|
|
This topic comprises 10 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
|
|
Author
|
Topic: LOOK vs AMC
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
|
posted 11-21-2014 08:47 AM
quote: Jason Burroughs
Terry, who do you work for?
Terry is trolling, same as usual.
Since nearly everyone else participating in this thread is sympathetic to LOOK, Terry automatically takes the opposing viewpoint just to stir up some shit. His little "L ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) K" comment earlier just shows what he's trying to do. It also ruins any credibility for anything he says, provided he had any credibility in the first place.
quote: Jason Burroughs
What is there to prevent any large chain from undercutting and underbidding a smaller circuit or independent? The smaller players would not have the critical mass and deeper pockets to support a loss leader.
AMC could do that, but I actually suspect the opposite. Big chains like AMC, Regal, etc. want the entire exhibition business to themselves. They don't want "little guy" independents letting customers realize the biggest chains still have a carbon copy, cookie cutter, fast food approach to the movie-going experience. Small chains like Warren Theaters can kick their ass all over the place in a given market when given a fair chance.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jason Burroughs
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 654
From: Allen, TX
Registered: Jun 99
|
posted 04-23-2015 04:23 PM
Apparently the DOJ has begun an investigation to the Clearance practice in the exhibition industry.
Dallas Morning News
Dallas Morning News:
The U.S. Department of Justice is looking into whether the country’s biggest movie-theater chains are keeping smaller competitors from getting first-run films — and at the very center of that investigation is the owner of a single North Dallas movie theater.
Back in October Tom Stephenson, chief executive of the luxurious 11-screen LOOK Cinemas multiplex on Belt Line Road, complained that the Chinese-owned AMC Theatres megachain was blocking LOOK’s attempt to book The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1. At the time, AMC’s Village on the Parkway 9 was under construction at Belt Line and the Dallas North Tollway — less than a mile from the 2-year-old LOOK — and circulating a flier that said “we will not be licensing films day-and-date with this theatre.”
Stephenson said AMC had received “clearance” from Lionsgate to show the Hunger Games sequel — that is, the studio said only AMC could show the movie within a certain radius, cutting LOOK out of the frame. Clearance is an old practice in the movie business, but indie theater owners have long maintained it’s little more than “a tactical anti-competitive weapon” used by the big chains to run their smaller competitors out of business.
Stephenson’s attorney, Brett Johnson, told The Dallas Morning News at the time that “AMC is trying to strong-arm the film distribution companies into giving them exclusivity with films.”
The LOOK owner maintains the practice continues: “We couldn’t show Hunger Games, we couldn’t play American Sniper, 50 Shades of Grey. And we’re not scheduled to get the new Avengers,” he tells The Dallas Morning News today. “These are big-time movies we would have loved to have play, and AMC has not let us have them. AMC is forcing the studios to honor this clearance, and it remains an ongoing problem.”
And according to Stephenson, it’s now an ongoing Justice Department probe. The Los Angeles Times initially reported on Justice’s investigation into AMC, Regal and Plano-based Cinemark — the so-called Big Three exhibitors — last week. The feds will not confirm its existence. Stephenson says today that he was interviewed by federal investigators on April 14.
“They were interested in how the process works, in terms of who declares these clearances and how do we find out about them,” he says. “They asked, ‘Has a studio ever been involved a clearance not asked for by an exhibitor.’ The answer is no. AMC is the one asking for clearance, saying they won’t play day and date with us.”
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times yesterday, AMC Entertainment Chief Executive Gerry Lopez said “clearance” has been around since the dawn of celluloid, and insisted it’s little more than a “quirk that is very specific to this industry.”
He also said LOOK is just one of a handful of theaters complaining about it.
“There are 600-plus exhibitors in this country,” he told the paper. “There are three or four exhibitors who are irritated by it. My guess is they have made some bad business calls and they’re trying to figure out a way out of a bad situation by alleging stuff and in some cases going to court.”
Stephenson called Lopez’s comments “ludicrous” and said he’s “trying to whistle through the graveyard.”
LOOK has launched an online petition that says “you should choose where you see a movie, not AMC.” And a few weeks ago, Stephenson took his fight with AMC to the movie-makers, sending studio chiefs a missive in which he says Paramount has decided to “end clearances in the Dallas, Texas area between Look Cinema and AMC’s Village on the Parkway 9.” He also writes that “AMC is using clearances as a competitive weapon to prevent new market entrants from building near AMC theaters.”
Other theaters have long maintained AMC, Regal and Cinemark have kept the goods out of their theaters. Owners of Boca Raton, Fla.-based iPic Entertainment have also been interviewed by the feds, according to the Times/ And last year Georgia-based Cobb Theaters filed a federal antitrust lawsuit alleging AMC “has used its worldwide and national circuit power and its market power in a substantial number of geographic markets to coerce film distributors to deprive Cobb, its only competitor in one of the relevant geographic and product markets, of fair competitive access to films to exhibit to the public at its competing theater.”
In the end, says Stephenson, studios need to let customers decide where to see their movies, no matter how close multiplexes sit to one another in the market. And, of course, he welcomes the Justice investigation.
“This is serious big-league stuff,” he says, “and people are understanding that.”
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 10 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
Printer-friendly view of this topic