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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: fellow independents: how is business?
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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 07:56 PM
Yeah, The Hurt Locker is another movie I watched in the theater, pretty much all by myself. It has been a long time since I watched the show. IIRC, I was a little put off by certain plot points that seemed far fetched.
quote: Justin Hamaker
Generally speaking I think the studios wind up doing more harm than good when it comes to this dance they do with trying to position movies for an Oscar run.
I agree. 30 years ago it was Standard Operating Procedure for an awards-likely movie to open in very limited release, only in the most exclusive of New York and Los Angeles theaters. Perhaps only two theaters in the whole damned country would be showing this piece of Oscar-bait. That crap was normal back around 1990. IIRC, they called the practice "platforming." Open the movie in a couple NY and LA theaters. Then expand to a couple dozen big cities 2 weeks later. Then add a few more dozen bookings the following week and on and on.
I have a theory about that old practice. The movies these studios were promoting were sometimes pretty unconventional and even very risky. Back then all movies were shown on film. It costs a lot of money to strike 1000-3000 prints for a wide release and promote it. So the studios, particularly indies with limited budgets, would sort of ease the unconventional product into the market. If it was well received then they would order more prints, more ads, etc.
Today the situation is very different. There really isn't any need to do this exclusive NY/LA-only bullshit anymore with prestige movie releases. For one thing, nearly all the legit movie palaces are GONE. The damn theaters in New York City are no more remarkable than the ones in Oklahoma City. We have an "IMAX" screen in my town of less than 100,000 people. Next very obvious point, there aren't any film prints anymore. Point #3: movie studios and movie theaters don't spend squat on newspaper ads anymore. Hell, they don't even build web sites for specific movies anymore like they did 20 years ago! Movie fans visit the same few web sites for movie info/news (Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, etc). There's a few different web sites out there just for movie trailers.
With everything being all-digital and so much of a movie's promotional effort happening online in just a scant few outlets why do they even need to bother with the platforming practice now? I guess the only reason I can see is the semi-monopoly the big chains like AMC, Regal, etc have over the vast majority of theater screens. Those guys only want to play mainstream big studio stuff. So a smaller "grown up" movie has to sort of prove itself before it can get any screens in places like Lawton, OK. Unfortunately with the theatrical window being so badly freaking compressed now, any "grown up" art/indie show is just as likely to go immediately from very limited NY/LA theatrical runs to Netflix or Amazon Prime as play in an ordinary middle American multiplex. That's what we're basically getting with The Irishman.
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Sarah Treichel
Film Handler
Posts: 12
From: Fort Kent, ME USA
Registered: Apr 2019
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posted 11-04-2019 12:11 AM
I started managing this place last October, started booking in December. We're in a small town that is pretty isolated, 3 hours north of Bangor, and right on the New Brunswick border. The owner made a big effort, but the theater was still in rough shape - generally filthy, painful seats, bizarre layout, little heat, no A/C - just not a pleasant place to come. We've been working on that and also changed our strategy with booking. Basically, I have learned two important things: 1) Disney keeps the doors open and 2) we *must* get the big movies on the break if we possibly can. Some of the bookers this theater has worked with in the past haven't understood that even though we are in very small town far from any big American city, our main competition is 25 mins away in a Canadian city. They have twice the screens and 6-7 times the population, so they seem to be able to get whatever they want to show. Most people here have passports, especially the ones with $$ to spend on concessions. Plenty who don't are happy to watch pirated movies online, so if we wait 3 weeks to open a big movie, most of our audience has already seen it. In between Disney and superheroes, I look for quality, but always try to have a kid-friendly film on one of our two screens, even if it's just ho-hum. Families come out every week and they buy popcorn. Persons of a certain age who also exist entirely outside of geekdom do not. By focusing on family fare and developing a good relationship with (constantly pestering) sales reps, we are actually doing better this year than last, even though we take all of the familiar guff about how we should have had Rocketman instead of Lion King. I booked The Old Man & the Gun. I loved it. Nobody came.
That said, distributors who've decided to limit their releases have really hurt us lately. I just keep telling myself, "Frozen 2 is coming." Then we'll be able to pay our taxes and our vendors.
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