Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: AMC not updating exterior signs

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Posted by Mark Campbell (Member # 4411) on 02-25-2015, 06:35 PM:

There are at least 3 AMC's in the Seattle area that still have old branding signs from previous operators on the exterior.

The Oak Tree Cinemas, Factoria Cinemas and Woodinville 12. All 3 are listed as "AMC Loews…………" on the website. All 3 have Cineplex Odeon signs on the exterior - no mention of AMC or Loews. All 3 have AMC branding on the interior. When I was last at Factoria some patrons went up to the box office and asked where the AMC theater was. They had been driving around looking for it.

In the grand scheme of things is it that expensive to put up AMC signs on the exterior? All these theaters have been converted to digital so they appear to be in it for the long haul.

Also, most of the Seattle area AMC's are old GCC's, Loews, and Cineplex Odeons (a lot of those were SRO prior to being bought by C.O). All the GCC's were rebranded AMC on the exterior and read "AMC………….." on the website. All the Loews Cineplex read "AMC Loews………." on the website and and only a hardly any of those have been rebranded on the outside.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-25-2015, 06:45 PM:

That's weird. AMC has been really good about updating their branding here in the Denver metro area with the theaters they've acquired. They've gone so far as to repaint entire buildings to match the red AMC motif.

Posted by Shawn M. Martin (Member # 6762) on 02-25-2015, 06:48 PM:

Yeah, the AMC Loews in Georgetown still says "LOEWS THEATRES" across the outside.

Posted by Mark Campbell (Member # 4411) on 02-25-2015, 07:10 PM:

Pretty sure the Alderwood 16 north of Seattle still says Loews as well but can't confirm. The Lakewood Town Center 12 south of Tacoma appears to have lost its Loews sign for an AMC when they converted to the cushy chairs.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-25-2015, 07:29 PM:

The Carmike Wynnsong in Billings has one of those 10-line marquee signs on the main street near where the theater sits....they stopped putting the show titles on it and only put the phone number and "Fandango" website address, unless they are opening some huge title in which case they'll put just that title on the sign. This despite the sign being on one of the heaviest-traveled streets in the whole state. I'm kind of surprised Carmike hasn't gone to some sort of electronic signage.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 02-25-2015, 08:45 PM:

Many Loews Theaters acquired by AMC in the 2006 merger are still branded as "AMC Loews", and Loews is still technically an AMC brand. As I understand it, it partly had to do with contracts that Loews/Cineplex locations had with various outside vendors (Screenvision, for one) that did not also have a deal with AMC, and partly to distinguish pre-existing Loews locations that hadn't been upgraded to stadium seats, the AMC trade dress and the like. I notice around the NYC area that when one of these locations gets remodeled, the "Loews" disappears from the name.

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 02-25-2015, 09:58 PM:

The Mall Cinema 8 in my hometown has identity issues too. For years it was owned by Dickinson so their branding is spread around the place here and there. In the last maybe 10 odd years Showplex bought them out and then the most recent buyout was by Starplex. Amazes me companies dont have branding as one of there priorities.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-25-2015, 10:28 PM:

Dickinson ran the Central Mall 12 theater here in Lawton for a few years. Then it changed hands a couple of times, with Showplex running it currently. Our company built the original exterior channel letter sign, but never with any "Dickinson" branding. It's always been "Central Mall 12 Theaters".

quote: Mark Campbell
In the grand scheme of things is it that expensive to put up AMC signs on the exterior? All these theaters have been converted to digital so they appear to be in it for the long haul.

That seems very strange AMC would not change out the exterior signs at those theaters to get the branding current. They've taken care of that with a couple theaters I know of in the Oklahoma City area.

Exterior channel letters aren't all that expensive (relatively speaking). If they just wanted to do the "AMC" part alone it might not even cost a couple grand for standard 24" tall characters.

Maybe there is something else getting in the way of a brand update. Sign ordinances change for one thing, with some sign codes getting strict to a very stupid, anti-business degree. Many will try to restrict square footage of building mounted and free-standing signs. Some of these ordinances will restrict how many signs can be on a building exterior or how many exterior signs are allowed in total. The theater operator might be stuck with a choice of leaving the old "grandfathered" signs in place versus having no building sign at all in place of it.

quote: Mike Blakesley
The Carmike Wynnsong in Billings has one of those 10-line marquee signs on the main street near where the theater sits....they stopped putting the show titles on it and only put the phone number and "Fandango" website address, unless they are opening some huge title in which case they'll put just that title on the sign. This despite the sign being on one of the heaviest-traveled streets in the whole state. I'm kind of surprised Carmike hasn't gone to some sort of electronic signage.

Here in Lawton the Carmike 8 theater has a fairly big street sign with a 16' tall by 20' wide cabinet; the bottom 11' is for the changeable copy section. They still update the movie listings on it. It would be pretty expensive to replace that with a LED sign. However, the LED display wouldn't have to be quite as big since the messages can change.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 02-25-2015, 11:32 PM:

quote: Mark Campbell
In the grand scheme of things is it that expensive to put up AMC signs on the exterior? All these theaters have been converted to digital so they appear to be in it for the long haul.

On a set of individual theaters, no it would not cost a lot but taken as whole a re-branding can cost a lot of money.

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 02-26-2015, 02:39 AM:

Bobby is Dickinson still going or did Showplex buy them out?

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 02-26-2015, 11:27 AM:

Well, if Santa Monica is anything like San Francisco, even a simple
modification to an existing sign often requires getting approval from
the city planning commission and in some cases (depending on the work
to be done) it may even require an 'environmental impact review' to make
sure that you're not disturbing some rare bird or other critter that might
be nesting in the sign superstucture.

Getting the approvals & permits can take many months, or even a year.

When SBC took over Pacific Bell some years ago, it cost them hundereds
of thousands of dollars to get the permits & approvals to change all the
old "Pac Bell" signs to "SBC" signs, even though in many cases the only
thing that changed was the lettering on the "face" of the sign.

And then they went through the whole process again several years later
when SBC took over AT&T like Nazis marching through Poland and they
had to change all the signs again, to read "AT&T" instead of "SBC".

But don't worry - - all this cost was passed on to the customers.

Posted by Jason McMillan (Member # 5542) on 02-26-2015, 11:41 AM:

Here in the Houston area, AMC just literally remodeled the AMC Loews Spring 10 which they acquired when they took over Loews years ago. Until this remodel, it had "Loews Theatres" signage. They put up a new sign and its now just "AMC Spring 10". Of course, it didn't have digital until they did the remodel, either.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-26-2015, 12:39 PM:

quote: Jarod Reddig
Bobby is Dickinson still going or did Showplex buy them out?

B&B Theaters bought out Dickinson. The old dtmovies.com web domain still works, but you wind up at B&B Theaters' web site.

quote: Bobby Henderson
Dickinson ran the Central Mall 12 theater here in Lawton for a few years. Then it changed hands a couple of times, with Showplex running it currently.

Correction: Starplex took over the Central Mall 12 from Showplex. Starplex, showplex, blah blah blah. Kind of easy to get them confused with each other.

quote: Jim Cassedy
Well, if Santa Monica is anything like San Francisco, even a simple modification to an existing sign often requires getting approval from the city planning commission and in some cases (depending on the work to be done) it may even require an 'environmental impact review' to make sure that you're not disturbing some rare bird or other critter that might be nesting in the sign superstucture.

Getting the approvals & permits can take many months, or even a year.

That's a great recipe to have businesses not locate there and others to leave. It sounds like it would be an act of business suicide to locate a sign company within San Francisco city limits.

Exterior signs are the most important marketing tool for most businesses with a retail store front. Overkill level regulations like the ones described in San Francisco get in the way of that. I'm fairly certain the people dreaming up those rules don't have any understanding of what it takes to run a retail business. They probably just have their servants, assistants or whoever do all their errand running for them.

quote: Jim Cassedy
But don't worry - - all this cost was passed on to the customers.

We're not going to deal with all the bureaucratic red tape off the clock. Our time is not free. Unfortunately most customers don't understand and/or don't care about that. So when we're faced with doing a job in a community with a completely ridiculous sign ordinance we'll stick to our guns about the higher "pain in the ass" tax assigned to that price quote, or we just don't screw with that project in the first place.

Posted by Terry Monohan (Member # 8285) on 03-04-2015, 06:58 PM:

Just think when Loews Theatres makes a comeback someday and buys out AMC from the Chinese they won't have to change the signs. Time for RKO to start up again and buy out Cinemark Cinemas. As you know in the old days theatres had different names, now they are all called the name of the company that owns them. The big circuits today have no imagination or any showmanship.

Posted by Eric Hooper (Member # 1730) on 03-04-2015, 09:53 PM:

There is a "Cineplex Odeon" operating as an AMC up at the mall in Burlington, WA. All signage outside says CINEPLEX ODEON complete with the Cineplex logos.

It's very confusing..... [Confused]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-04-2015, 10:03 PM:

quote: Terry Monohan
Just think when Loews Theatres makes a comeback someday and buys out AMC from the Chinese they won't have to change the signs.

This is assuming movie theaters will still be allowed to exist by the time Loews could come back from AMC/Chinese ownership.

The sales droids running our global media companies seem hell-bent on further shrinking that theatrical release window and then even eliminating it altogether. It's kind of shocking at how fast "HD Digital" VOD becomes available after a movie's theatrical release. Some VOD releases precede the Blu-ray by more than a month and are within a couple months of the original theatrical release date.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 03-05-2015, 10:01 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Some VOD releases precede the Blu-ray by more than a month and are within a couple months of the original theatrical release date.

Or day and date with the theatrical release.

While it may be easy for the major circuits to boycott the Netflix theatrical release of Beasts of No Nation, this is a film that would have barely gotten a theatrical release regardless of who and how it was released. It will get harder once the major studios start doing day and date with streaming for "big" pictures.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-05-2015, 02:35 PM:

While a person should "never say never," at least for now the studios seem to recognize the value of a theatrical release for "big" movies.

Too bad there's no way to quantify how much money they leave on the table when a movie like "Big Fat Greek Wedding" comes along and is an unexpected hit. Released today, a film like that would be an ideal candidate for the spiffy new "quick-to-VOD" thing and would have probably grossed a 10th of what it did with the release pattern it had back in the day.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 03-05-2015, 04:32 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
Too bad there's no way to quantify how much money they leave on the table when a movie like "Big Fat Greek Wedding" comes along and is an unexpected hit. Released today, a film like that would be an ideal candidate for the spiffy new "quick-to-VOD" thing and would have probably grossed a 10th of what it did with the release pattern it had back in the day.

In all honesty, how many times does Big Fat Greek Wedding come along? On the studios side, there a lot of movies that would benefit from a shorter window as the movie did not do well at the theatre. I am all for longer windows BTW.

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
It will get harder once the major studios start doing day and date with streaming for "big" pictures.

Eventually the big chains are going to have to realize that shorter windows are going to happen, what if the big chains had exclusive rights to VOD for 6 months after the theatrical release with a one month theatrical window? The big chains cut out Apple, Netflix and all the others.

quote:
There is a "Cineplex Odeon" operating as an AMC up at the mall in Burlington, WA. All signage outside says CINEPLEX ODEON complete with the Cineplex logos.

It's very confusing..... [Confused]

How long has AMC been operating it?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-05-2015, 06:16 PM:

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
In all honesty, how many times does Big Fat Greek Wedding come along?

There's no way to know, because that environment doesn't exist anymore.

The "unexpected hit" used to be a pretty common phenomenon, or a movie taking a while to find its audience. Not everything can be an instant hit. The suits are so hell-bent on getting it out on video ASAP that a movie is out and flushed down the video toilet before it has a chance to take a breath.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-05-2015, 09:31 PM:

Movie studios executives and their global media corporation higher-ups have attention spans no greater than a couple of weeks. Movies are now hyped with only the opening weekend in mind. After that they're pushing to get the movie out of theaters as fast as possible and onto home video fast as possible.

I think those executives are leaving a hell of a lot of money on the table with that short-sighted approach. That's because the various home video platforms are totally eaten up with race to the bottom economics. The studios are providing people with more choices, but the hard reality is many viewers gravitate to the cheapest option. Often that means waiting patiently for the movie to show up on Netflix or another low price subscription streaming service. Shit, that's even cheaper than going to the video store or Redbox.

Blu-ray sales are way down. That's partly due to the increasingly fractured home video market, but it's also due to all the price cutting. The studios have ruined a lot of the perceived value of Blu-rays and legacy DVDs. And they're making it worse by the reduced efforts they're putting into those movie disc releases.

In radically speeding up a movie's release cycle from theatrical all the way to Netflix and Walmart's $5 bargain bin end cap Hollywood studios are making their movies even easier to forget. Here and gone in a flash.

Meanwhile the Chinese movie market just bested monthly dollar earnings totals of the United States market for the first time ever. One could argue, "well China is a growing economy," but that would be wrong currently since that country is not doing so well economically (China may even be in a recession).

The sad thing is even if Hollywood movie studios want to go back and increase the theatrical window's amount of time they may not be able to do so.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 03-06-2015, 10:29 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
There's no way to know, because that environment doesn't exist anymore.

The "unexpected hit" used to be a pretty common phenomenon, or a movie taking a while to find its audience. Not everything can be an instant hit. The suits are so hell-bent on getting it out on video ASAP that a movie is out and flushed down the video toilet before it has a chance to take a breath.

There are still unexpected hits its just that the demand for tickets is far less than the availability of screens and cinemas today. Back when E.T. or other long standing movies were released, there was not the infrastructure to get a wide release compared to what is available now. Also the marketing today is far more widespread and geared towards getting people to want to watch the movie sooner than later.

I do agree that a longer release window will help improve box office numbers, I just don't think that it will help with the numbers as much as people seem to think it will. There were just as many movies in the 80's that burned and fizzled in week one and week two, however there were longer runs for larger movies, but I remember that the screens and infrastructure to get mass audiences into the theater the first weekend was just not like it is today, thus there was a high demand for limited showtimes, screens and locations. Today, in large city it is almost impossible for someone to be turned away from a movie because there are no more seats or screens available to accommodate them.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-06-2015, 11:06 PM:

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
There are still unexpected hits its just that the demand for tickets is far less than the availability of screens and cinemas today. Back when E.T. or other long standing movies were released, there was not the infrastructure to get a wide release compared to what is available now.

Bullshit. While there may not have been any 24 or 30 screen "megaplex" locations there was still many thousands of movie theater screens. Anything from twins & triples to 8 & 12 screen locations were very common in the early 1980's. There was a lot more single screen and drive-in locations still in business in rural areas. Truth be told there may have been more separate movie theater locations back in the early 1980's than exist now. During the past 30 years quite a bit of consolidation has taken place. Developements in home theater, competition between theaters, booking shifts and the conversion to digital has shut down many older locations.

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Also the marketing today is far more widespread and geared towards getting people to want to watch the movie sooner than later.

I'm calling bullshit on that too. Back then marketing was more simple. It mainly consisted of ad buys in newspaper and TV. Back then the movie posters were much better; they actually featured real artwork rather than forgettable collages of Photoshopped actor heads on what passes for movie posters today. Today the advertising market is extremely fractured. If anything, movie advertising has regressed to a lesser state now. Not as much effort is put into it. Generic movie posters, generic movie trailers, banner ads on some web pages, some trailers on YouTube and that's about it. Hell, 15 years ago a movie studio would put some serious effort into a movie web site. Now most movie productions don't bother with that. They just post some crap on Facebook and Twitter then call it a day.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 03-07-2015, 05:11 AM:

No, Terry is quite right, at least in his former point. According to NATO in the summer of 2013 there were just over 39,000 movie screens available in the U.S., this after the multi and megaplex construction boom of the mid-to-late nineties. Possibly the number is less now due to closures of older locations, but in 1982 there were only about 21,000 total screens, indoor and drive-in combined.

To continue with his example, E.T. opened with 1,103 screens, which for the times was a "wide" release (it eventually built through the summer to 1,778). Compare this to Guardians Of The Galaxy, which opened on 4,088 screens, nearly TRIPLE the amount. The difference is the availability of tickets, which Terry correctly points out is offset by the number of screens and showtimes available, as well as the general box-office downturn which has been well noted here. The wide-release "infrastructure" is far larger today, but the demand for tickets is proportionately less.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 03-07-2015, 12:15 PM:

quote: Mark Ogden
To continue with his example, E.T. opened with 1,103 screens, which for the times was a "wide" release (it eventually built through the summer to 1,778)

Even 1,103 locations for the E.T. opening weekend was not as wide as it could of been (although it was very wide). Star Trek II opened at around 1600 locations a few weeks before, a few month before that a Richard Pryor movie opened on 1200 screens and there are other examples of course.

Nobody could of predicted the success and demand of E.T. when it was released, the theaters and studios eventually increased the amount of locations once it was determined that there was going to be a large demand. Same thing happened with My Big Fat Greek Wedding. For both of these movies, if the studios that were releasing knew there was going to be such an enormous demand, there would of been allocated even more locations for opening weekend.

In comparison to Star Trek II of the same year, the success of the movie was predicted and the release was as wide as it could possibly of been at the time, but after the first weekend the box office path of Star Trek II was no different that it is today as it had 34%, 33% and 27% drop off rates in week 2, 3 and 4.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-07-2015, 11:49 PM:

quote:
Nobody could of predicted the success and demand of E.T. when it was released,

Our booker did. The week before it was released, I was asking him about the movies for that summer...he was going down the list and giving his opinions. I can still hear him saying, "This "Extra-terrestrial' thing is going to do a lot of business." Which doesn't sound like much of a prediction, but he never said anything was "going to do a lot of business" unless he thought it was a blockbuster and he was almost always right.

I expect he wasn't the only booker to make that prediction.

"E.T." was a huge gamble, what with no major stars, a kid-oriented sci-fi story, and a director who had been successful being it's only real big draw.

I saw it on its opening day (at the Rimrock IV in Billings, I think) and given the hype it was getting (magazine covers and such, plus it being such a heartwarming movie) I knew it was going to be huge.

Star Trek II isn't a valid comparison as it was a sequel. There's always a built-in guaranteed audience with a sequel.

Posted by Mike Frese (Member # 4361) on 03-08-2015, 09:52 PM:

Another item that I did not see being mentioned is that the opportunity to see a movie in the first week is even greater due to the now normal to make the big movie of the week available on multiple screens at these even more locations.

Of the 1700 locations for a wide release movie in the 80's, how many screen did it play on?

The next Avengers will be 4000 locations on what 12,000 screens?

Now even a modest new release like Chappie with an expected boxoffice.com opening weekend of $18m or so gets 3 screen at 12 plex I was at this past weekend.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 03-09-2015, 06:39 AM:

Those ARE screen totals are being talked about, which should not be confused with the number of locations. Guardians Of The Galaxy opened on 4,088 screens. I don't know how many locations (theaters) that translates to. I imagine that most theaters that had the film showed it on at least two or three screens. If you divide by that you may get close to an accurate count, although record keeping for this sort of thing tends to deal with screen count rather than the number of sites. The number of theaters for an early 1980s release would hew much closer to the screen count, as there were more single, twins and triplexes still operating then, with fewer multiple screen showings in each.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 03-09-2015, 02:49 PM:

And back in the 80s, to run a movie on 2 screens involved running two movies interlock or bicycling the reels between two houses (When I worked at the Fox Theater it was still running 2 projectors per house on 6K reels.). Distributors rarely allowed two prints or more to be booked at the time.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-09-2015, 05:34 PM:

Another thing more common now is the same movies playing in each multiplex. 15 years ago, Billings had two plexes which would each be playing up to 7 different movies. Now, they have a 10 and a 14, and typically at least half of the movies at one (or more) are also playing 0on multiple screens at the other, sometimes on multiple screens.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 03-09-2015, 09:26 PM:

quote: Mark Ogden
Those ARE screen totals are being talked about, which should not be confused with the number of locations.

I believe its locations that are being talked about, not the number of screens.

quote: James Westbrook
(When I worked at the Fox Theater it was still running 2 projectors per house on 6K reels.). Distributors rarely allowed two prints or more to be booked at the time.

Having two screens with changeovers was very easy to use one print for two screens without interlocking.

Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 03-11-2015, 08:37 AM:

When AMC bought the Rave Cinemas building back in January 2013, it took about nine months to get the Rave exterior signage taken down and the AMC exterior signage put up... but it would have happened in two months, if it wasn't for the Brentwood City Council having a stick up their @$$ about the size of the signage.