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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: AMC Spending $600 Million to Remodel Theaters With Larger Chairs, Fewer Seats
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Lyle Romer
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1400
From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 07-29-2014 09:57 AM
The problem that AMC (probably more than any other chain has) is that their gigaplex idea that worked great in the late 90's doesn't work anymore due to the overhead.
When they originally came up with the idea, it was somewhat brilliant. Essentially, instead of having one 500 seat auditorium showing a film they would now have two, 300 seat auditoriums. For the busy movies, 2 prints in 500 seat auditoriums could be replaced by four, 300 seat auditoriums.
I'm not bad at math. I know 300x2=600, not 500. The capacity increased a little bit.
By spreading the shows out, they could get great efficiency by requiring roughly half the staff to serve the same number of customers. It also greatly increased staff productivity because of nearly continuous shows throughout the complex.
This is one issue with a standard 8-12 plex. You are essentially paying employees to stand around doing very little for a lot of time. For example, you have a set of shows between 7PM and 8PM. Then the next set of shows is 9:45PM to 10:30PM. For an hour and 45 minutes, the staff is either taking breaks or mostly standing around talking to each other. Yes, there is "some" work going on like restocking and cleaning but it doesn't take more than a few minutes to accomplish that stuff.
Of course, back in the late 90's when September rolled around, an AMC 24 plex could hold more product and play 20 different movies (dual prints of the top 4) instead of running multiple prints of 10. This would allow the business model to work in the slow season.
Today, you can't find 20 titles in September that will do nearly enough business to offset the overhead of a modern megaplex. That is why AMC is doing this project. It is to try and get higher revenue per person. Also, the reduced capacity lets them utilize the available seats more efficiently.
At the very busy (last time I could see figures a few years ago) Downtown Disney 24 in Orlando, AMC turned several (6 I think) auditoriums into dine-in theaters. They are essentially operating a conventional 18 plex and a dine in 6 plex at the same location.
Regarding the comments about "why don't they spend $600 million on payroll instead to get friendly employees?"
I'm sure that they are financing this conversion. Let's say it is over 5 years. That's $120 Million a year. From the last public data in 2012, they had 26,000 employees. That would average $4,600 per employee. A lot of them are part time. Let's use 1500 hours per year for each. This will help account for the fact that managers would get bigger raises.
Would $3 an hour extra really get that much better employee? Because of the part time nature of the job, I don't think paying ten something an hour vs. a little over minimum wage will really make a difference. You still won't be in the range where normal people can make a living on that wage and part time hours.
Besides, if you carefully read the article it says "landlords often shouldering some of the cost." The translation of that is that for the most part they are financing this by getting landlords to give them tenant improvement money in return for increased rent. Therefore, they will more likely spread the cost over 10 years which will half what they could give to each employee per year.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-30-2014 12:13 PM
This is a new idea? Century's Fresh Meadows Theatre in Queens, NY, their flagship theatre in that borough, had plush, reclining seats. I don't know it the AMC seats go back farther than the Century seats, but they did go comfortably back and you were able to rock in them too. So not all theatre seats always force you to sit in a fixed, upright position. And this was WAY back in 1955; so if some young hot-shot AMC exec thinks he's come up with the next great new idea, he'd be sadly mistaken and hasn't bothered to check history. And guess what -- the Century theatres didn't charge extra for providing a comfortable cinema experience either. I guess back then they thought that's what an exhibitor was SUPPOSED to do.
And they were just as mistaken when they thought they had this unique great idea when they approaced WB wanting to run a WB cartoon before the feature films at AMC theatres. Like that wasn't also the norm 30 years prior. Only back then, those WB cartoons were full-frame, GORGEOUS TECHNICOLOR prints; unfortunately AMC couldn't be bothered playing 1.37:1 ar prints correctly, so they had WB strike pillared versions that would play with 1.85:1 plates and lenses...on Eastman stock. They ended that brainstorm quickly enough because those pillared 1.37 Eastman prints looked like crap and no one was impressed. I guess the young turk at AMC who thought up that idea was too young to ever have heard the expression, "If you are going to do something, do it right or don't do it at all."
There's nothing new under the sun.
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