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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: fellow independents: how is business?
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Carsten Kurz
Film God
Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009
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posted 11-01-2019 05:03 PM
In germany, 2018 was one of the worst years for the exhibition business ever.
In the UK, however, 2018 was a record year. The UK was down to 54 million admissions in 1984. Since then, admissions increased continuously to a whooping 176 million in 2018.
When you look at their box office top rankings, they watched the same movies as other countries...
https://www.launchingfilms.com/research-databank/uk-cinema-admissions
Even some Disney/Pixar flics performed way under expectations here in recent years. We played e.g. 'Finding Dory' from the start, and that was a desaster - and I am talking admissions, not revenue. Luckily, we usually play quite a few successful german and european arthouse or comedy releases.
- Carsten
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-01-2019 10:00 PM
Scott Jentsch's suggestions on Page 1 of this thread are very good. Fixing issues in the theater's web site and maintaining a more active social media presence can only help.
Mike Blakesley's suggestion about pricing and gift cards is worth considering. Ticket pricing for a small town theater is more tricky now than ever though, given the sorry terms the big movie distributors are dictating.
I like Leo Enticknap's point about the local economy overall. If the broader economy is struggling it will negatively affecct all other discretionary, out of home businesses like restaurants, bars and other outlets of entertainment.
Then there's all the stuff that seem beyond control, like the changes in demographics affecting small towns. Many rural areas are shedding young adults like crazy. The bigger cities have more opportunity and a lot more fellow young adults.
In some cases, like here in Oklahoma, the flight of youth is partly self-inflicted. Our state gutted public education funding for several years. Teachers were leaving in droves (and disgust) because they were among the worst paid in the nation and hadn't seen a pay raise in over a decade. Soon families starting following the teachers, packing up and moving. A few more prosperous school districts within Oklahoma benefitted. But many people have been leaving the state for places in Texas and elsewhere. Given the choice, young families aren't going to raise their kids in a town that doesn't invest in the local schools. I get it that no one likes paying property tax or any other taxes. But any town needs young adults and families present to keep the town alive. Recently Oklahoma's state legislature finally noticed the damage being done. They passed a modest teacher pay raise by raising fuel taxes for the first time since 1993. Texas school districts are still coming up here and poaching teachers right and left. We have thousands upon thousands of "emergency certified" teachers filling vacancies in schools. They haven't even finished their educations yet!
Aside from the shifts in economics, demographics and idiocy from elected policy makers, the movie industry is NOT helping matters with their own narrow-minded decisions.
Take Martin McCaffery's situation with his non-profit, art house theater for instance.
For years I've been going on and on about the dangers of shrinking the window between a movie's release in commercial theaters and then on home video. That window is the most narrow with independent, art-house movies. Such movies already suffer on the theatrical side due to a very low number of available screens. Compound that with a select base of customers who support independent, art-house type movies. Some of these movies are available to stream via Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc the same time they're released in theaters. An increasing number of them don't even get to play in commercial theaters at all. The Irishman is one of the year's most anticipated, awards-likely movies. It opened today, but will be on Netflix before the end of the month. And that's Netflix being "nice" to movie theaters.
Politics also weighs-in with art-house movies. For decades many films in that category have dealt with social and political issues, often going left of center. Some aren't overtly political, but still feature characters that don't conform to Bible Belt ideals -such as a love story between gay characters for example. Obviously that doesn't fly with a lot of would-be customers in "red" territory, especially given the intense polarization going on now.
Regarding "super hero movie fatigue," I get it. The frustrating thing is that, at least in Marvel's case, they've done a great job cranking out those movies. Avengers: Endgame had a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Many other Marvel movies have scored in the 80%-90% range. DC isn't nearly as consistent. But The Dark Knight was a truly great film and the first installment of Wonder Woman was very entertaining. As long as Disney and Warner Bros keep doing well with the super hero game we're not going to see the assembly line stop.
I think the broader problem is the paint-by-numbers, Save The Cat!, movies via template production model. It does affect the super hero genre. In Marvel's case, I think they've adopted the same rigorous, self-critical team-oriented approach on story development that Disney pioneered with its animated films. Pixar copied the same production formula. Pixar and Disney both have faltered from time to time this decade by pushing out too many sequels and not staying true to original standards. Pixar threw out much of their original work on Toy Story 2 to almost re-build it completely because the original idea wasn't working. It caused a shit-ton of stress, but they ended up with a far better movie in the end. Today, I don't think Pixar would go to that much trouble. Doing things "good enough" seems to be the business model now. And that goes for all kinds of movies. Not just the super hero, sci-fi variety.
Finally, there are the movie theater customers themselves. We deserve plenty of blame for this crisis. It is a personal choice to acquire a Kodi box or modded Fire Stick that delivers a payload of pirated content. It's a personal choice to search out pirated content online. That has been a driving force at narrowing the theatrical release window. So anyone who watched pirated content to save a buck has absolutely zero right to complain at all when his local movie theater closes. They can look in a mirror and say "fuck you" to themselves.
We're also increasingly fickle and spoiled by the rapidly improving movie-watching experience we can get at home. I saw a big "end cap" of 65" 4K TV sets at Walmart for under $1000 earlier this evening.
quote: Mike Blakesley
Quite a number of the movies have been underwhelming this year, too. They are flash-in-the-pan things. Nothing is sticking. We haven't had a "cultural phenomenon" in I don't know how long.
The big studios in Hollywood need to take chances on NEW IDEAS for that to happen. Star Wars was a cultural phenomenon back in 1977. But no one knew for sure that success would happen. The project was a massive gamble. The actual production was a nightmare for Lucas. The same is true for The Godfather. Francis Coppola worked through much of that production day by day expecting to get fired by Paramount.
Hollywood studios (and the Wall Street people they answer to) don't take chances like that anymore. They don't seem to realize the movie industry is really a global one. Europe and Asia both have movie industries of their own. Given the right circumstances they could invade the US market with superior content and upend Hollywood's racket. Especially if the European and Asian distributors reach out directly to American theater chains,
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 11-01-2019 11:14 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
I can't imagine what it must be like for a single-screen operation. How do you run the same movie for several weeks in a small town (because of contract stipulations), then have to choose about what to change it out with, when the next franchise movie is coming right down the line? That would keep me up at night...
Oh believe me, losing sleep is something I do on a regular basis. That said, here are my "secrets" for doing the multi-week movies.
1. Pick the product carefully and DO NOT EVER let your personal taste decide. Listen to the booker. (He's right virtually 100% of the time.) Never play something JUST because it's trendy. Check the terms... if it's a Disney movie or anything on the "sliding scale," we're probably better off to play it 3 weeks and face crickets in week 3, than to wait until the 6th week of release and get 1/4 of the crowd, but still have to pay the same high percentage.
2. When playing a movie for more than a week, put the start - end dates on the marquee, website, phone system, in the front windows, wherever. This will help people realize they don't HAVE TO come in on the opening weekend and it will spread the crowd out, thus reducing sellouts (which are aggravating to people when the theater is overly crowded or if they can't get a seat) and giving everyone a more enjoyable experience.
4. Once the movie is running, hit social media every couple of days with something related to the movie. I like to do "fun facts" about the movie we're showing, if I can find enough interesting stuff. (Wikipedia is your friend.) Or, post a picture of a bunch of happy kids. If it's hot out, put up a "cool off with a great movie!" post. If it's cold.... "warm up with a great movie!"
As for what to follow-up a multi-week booking with.... we try never to play two of the same kind of movie in a row; we don't follow an "R" movie with another of the same rating, if we can help it. If we're faced with a choice between two films that both seem good, the higher-grossing movie usually gets the nod. If a movie is getting horrible reviews OR if it is more than a month old, it's almost always better to pass it by.
Something else I have told other small operators...Embrace the R-rated movie. A lot of small theaters like to brand their place as "family friendly" and they think if they never play an R film, families will flock to whatever else they play. That's ridiculous...there are a lot of very fine R-rated films, and several entries in our all-time top 50 are rated R. We are family friendly, but if we're playing something rated R the kids will mostly stay away. If you automatically distance yourself from R films, you're basically telling the grownups you don't want their money. We don't go out looking for R movies, but if it's a hit, we'll play it, I don't give a crap what the rating is.
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Dan Allen
Film Handler
Posts: 2
From: Fredonia, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2005
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posted 11-02-2019 08:28 PM
We're a 444-seat non-profit Opera House in western New York. Aside from our Cinema Series, we do live events on stage as well as live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, the National Theatre in London, and the Bolshoi Ballet.
We've seen a decline across the board in attendance, mostly in the last 2-3 years. Whereas we used to be much more of an arthouse with a pretty dependable cinema audience, people just won't show up these days for something they haven't heard of (that goes for everything we do).
We're second run, so at least the split is better. And we run our films on Saturday and Tuesday nights. Tonight, we're showing Downton Abbey and there's a pretty good crowd here for it - about 130. Like Mr. McCaffery, our crowd is older, and they decided awhile ago that they don't care for serious drama, so our film choices tend to be lighter, crowd-pleasing fare for the most part.
I think alot of it is the availability of stay-at-home entertainment on bigger and bigger TVs for less and less money. Hell, nobody even needs to leave the house for groceries anymore, do they? For us personally, it's partly being located inside the Village Hall with no marquee. For a theatre that has been around since 1891, there's a shocking number of people who still have no idea we're here. That's not for lack of trying... and we're working on that marquee.
I will say that one thing our movie audiences always seem to enjoy is when our boss steps out on stage to welcome them, talk up the next event, and do a quick giveaway that ties in to the movie (the soundtrack, or book it's based on, etc). That's something they aren't getting at the local movieplex, and word about it does spread.
I hardly post, so I'd like to say thanks to everyone here. I come here almost daily and these forums have helped me in countless ways. And to the OP, I hope things turn around for you - you're asking the right people.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-03-2019 12:54 AM
quote: Steve Guttag
Mind you, many adults will not consider an "R" movie to be the litmus test of an "Adult" movie. Horror and Action would tend towards young-adult (teen/college) rather than middle-aged and other classes of adult.
The R-rating doesn't carry the edgy, forbidden (or even "immoral") punch that it did decades ago. Today R-rated Hollywood movies are tame compared to "unrated" content one can watch on premium cable networks or streaming services. Hardcore porn is freely accessible on the web, and that distorted form of sex is tame compared to more grotesque content such as explicitly violent war footage and atrocities -like beheading videos.
R-rated movies from big studios have less sexual content in them than they did in the past. Most movies are R-rated only for violence and profanity. Bare female breasts seems like a rare component in R-rated movies today. There doesn't seem to be a heck of a lot of biblical-oriented protests against violence in film. With that being said, if I was running an independent theater in a small city or town I would book R-rated movies as well as any G, PG or PG-13 shows. R-rated movies are not porn.
Improving residential Internet speeds and the impending 5G conversion in the mobile phone industry is going to make streaming video over the Internet only that much better. Unfortunately it's going to make those little movie piracy devices work better too. Anyway, do like Mike says and book those R-rated movies. Even if it pisses off the pastor at the local church.
quote: Justin Hamaker
Thinking back, I remember one of the first times I truly felt the decline in demand for high quality movies for adult audiences was when Michael Clayton under performed. The movie had a lot of positives, including a popular lead actor and great reviews. But it didn't land with audiences and wound up being just a 2 week picture for us.
That's too bad. Michael Clayton was a very good movie. Great cast, great performances and arguably the best of George Clooney's career.
Unfortunately that's how it goes with "grown up" films. The Usual Suspects played for just one week here in Lawton at the Carmike 8. It seemed like me and the theater's manager were the only two people who watched it locally during its original release. Months later when it came out on home video, and got exposure at the Oscars, people in my town finally started watching it. On their TV screens at home. Then they had the audacity to bitch and complain, asking "why don't movies like this come to Lawton." I had fun telling them, "it did come to Lawton! You just didn't care to find out about it!" Lazy jerks.
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(They sure don't spend at the concession stand like the families do either) But, we don't shy away from R rated stuff either, and it IS nice to see appreciation when we do bring in more adult fare.
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