with the type of film. If it's a film with real fans and excitement is thick, a packed theater is amazing. OTOH, films where the audience isn't engaged, or dare I say invested, having a crowd can often just be annoying because of the chatter or people moving around.

yes! I want the opposite. Packed screenings. There are some movies, especially summer blockbusters, that I want to see in a full room.

I went to a pretty packed showing of Spiderman No Way Home... the reaction to Matt Murdock catching the brick was pretty awesome. It's definitely a better experience watching movies with fans of the movies themselves.

That said, it's also nice sometimes catching a mostly empty 2pm showing of something and getting the perfect seat without distractions... Especially considering if I turn up the volume to get the appropriate experience at home I get yelled at.

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

#242

Post by tracker1 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #232
mizzao wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this was the case, but then I went to a full movie theater and really enjoyed being a part of an audience that was all experiencing the same thing. You could feel the emotion and that is a different sense than having the theater all to you to, but potentially just as rewarding.

Hah, yeah, my local AMC is a ghost town as people moved to newer and/or better maintained theaters. (Not entirely AMC's fault, they bought a decades old theater that was sort of on its last legs after four other companies controlled it in as many decades.) Most of the screenings I attend are empty or nearly so. I almost need an app to find the full AMC screenings. (I know it is at least as much a factor of which nigh…

There was a Harkin's location a few blocks from me kind of like that... it was old, but still really busy... the only difference is the land became so valuable they wound up selling anyways. The next nearest Harkins and AMC have much worse parking, even if newer/larger theaters, because they're sharing in strip-malls.

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

#243

Post by tracker1 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #164
echelon wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MoviePass was one of the most absurd ideas for a company ever. I don't know what they were thinking. Unlimited movies and they ate the entire cost? They didn't arrange any special deals or anything - they just paid the full price of the movie. It was insane.

1 movie per day I believe FWIW. I had it briefly as well. But they kept making changes it’s hard to remember exactly what the first iteration was.

I am mostly only familiar with the AMC version of this (A-List) which I had pre-covid, but since there haven't been multiple movies I'd want to see most months at all.

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

#244

Post by WorldMaker »

tracker1 wrote: post #242
WorldMaker wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, yeah, my local AMC is a ghost town as people moved to newer and/or better maintained theaters. (Not entirely AMC's fault, they bought a decades old theater that was sort of on its last legs after four other companies controlled it in as many decades.) Most of the screenings I attend are empty or nearly so. I almost need an app to find the full AMC screenings. (I know it is at least as much a factor of which nigh…

There was a Harkin's location a few blocks from me kind of like that... it was old, but still really busy... the only difference is the land became so valuable they wound up selling anyways. The next nearest Harkins and AMC have much worse parking, even if newer/larger theaters, because they're sharing in strip-malls.

Yeah, the dynamics and shifts in trends of where the newer theaters get built and which theaters become the busiest theaters is fascinating to me, and especially how much nostalgia influences which theater I want to spend the most time at.

I lost my favorite theater in the early 2020s and then its sibling, and last locally-owned and operated theater, to a landlord screwing with rents to try to attract an inner-city Publix. (A deal which still may not actually happen.)

That leaves the AMC as the last regularly attended theater of my high school and college days still standing.

A newer, more popular Cinemark is in the city's biggest mall. I still remember when mall theaters were the worst/cheapest/smallest places. This has flipped now that most of what's left of the malls are the new theater/Dave & Busters at the one mall or the Top Golf/Puttshack at the other mall with the rest of the malls seeming now just weird appendixes to the new attractions. Meanwhile, I don't want to deal with Mall Traffic, which is still a thing in these flipped malls, I don't entirely know why.

Most of the rest of the most popular theaters all wound up in the Exurbs, two beltways away from the city's downtown, presumably due to cheaper land, and I don't want to commute that far to regularly watch movies.

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

#245

Post by bell-cot »

bombcar wrote: post #203
bell-cot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I coulda added another "That I've seen" disclaimer to my second para. My dataset is just friends & family who I've seen "based on a true story" movies with, where I happened to know the history. The term to describe my "99%" isn't "dumb". It's "don't care".

It's all variations of Gell-Mann Amnesia. Any portrayal is a betrayal. Of course, if I'm going to talk about something I know deeply, I'm almost certainly going to begin with "this is all incorrect in the details, but correct in general" or similar.

> Any portrayal is a betrayal.

For those sufficiently pedantic, true. OTOH, there's a rather wide spectrum in how well (say) Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, Ken Burns's The Civil War, and McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom portray the U.S. Civil War.

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

#246

Post by WorldMaker »

tracker1 wrote: post #239
WorldMaker wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMC was one of the theater chains that did figure it out, but was also smart enough to realize that they didn't need the middle man and had a large enough chain to leverage. AMC A-List still exists. (Up to 4 movies per week at $23-35/month.)

This is the one I was thinking of... I didn't know of a separate "MoviePass" than what AMC and a few other theaters did that was similar.

Yeah, "MoviePass" was its own SV startup that tried to be the generic version of this pass and apply to "all" theaters. It burnt through a bunch of VC funds just to fail and it shouldn't have been a huge surprise that big chains like AMC decided to do their own similar passes on their own without a middleman.

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

#247

Post by cjkaminski »

bombcar wrote: post #198
dsr_ wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's usually quite possible. Movie theaters make their money on food and drink, so arranging an extra screening for the cost of 50% of the seats in a given room is nicely profitable. Depending on the theater's manager, they'll either want someone to guarantee a minimum or to have a single fee paid up front. There's nothing quite like knowing that everyone in the theater is a friend.

Opening night most if not all of the ticket price goes to the studio anyway, but it's the ticket price not the per-showing price - so if they have a theater empty anyway (and I've not seen a blockbuster fill all theaters at a given multiplex for decades, and even then it was only small 4plex) they might as well make you a deal.

The split on ticket price between studio and theater operators is usually around 50% for the opening period. The window scales towards the theater's benefit over time, usually going to about 75% in favor of the operator.

That said, you're 100% right about making an offer. Most theaters have underutilized screening rooms, and managers have the ability to rent for private events. I've done this a few times. The rental rate tends to be about 10-15x the price of a single ticket (in my experience).

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

#248

Post by tracker1 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #244
tracker1 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a Harkin's location a few blocks from me kind of like that... it was old, but still really busy... the only difference is the land became so valuable they wound up selling anyways. The next nearest Harkins and AMC have much worse parking, even if newer/larger theaters, because they're sharing in strip-malls.

Yeah, the dynamics and shifts in trends of where the newer theaters get built and which theaters become the busiest theaters is fascinating to me, and especially how much nostalgia influences which theater I want to spend the most time at. I lost my favorite theater in the early 2020s and then its sibling, and last locally-owned and operated theater, to a landlord screwing with rents to try to attract an inner-city P…

Haven't even considered the theater from when I was a kid... I was in a smaller town, and until I was about 13yo, there was a single theater with two screens. I remember waiting about 3 hours in line across two showings to see Return of The Jedi opening weekend. Aside, I also remember when you could get the movie, a small popcorn and a small drink for $5, and not being able to convince my dad to fork over the extra when the theater raised its prices... that's when my friends and I would stop at Walgreens on the way and buy candy there instead of at the theater.

Yeah, mall theaters are just kind of hellish... mostly because of the parking/organization... I know why they're laid out how they are, just really wish they'd switch it up to make the theater easier to access if that's all you want.

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

#249

Post by dtgriscom »

lostapathy wrote: post #226
mizzao wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this was the case, but then I went to a full movie theater and really enjoyed being a part of an audience that was all experiencing the same thing. You could feel the emotion and that is a different sense than having the theater all to you to, but potentially just as rewarding.

I think this varies with the type of film. If it's a film with real fans and excitement is thick, a packed theater is amazing. OTOH, films where the audience isn't engaged, or dare I say invested, having a crowd can often just be annoying because of the chatter or people moving around.

I saw the first Star Wars movie on the day it opened in Boston, in an enormous, packed theater. I will never forget the roar that went up when Han Solo came out of the sun to save Luke.
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