Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: show times for 2 prints

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Posted by Ryan Navaroli (Member # 3477) on 12-04-2005, 04:26 PM:

my company recently opened an 11 screen stadium seating theatre outside of town. We opened the weekend Chicken Little came out with 2 prints and have run 2 of Potter and will run 2 for King Kong and Narnia. How do you recommend scheduling the show times when you have two prints, especially ones for longer movies like, well, all of the Holiday big movies.

Do you run them close to eachother incase of sell outs so it over flows into the next stadium, or spread out to offer a greater variety of times? Any comments would be appreciated thanks.

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 12-04-2005, 04:30 PM:

A lot depends on your auditorium size. If you keep your showtimes at least half an hour apart but not more than 45 minutes-say like 1, 1:30, 4, 4:30, etc-it will help with sell outs.

You could go with the variety of showtimes option, like 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9:45 or something like that. Problem is if your 1 show sells out then customers need to wait 2 hours to see the next showtime. I'd be less inclined to go with this showtime setup if I had competition, especially if they were playing day and date.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-04-2005, 04:32 PM:

Long shows for two prints equals at least a good half hour between the two sets.

For "Chronicles" @140m: One set - 12:30 4:00 and 7:00 with an optional 10:00 time for weekends only, and the other set will be 1:00, 4:30 and 7:30 time
For "KONG" @180m : One set will be a 12:00n, 4:00 and a 8:00 time, the other will be a 12:30, 4:30 and a 8:30 time.

This is setup with trailers and a 20min cleanup time.

good luck and try this one out. - Monte

Posted by Ryan Navaroli (Member # 3477) on 12-04-2005, 04:36 PM:

Our biggest auditoriums are 202 and 203 followed by 185ish and two at about 160. We had Harry Potter spread out by 20min and sold out all the shows except matinees all opening weekend. Chicken Little saw no sell out success but we wanted to open with 2 prints to show the studios that we wanted to do it.

In the town our competetition is a 10 screen (not so good) theatre about 25min away and the one I run, 3 screen downtown "Art" theatre

Posted by Matt Fields (Member # 3211) on 12-04-2005, 08:16 PM:

quote: Ryan Navaroli
In the town our competetition is a 10 screen (not so good) theatre about 25min away

Hey Ryan-

Welcome to Film-Tech! Where's Trevor?

Admittingly, the competition is isn't as nice as your guys brand spankin new place, but it isn't all that bad.

When I've scheduled two prints, I usually put the earlier showtimes in the largest/best auditorium, then start the second print 30 min later. -Matt

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 12-05-2005, 12:43 AM:

I would schedule the first set of shows in the smaller auditorium for one reason: If you sell out that show, the people forced to wait for the next show will get to view the picture in a larger auditorium than the earlier crowd.

Compensation rocks

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 12-05-2005, 02:31 AM:

ditto, for another reason: the second auditorium must seat the overflow from the first, in addition to those who intentionally came for that show.

carl

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 12-05-2005, 04:06 AM:

I'm going to buck the trend on this one. NEVER EVER schedule 2 prints any closer than 30 minutes. You have two prints in order to provide a variety of showtimes to the customer. Otherwise, why not just interlock?

My showtimes would be something like this ...

Chicken Little
Print 1
12:30p 2:40p 4:50p 7:00p 9:10p (11:20p weekend show)
Print 2
1:35p 3:45p 5:55p 8:05p 10:15p (12:25a weekend show)

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
Print 1
12:10p 3:35p 7:00p 10:25p
Print 2
1:55p 5:20p 8:45p (12:10a weekend show)

The Chronicles Of Narnia
Print 1
12:50p 3:55p 7:00p 10:05p
Print 2
2:20p 5:25p 8:30p (11:35p weekend show)

King Kong
Print 1
11:30a 3:15p 7:00p (10:45p weekend show)
Print 2
1:25p 5:10p 8:55p (12:40a weekend show)

Posted by Matt Fields (Member # 3211) on 12-05-2005, 07:48 AM:

Its been my experience that most people arrive for the earlier showtime, therefore putting the first show in the larger auditorium best meets the customers wishes.

Posted by Anslem Rayburn (Member # 1267) on 12-05-2005, 11:57 AM:

I agree with Mike about this. We recently ran 2 screens of Chicken Little in this manner. Went over really well. Longer shows are a little trickier, but we try to never have 2 screens of the same film starting too close to each other. 1 hour seems to be ideal for our location. Makes it so that if someone is late (or the show is sold out), they don't have to wait too long for the next one.

If we used the 1, 1:30, 4:, 4:30 example and the 1:30 sold out, we would be asking customers to wait 2 1/2 hours for the next show. If we did 1, 2:30, 4:00, 5:30 we are balancing the wait a little more (although, as I said, with long shows it's a little harder, since the wait time increases no matter what you do).

Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 12-12-2005, 08:59 AM:

quote:
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Rated (PG) • 2 hrs. 12 min.

BUY TICKETS - 12:45pm, 1:15pm, 2:15pm, 2:45pm, 2:45pm, 4:00pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm, 6:15pm, 6:15pm, 7:15pm, 7:45pm, 8:45pm, 9:30pm, 10:30pm

This was pulled from a local dallas theatre. Hmmmmm, let's see. 2:45 or 2:45, 6:15 or 6:15.

Could it just be a website error or real scheduling?

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-12-2005, 09:21 AM:

Three prints on four screens would do it. Your guess is as good as anyone's as to if that's really the case.

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 12-12-2005, 05:20 PM:

Most likely an interlock.

Posted by James Nash (Member # 2836) on 12-12-2005, 11:26 PM:

quote: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Rated (PG) • 2 hrs. 12 min.

BUY TICKETS - 12:45pm, 1:15pm, 2:15pm, 2:45pm, 2:45pm, 4:00pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm, 6:15pm, 6:15pm, 7:15pm, 7:45pm, 8:45pm, 9:30pm, 10:30pm

This was pulled from a local dallas theatre. Hmmmmm, let's see. 2:45 or 2:45, 6:15 or 6:15.

Could it just be a website error or real scheduling?

This is why there are multi showtimes. The theaters began to fill up, and sell out. The theater created a duplicate showtime an adjacent auditorium and interlocked. We do that in order for our online ticketing customers to purchase tickets to the interlocked performance.

one of our theaters had 2 prints of narnia, and interlocked it twice for a total of 1 print on 3 screens at 7pm, 8:30pm, and the 9pm hour show. all of the screens had been sold out.

Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 12-13-2005, 09:29 AM:

I think it was scheduling thing because I checked their times on Wed because Kong would have created a new schedule and then have 4 unique times. I can't see purposely interlocking during the weekdays.

Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 05-09-2007, 05:38 AM:

It has been 511 days since the last post.

Posted by Ross Oba (Member # 3433) on 05-09-2007, 05:38 AM:

Sorry to resurrect this from the dead, but I was noticing showtimes for this weekend's movies and noticed a theater had Spider-Man 3 at 6:30 and 6:50. Now I don't know whether this theater sold out any movies the first week but wouldn't that defeat the purpose of having two prints? If you have two prints you should either spread them out further to provide the best convenience for customers or have them no less than 30 minutes apart. I remember another theater had two prints of a movie that started 10 minutes apart. Where's the logic in this?

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 05-09-2007, 08:26 AM:

Ross:

That is what you call either stupid manager or stupid mandated corporate times.

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 05-09-2007, 12:02 PM:

Could it be an interlock but not turning the lamp on during the ads/trailers on one of the screens? Stupid idea, but not as stupid as having two prints 20mins apart.

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 05-09-2007, 12:47 PM:

Not likely.

Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 05-09-2007, 12:48 PM:

Sounds like 2 prints to me...

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 05-09-2007, 01:47 PM:

You can interlock two films 20 minutes apart using a film accumilator. That would be my guess.

Anyone ever wanting to get a general idea of how other theatres schedule multiple prints and showtimes in general: Use the Movie Showtime part of IMDB.com. It actually shows a map of the entire U.S. and where a film is playing. You can click on the region and get a list of all the showtimes for that area.

It is quite useful.

Posted by Sam King (Member # 4029) on 05-09-2007, 07:05 PM:

Isn't that going to be an awfully big accumulator?

Posted by Geoff Jones (Member # 3668) on 05-10-2007, 11:05 PM:

As a moviegoer, I wish theatres would advertise which screens each showtime was playing on.

I hate the idea of paying $10 for a 20' screen when the same movie is playing on a 50' screen an hour later.

I call and ask whenever I can, and if I'm buying my tickets early, I'll ask, but sometimes I can't do that and not all theatres publish box office numbers.

Rant off.

Geoff

Posted by Ross Oba (Member # 3433) on 05-11-2007, 05:00 AM:

Well, I would ask for how many seats are in each theater that is playing the movie because they would obviously understand your question that way because most employees probably have no idea about the size of screens.

Posted by Trevor Key (Member # 3496) on 05-11-2007, 12:03 PM:

[ 05-11-2007, 01:51 PM: Message edited by: Trevor Key ]