Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: How Slow do Weekdays Get?

This is topic How Slow do Weekdays Get? in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Richard C. Wolfe (Member # 431) on 10-17-2005, 10:23 PM:

Tonight was one of the slowest nights that I have had in a long time. I had 17 people for the one showing at my single screen theatre. Monday is usually the slowest night of the week, but I seldom get less then 25 or 30 people even on a Monday. During the past 35 years that I have operated this theatre, I have had one time that I only got 2 people, 4 times that I only got 5, and about a half dozen times that only brought in around 10 or 12. I have never had a no show ever (I say that with my fingers crossed).

This is a small town 2nd run house with a $3.00 top admission, so I guess all and all, I shouldn't be too disapointed. I have gone past many megaplexes on weeknights and have seen only 15 to 20 cars in the parking lot for a 15 plex. Just how slow does it get per screen at these large 1st run complexes?

So I'm asking those of you who are at these large complexes, just how slow does it get per screen per showing at your theatres on weeknights? How often do you have no one show up for a scheduled showing?

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 10-17-2005, 10:30 PM:

When I used to work at a 21 screener, on some of these horrible slow nights, I'd call downstairs before I would start that last movie for each house. On occasions, in the 21 screener, there would be, on average, 5 to 8 cold houses for the 9pm shows during the weekdays in this part of the year.

But if only one customer whould show up for a movie, it went on the screen-no turning away customers.

-Monte

Posted by Jim Ziegler (Member # 86) on 10-17-2005, 11:44 PM:

Last week we had a 9:00 set for my 6 screener with a total attendance of 3... It ws a fluke, but still hurt..

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 10-18-2005, 01:06 AM:

Please change the teaser title of this thread.

Posted by Stephen LaPadula (Member # 3050) on 10-18-2005, 01:52 AM:

There are a few theatres that are exceptions.....In the 1st run multiplex I work at we did just under 2000 admits tonight. The slowest day since I've worked here (3yrs) is about 1100 people, and the slowest week has never been less than 19,000 in attendance. Just to note we also share product, if we didn't I don't think we'd ever get down to such slow weeks.

Posted by Amanda Jones (Member # 3326) on 10-18-2005, 07:25 AM:

Slowest we do during the week is about 200-300 people a night.

Mondays though is always the busiest. Last Monday surprisingly we did over 500.

We run all shows our 6/7 set. On Wednesdays and Thursdays we only run our 9/10 if we sell for it.

Posted by Robert Burtcher (Member # 3227) on 10-18-2005, 08:57 AM:

Our slow days tend to be Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and for our 10-screener inside of a mall, during the school year, we'll pull in approximately 60 customers on average. Our busiest day is always Saturday, and we average around 1100 customers.

Posted by Matt Fields (Member # 3211) on 10-18-2005, 09:00 AM:

Last night I had 21 people on four screens (one set of shows)...

11 in Wallace and Gromit
8 in the Fog
2 in Into the Blue
0 in Waiting.

That was really slow for even the slow time of year though.

Posted by Thomas Jonsson (Member # 1902) on 10-18-2005, 02:33 PM:

What is considered a "small" town in the US?

Thomas

Posted by Richard C. Wolfe (Member # 431) on 10-18-2005, 04:37 PM:

Thomas

In our case we have about 10,000 in our "small" town, and we are only 7 miles from a city of 110,000 people, but the metropolitan area that we are on the edge of has a total population of about 700,000. The term small town can be defined differently by different people depending on what part of the country you are in. In the northeast USA, 10,000 is a small town. In Montana it would probably be a city.

Martin

If there is something wrong with the title, please feel free to change it. I don't think that I understand why you are suggesting it be different, but if indeed it should be, go ahead and do so. If you are unable to make the change and I have to do it, just let me know what it should be changed to.

EVERYONE.

What I am looking for is the number of people per screen rather then per complex for any given singular showing of a film.

[ 10-18-2005, 10:42 PM: Message edited by: Richard C. Wolfe ]

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 10-18-2005, 06:51 PM:

In our single screen in town house when the pic is a real dog we'll occasionally have as few as 30 for the 7:15. Typically that show time is around 150 Mon. thru Thurs. The Late show is another matter though, a few weeks ago that time brought 6 to 10 for a Mon. thru Thurs each nite. I can recall only one no show night in the 18 yrs. I've been there. It was late '80s for one of those Disney films with the cop and the dog, first run, played only one week.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 10-18-2005, 11:36 PM:

You just need to edit your original post and change the title to something that represents what the thread is about. "How slow does your business get?" would be a great title. As it stands, you could be discussing how slow your urinals flush for all we know. [Smile]

(Reference Rule #7 here.)

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 10-19-2005, 12:18 AM:

..yea, like "How Slow have your weekday nights been" - more specific instead of "teasing" us with a pronoun (what definies "it" - what is in the word "it" )

Not to pick on you, of course..just a little help from a member.

-Monte

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 10-19-2005, 07:39 AM:

One urinal is very slow, the rest are OK.

Posted by Brandon Willis (Member # 2345) on 10-19-2005, 12:33 PM:

Some of our concessionsts can work pretty slow, sometimes I think they do it on purpose to try and get out of there.

Posted by John T. Hendrickson, Jr (Member # 849) on 10-19-2005, 05:08 PM:

Personally, I don't find anything wrong with Richard's title on this thread. Most of us know he is a respected member and theater owner, and can figure out what he is refering to.

Richard, I'd like to give you information, but our owners are picky about my posting particular numbers. Suffice it to say that Monday nights have been very slow lately.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-19-2005, 05:51 PM:

We've been fairly slow lately on the weeknights, but nothing out of the ordinary for this time of year. Everyone is too busy with school events. In the past couple of weeks alone, we've had to compete with 2 football games, 4 volleyball games, a "Mexican dinner theater," a choir concert and a drama-club play.

I expect things to pick up in a big way on Nov. 4.

Posted by Jarryd Beard (Member # 2543) on 10-19-2005, 07:04 PM:

Even though it's number one nationally, The Fog is doing no business at our theatre. Last night's gross for that film was ZERO . Elizabethtown and Waiting are our two best. Waiting's doing no business nationally, but we're in a college town.

Posted by Eric Hooper (Member # 1730) on 10-27-2005, 02:18 PM:

I saw Resident Evil 2 on the 2nd Wednesday of release at the 1200-seat Coronet Theatre in San Francisco (now closed), and there were only 5 admits at this 7:00pm show (which is why the theatre is closed now I guess).

Posted by Joseph Pandolfi (Member # 223) on 10-29-2005, 07:17 PM:

When I used to work at a four-plex last year before it was torn down to make way for renovations, there were a couple of times we ran 4 shows each and we had less than 20 people for the whole day!