This is topic Dollar Theaters, Good idea or bad Idea. in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Matthew Stevens (Member # 2167) on 02-08-2004, 02:49 AM:
 
We just had a dollar theater open in our town. It really hasn't effected business at all. I worked there for a week just to check out their daily operations. I fixed half their projectors and told the owner to open his wallet and buy something other then super platters (Idiot). But when I was there, some of the movies they were opening were coming out on DVD/video in two weeks anyway.

Do you think this movie house will make it in the long run.

By the way, I was projection manager and I was only making $6.00 an hour. I trained the owner how to build movies and he still didn't listen to me. I went in there 2 weeks after quitting and they already lost all their original managers. The Portal glass was never, ever, ever, ever cleaned and began creating a ghost image below the original image on the screen.
I cleaned it when I worked there, but as soon as I quit, it all goes to crap.
 

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Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 02-08-2004, 03:06 AM:
 
With an owner like that the place should be out of business by next tuesday. Oh wait this is a movie theatre we are talking about.

The dollare movie down the street from my theatre does very good attendance. A lot of people wont pay $8 for a ticket and dont want to spend $6 to rent a dvd so they go to a dollar movie.

I would assume that a dollar theatre should make the same amount of money as a first run of equal size and equal attendance. The money comes from concession so the price of the ticket shouldn't matter.

I think the idea is that most people expect poor quality from a dollar theatre so the people running them dont see the point in putting any effort into it.
 

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Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 02-08-2004, 07:33 AM:
 
One thing I have noticed about $1 theatres is that the audience often doesn't decide what to see until they get to the ticket window. I have often heard people ask the ticket seller "What's good" then selecting a film. At such a low price, people don't mind as much if the film doesn't suit them. I think they are going for the inexpensive entertainment rather than to see a particular film.

Cinemark has an extremely successful one close to me, and it has driven out some of the nearby businesses due to taking up most of the parking. There is a terrific Chinese carry-out there, and I check on Fridays and Saturdays to make sure I'm not going there between films.

[ 02-08-2004, 10:05 AM: Message edited by: Mark Lensenmayer ]
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 02-08-2004, 09:25 AM:
 
We started at a buck in 1990, it went to $2.00 seven years ago. We give them a bright sharp pic with good analog sound with surround, the equipment is well maintained, and we reject any print that isn't in near new condition, our seats are however terrible, that will be remedied in the not too distant future. In surveys done by the newspaper and a local artsy weekly we have been named best theatre in the area every year for the past ten years. Discount theatres are only bad when the owner decides to make it bad and ignore the customer.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-08-2004, 09:42 AM:
 
I did all the design and booth work for many 1 and 2 dollar houses back in the Midwest(Wisconsin, Indiana, and Chicago area) from the early 80's on. Chicago had and still has a huge second run market. Most were VERY sucessful and almost all of them had quality buildings, equipment and presentations as good or better than the first runners did. One small chain in Milwaukee, Value Cinemas was eventually bought up by Marcus Theatres and they kept it as a 2.00 deal as well. Still going to this day as far as I know.

The guy you worked for will end up having lots-o-fun. This is the included option that comes with every Stupid Platter wether you ask for it or not! With those Stupid Platters he'll end up making his customers angry when things fail to run smoothly and they won't be returning. I can only chuckle at people that actually run them and the dealer that sold them to him . Gotta wonder what the rest of the boots are like.......

Mark @ CLACO
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 02-08-2004, 10:18 AM:
 
Subrun is a difficult market nowadays presumably because of the ever shortening window between 1st run and video. Many of the theatres Mark used to service or otherwise is familiar with in the Chicago suburbs are no longer subrun. The Lake (Oak Park), York (Elmhurst), Elk Grove, Glenwood, Glen (Glen Ellyn) are all first run now. Classic Cinemas sold (leased?) the Park Forest to a tiny operator with a couple other houses who has since left and a third operator has taken it over. Still subrun though.
 

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Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 02-08-2004, 11:08 AM:
 

quote:

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I would assume that a dollar theatre should make the same amount of money as a first run of equal size and equal attendance. The money comes from concession so the price of the ticket shouldn't matter

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Don't assume so quickly. A first run theaters percap can run anywhere from $2.25 to $3.00 dollars depending on there concession prices.

For Second run discount I have rarely seen the percap rise above the $2.00 mark.
 

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Posted by Tom Wienholt (Member # 1510) on 02-08-2004, 11:24 AM:
 
My family owns and operates a very successful second run theatre in Baltimore. We charge $2.50 for all shows and consistently have a per cap of about $2.15. The theatre is very successful. Also, when it comes to the amount of time between first run and video, it is much longer than people think. We always show movies well before they make it to video. But, with a very successful movie, such a Finding Nemo, we may hold on to a film even after it goes on video and it still will draw a crowd.

Also, don't assume that all second run theatres are crap and have crappy projection. That's not true. And, by the way, the last time I checked, a large percentage of first run theatres have terrible projection and terrible employees. Don't act like first run theatres are great and second run are just shit.
 

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Posted by Matthew Stevens (Member # 2167) on 02-08-2004, 12:18 PM:
 
I meant no offense to any second run houses, I did mean offense to PictureShow (the dollar house). Sorry if I came off that way.

Mark- the dealer of the stupid platters did try to sell him better ones, but the owner (jackass) just wanted to save a buck or two. When I was in there picking up my check last, the new projectionist forgot the run the film over the roller on top of the projector causing Bruce almighty to become very scratched. The projectionist didn't even notice until I pointed it out.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-08-2004, 12:32 PM:
 
Steve, There were MANY other sub runs that I serviced not just the ones that I Willisized. Many of them are still running and others have closed down for good. We have a chain of sub runners here in SLC that do very well even with the close video release dates.
Mark
 

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Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 02-08-2004, 02:35 PM:
 
I don't think anyone here is assuming that a sub run house cannot give a quality presentation. I think the point so far is that if whoever is running things cares then a subrun house can be nice.

However, the sad fact is that the "It's just a dollar theater" mentality seems to be prevalent in most dollar theaters.

Like Tom said, same thing goes for first run theaters.

Matthew, nice swastika on your sign
 

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Posted by Stephen Jones 1 (Member # 114) on 02-08-2004, 06:19 PM:
 
While theatres make a nice sum in the concession stand, the box office income is not totally irrelevant. Otherwise you'd see all first run theatres selling tickets for a dollar. There is more money to be made in box revenue than many probably think. What do you think of some of these theatres that show FIRST run movies at $2.00? There are quite a few Cinemarks that do this. It helps to keep these theatres competitve when a new gigaplex comes into town.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-08-2004, 08:22 PM:
 
We have two bargain theaters in my town, the Vaska (which is an older single screen theater) and the Cache 8, which used to be a first run house.

In this market the business is usually pretty spotty. Sometimes the parking lots will be filled, typically in early fall when some of the big summer movies are in sub run. But a lot of times they are empty.

At least in this market you don't have to spend $6 to rent a DVD (on average a 5 day rental from Blockbuster, Hollywood or Hastings will cost you $3.49 to $3.99). So I'm sure home video has to be taking a bite out of the revenues.

I think there is potential for bargain houses to have good show quality, but the only cases I typically see of that are in larger cities where a multiplex might have been built for bargain purposes in the first place. Many bargain houses I see are ones that used to be first run sites that were later downgraded to bargain status in the face of superior competition. That's what happened here anyway.
 

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 02-08-2004, 08:37 PM:
 
Cinemark's $1.50 Movies 12 seems to do very well here. Obviously I haven't done a scientific market survey, but my general impression is that a good chunk of their business is people who just flat out wouldn't pay full first-run price to see a movie, no matter what.

When Finding Nemo went subrun, they had it on 2 screens, and it did very well. And this was right around the time the DVD was out. Go figure.

They keep the place very clean -- I'll give them that. However, last time I was there, the presentation sucked. Come to think of it, the presentation there sucked 14 years ago when the place was brand new. But it's suckier now than it was then. They couldn't get a bright, steady image on the screen if their business depended on it (which apparently it doesn't). And the sound from the Peavey and UltraStereo audio equipment is weak, anemic, and totally unimpressive. (They do have DTS on 3 screens though, and they sound kind of sort of OK)
 

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Posted by Matthew Stevens (Member # 2167) on 02-08-2004, 10:51 PM:
 
Hey Chris, I'm Jewish, and half my family died in WW2 in a Nazis internment camp in Poland. So if you want to call me a Nazis, I’m ok with that, but I did not appreciate being called that. Thanks.
 

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Posted by John Hegel (Member # 628) on 02-08-2004, 11:09 PM:
 
I am looking at opening a second run $2 house (single screen) in a population of 20,000 people. The only competition is a small 7-screen mall theater that is said to have 115,000 people through their doors in a year at $6.50 per ticket.

My question is; if I put on the best show in town, will I be able to get 51,000 of those customers?

Thanks for you input,

John
 

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Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 02-09-2004, 12:39 AM:
 
We have two of those "discount houses" in our area, and both are struggling.

As is the case in many other markets, the film companies are saturating with many more prints than was the case in past years. The public has also become saturated with 160 crappy pictures for every decent one. A show burns through the market in 2 to 4 weeks, then it's gone. That leaves very little for the discounters to scrape from the bottom. Our discounters have reasonable, though not great performances, yet they can't hardly give their product away.
 

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Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 02-09-2004, 12:39 PM:
 
Most of the dollar theatres that have existed in my area have been terrible except one -- the Gateway 4 in Decatur, which was run by Regal Cinemas until its closing in May 2000. It was an old single-screen from 1967 that had been twinned and quadded. Evan after that, all of its auditoriums were still slightly wider than the smallest ones at other theatres. (3 were 36 feet wide and 1 was 29 feet, compared to the standard 28 feet at Regal/Cobb locations for smaller auditoriums).

The presentation at the Gateway was better than many first runs that were operating at the time. It was obvious that effort was put into keeping things running well. And admission was only $1, which only went up to $1.50 months the place closed. It was a true bargain.

In mid 2000, Regal seemed to get out of the 2nd-run theatre business. The only Regal 2nd-run I know of near here is the Hamilton 10-17 in Chattanooga. Typically, Regal hasn't built any 2nd-run theatres, but have taken over other theatres that were or became 2nd-run later. One anomaly is the Regal Nippers Corner 10 in Nashville, which was opened by Regal as a 2nd-run in 1992 and may have become first-run later. I'd like to know the story behind that one. I wonder if Regal took over the theatre from another company (Litchfield?) before the theatre opened, or if Regal built it intending it to be a 2nd-run theatre from the start. Inquiring minds want to know! Can anyone familiar with the Nashville theatre market from that period answer that one?
 

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Posted by Sam Johnson II (Member # 2157) on 02-10-2004, 10:19 PM:
 
The theater I work for is a first-run bargain theater, with tickets being either $1 or $3. We do pretty good business (I don't know what it's like compared to other theaters, since this is the only theater I've ever worked for) considering the closest other theater is about an hour away. However, another theater is going to be opening across town in a few months, and it will be interesting to see what that will do to our business, and what kind of business they'll get.
 

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Posted by Mike Pennell (Member # 1692) on 02-11-2004, 09:43 PM:
 
matthew, I think chris was innocently pointing out the design on the marquee of the theatre on your homepage
 

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Posted by Tom Wienholt (Member # 1510) on 02-11-2004, 09:58 PM:
 

quote:

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As is the case in many other markets, the film companies are saturating with many more prints than was the case in past years. The public has also become saturated with 160 crappy pictures for every decent one. A show burns through the market in 2 to 4 weeks, then it's gone.

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quote:

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Everyone- But you don't understand how crappy this dollar theater is, I'm mean basic stuff they don't even fix.

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I have a first run customer who has had an auditorium in each of 2 locations with no heat for 2 weeks...I don't know that the hand-written disclaimer on the door suffices...I don't know why, but people still buy tickets
In fact, I think I have a few customers that honestly beleive they can get by with rubber band repairs, no maintenance, crappy presentations, stale popcorn, and stupid help. Even worse for everybody, they do.
 

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Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 02-14-2004, 01:39 AM:
 
I saw a discount house recently that had finally replaced their heater after something like a month with nothing... except space heaters in the booth. People still went there too, though it was in the 50's there.

As for discount theatres in general; I'd bet the only ones that really do well overall are independently owned. The chains around here got out after learning the hard way that the patron's regard for your product is generally connected to how much he invested in it. An indie can compensate for that somewhat... but the chains here, if they were motivated in the first place (doubtful), did not.
 

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