Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Variations in screening policy across the world

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Posted by Peter Castle (Member # 1997) on 10-30-2014, 09:04 PM:

Reading many of the posts on FilmTech regarding seasons in the US, I felt it would be interesting to compare what distributors require across different countries and how different regions utilise their cinemas.
I'll start with Australia:

Sessions used: Here we can run seessions starting from 9am until about 9.30pm (finishing before midnight), so we can fit quite a few sessions in.

Required by studios: They specify minimum numbers of day and evening (after 5.30pm) sessions, up to 3 day/2 evening in opening week, reducing to perhaps 1day/1evening later in the run.

Required season: Varies from cities to regional but usually 3, 4 or 5 weeks (some arthouse might be 2 weeks). Little variation unless the title totally bombs.

Anyone care to compare?

(Please note: I run a campus cinema which screens only once a week, at the end of the above required seasons, so only the length of season has any effect on me.)

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-04-2014, 06:41 PM:

quote: Peter Castle
Sessions used: Here we can run seessions starting from 9am until about 9.30pm (finishing before midnight), so we can fit quite a few sessions in.

Maybe I missed something, but besides some special one-off arrangements like pre-screenings, I never heard about a studio or distributor requiring a special feature to be played within a specific time window on any given day. The only thing that usually limits those things are local laws and regulations regarding opening hours and staff availability.

Posted by Peter Castle (Member # 1997) on 11-04-2014, 07:59 PM:

The hours cinemas open are up to the cinemas. It is just that Australian cinemas don't usually start sessions very late. US cinemas seem to have sessions starting very late compared to Australia.

However, studios do specify the (minimum) number of sessions that are shown before 6pm and how many start after 6pm - these vary from title to title.