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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Topic: AMC shares plunge 25% after pre-announcing ‘shocking’ quarterly loss
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 08-03-2017 07:01 PM
Obviously, the logistics of a "modern, cost-optimized" multiplex with a gazillion screens are a bit different than those of a single screen operation. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Then again, can't expect any service for a measly 8 bucks for a bucket of popped corn...
Regarding AMC... With this Summer of Bummer still in the making, I'm afraid their Q3 investor's call won't be any better than their Q2 report.
You know, it's easy to blame it all on the Kong-sized gorilla in the room, but with the constant stream of dire crap Hollywood is churning out, it's hard to convince people to buy sugary bubble water at 6 bucks a can.
quote: Travis Cape
It's a mere $15 a year to do that. I would pay many times over that to bypass customers that often have no idea what they want. I only jump into the "magic" line when there's a mass of clueless people and I am close to showtime.
It's a lousy way of doing business. First of all you want me to commit my soul to your company, by playing to my ego. Secondly, once you actually managed to sell everybody your magic VIP pass, we just pay $15 a year extra for standing in the same line?
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William Kucharski
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 244
From: Louisville, Colorado, United States of America
Registered: Oct 2012
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posted 08-03-2017 08:19 PM
As a long-time Stubs member, I appreciate being able to jump long concessions lines, believe me; it's one of the perks that convinced me to stay with the program when they started charging for it.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
It's a lousy way of doing business. First of all you want me to commit my soul to your company, by playing to my ego. Secondly, once you actually managed to sell everybody your magic VIP pass, we just pay $15 a year extra for standing in the same line?
Every AMC I have been to has a separate queue for paid Stubs members, and employees are told to serve them first.
The problem is "cut staff?" There's already only one person working behind the counter for concessions even at the busiest times (thus the long lines) and now that more are offering regular food options, the situation is getting worse.
AMC Feature Fare
Do most people have the time to wait before showtime for their flatbread pizza to cook? Oh, and heaven forbid you need to find a staff member to point out a presentation issue…
Around me AMC is also spending a lot of money converting theaters to reclining seats and "Dolby Cinema" theaters but the resulting product is horrific - a "Dolby Cinema" premium presentation space where both lower corners of the screen glow bright red throughout the movie from the reflected stair lighting. Managers who replace lamps in projectors but don't recalibrate black levels so your average meeting room projector has better contrast. Theater volume levels that are almost universally set way too low. Really they're all about the "get the masses through for the latest two week blockbuster run" audience.
About five years ago I loved AMC, but they're now my chain of last resort.
Fun fact: Their latest move - they eliminated small, medium and large on popcorn, and made the smallest popcorn the former medium and the new large is their former XL, and prices were modified accordingly. I still have a few "Free Small Popcorn" coupons which are now discounts off the price of a "Regular."
Also, don't give Alamo too much of a thumbs up; every single time I go, they get my food order wrong. Every time. Including no matter how much I beg and plead otherwise, they bring room temperature popcorn, bleah.
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 08-03-2017 09:33 PM
That's one of the other things that's starting to piss me off about AMC. On two separate occasions recently at the Garden State Plaza 16 I have caught them selling $7.00 upcharge tickets to their "Dolby Cinema" screen #3, and then clearly NOT actually running the Dolby Vision graded/Dolby Atmos deliverable, if they even had one to show. It stood right out last year on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, where there was a noticeable decease in contrast between the Dolby Vision fanfare and the actual feature itself, and if there was Atmos sound going, I sure as hell didn't pick up on it. They have recently mitigated, somewhat, the red ambient light on the screen. But I wonder how many people are paying the upcharge for the screen and then sitting there fat, dumb and happy watching the same file as the regular screen next door is seeing, albeit with a little more (but not $7.00 more) punch to it.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 08-04-2017 07:18 PM
We've carried popcorn to a patron on occasion, or once we had run out of Milk Duds, and the new candy shipment had JUST arrived like 20 minutes before we opened for that night, and the Duds were in the shipment but not unpacked yet...when one of our regulars mentioned she sure wished we had Milk Duds, we waited until the rush was over, found the Duds in the shipment and delivered them to her in her seat.
quote:
Are we not going to talk about what a GD racket it is to even have the "convenience fee"?? It's one thing using a 3rd party website like Fandango, but when you're using AMC's own website, and you're enabling them to cut box office staff by using it, why in the actual fuck am I being charged an extra $2!??! If anything, it should be LESS!
Convenience fees are a pox on the entertainment industry. The big concert/sports arena near us is charging $19.25 PER TICKET in convenience fees. On top of that they add a $2.00 "internet fee" for buying online. That's in addition to the already sky-high concert prices ($89.50 for the one I just looked at). And that's to sit in small, shitty, worn-out seats with flattened padding and no legroom. If you make a gripe about that on their Facebook, they say you can save those fees by buying in person. Which is tough when you live a hundred or more miles away, which at least a third of their patrons do. Any movie theater is a virtual paradise by comparison.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 08-05-2017 04:44 PM
The price of "standard" movie theater tickets hasn't risen all that much. On the other hand surcharges for all sorts of extras can add a whole lot more to the ticket price.
I think theaters are doing their best to shift customers to those premium priced screens in various ways, either by booking the big new movie only on that higher priced screen or by making the standard priced houses kind of suck. All the ones around here present the LPCM 5.1/7.1 audio in the glory of low volume TV speaker dynamics. I gotta pay extra if I want digital sound that seems at least a little like 5.1 digital sound back when it was a new thing in movie theaters.
"Lie-MAX" ain't cheap; the one here in Lawton currently charges $14.79 per ticket for 2D evening shows. Add another $3-$4 if the show is in 3D. Dolby Cinema @ AMC carries a similar high price. Other competing premium digital concepts (XD, RPX, etc.) might cost a buck or two less depending on the theater location.
There are all sorts of luxury concepts that can make a movie ticket really expensive. Warren Theaters had their Director's Suite screening rooms. The rooms boasted huge, plush recliner seats and were open only to people age 21 and up. But you would blow something like $22 per ticket to see a show there. You could get served food and adult drinks there, but the prices were not cheap. I don't know how Regal has altered that since they took over all the existing Warren locations. Warren Theaters also made their premium balconies in their grand auditoriums off limits to anyone under 21, but tickets for the balcony also carried a significant premium.
I paid $18 per ticket for an afternoon show of Dunkirk because a 5-perf 70mm print was shown. Plus I paid $3 dollars in convenience fees ordering two reserved seat tickets in advance online. $39 is a bit steep for an afternoon matinee. 70mm is a special thing. However, back in the 80's and early 90's I didn't pay anything extra for things like 70mm Dolby Mag shows or THX.
Inflation or not, it's pretty easy for me to blow over $50 on a trip to the movies with my girlfriend. That's a lot of money. I'm paying a lot more than I would to just buy a copy of the Blu-ray a few weeks later. Compound that cost with eating out at a restaurant beforehand. Maybe people in Hollywood can afford to blow well over $100 per couple just for dinner and a movie. Here in "fly over" country we can't really afford to use $20 bills as toilet paper.
I'm still trying to support the movie theater industry by seeing as many movies as I can afford to see in theaters here in my town or on trips to OKC and Dallas for special occasions. But it gets hard with so much derivative content. There is good and bad with aggregate score web sites like Rotten Tomatoes, but with what it costs to go to the movies I'm not going to blow a lot of good money on a movie with mixed reviews.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-05-2017 10:03 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Maybe people in Hollywood can afford to blow well over $100 per couple just for dinner and a movie.
Believe it or not, you'd have to be careful to stay within a $100 budget. In the outer 'burbs of the LA Metro (where I live) that would get you a nice meal for two, plus a movie in a decent 'plex, with concessions, but you still wouldn't come away with much change. In downtown LA or Hollywood, however, you'd only avoid busting into three figures by eating at Chipotle or Five Guys. In the Hollywood tourist district, $20 could disappear on parking alone.
The movie industry has fundamentally changed from when I was growing up in the '70s and '80s: at that time, it offered a leisure activity for people who wanted to go out for the evening, but were unable or unwilling to spend the sort of money that live performing arts or sports events cost. Many movie theaters are now in direct competition with the lower end of those markets.
I'm not sure how and when this shift really got started here, but in the UK (where I grew up and lived before emigrating here in 2013), it was the late '90s. I was out of this business between 2001-14, but the last company I worked for until 2001 ran mainstream/arthouse crossover theaters that aggressively went after a customer demographic that was not the traditional one: middle-class, above average education, high disposable income, and wanted a higher end experience than the high street 3-plex or out-of-town mall multiplex typically offered. They put in bars and restaurants, comfy seating, decent projection and sound, and played a combination of Hollywood stuff that had gotten good reviews from the highbrow critics, and European arthouse movies. They also managed to land a lot of grant and public sector development type money for their new builds, because they were going into city centers that had lost most or all of their theaters to home video and the out-of-town multiplexes between around 1970-1990.
They also charged much higher ticket prices than was typical at the time. Their target customer was not a teenage or 20-something couple making a spur of the moment decision to go see, say, Pretty Woman or Terminator 2, but rather people in their 30s up who planned an evening out, booked a babysitter, had a high end meal as part of the trip, and saw a heritage drama pic or a new French movie that had been raved about in Sight and Sound. They probably also had recently bought a DVD player for their house, and needed a powerful incentive not to use it that evening.
Over the last two decades, that trend seems to have followed through into the mainstream, too.
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