Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: fellow independents: how is business?

This is topic fellow independents: how is business? in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=003237

Posted by Melanie Loggins (Member # 6454) on 10-29-2019, 06:17 PM:

I apologize in advance if this isn't allowed, but I'm in a professional vacuum and need to know if I'm alone.

My theatre is failing. We remodeled (completely) and reopened almost 9 years ago. Since then business peaked in 2013 and has been slowly falling off, until this year, when it went off a cliff. Booking has gotten harder, terms have gotten worse, and traffic has been a trickle. There is a fair amount of public buy-in to the theatre, but people like the idea of having a theater more than they seem to actually want to come anymore.

I am not looking for suggestions unless you have something you honestly think we haven't considered/tried. What I want to know is, how are you faring? Are we alone in this?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-29-2019, 07:51 PM:

I can't say we're off a cliff, but business is somewhat down this year for us. I don't know if we're a good example though... Our economy around here is somewhat shaky right now due to various factors, not the least being the "war on coal" you may have heard about. A lot of younger people have left town - our high school enrollment is just about to dip below 100 for the first time in at least 50 or more years. There is new oil development and a couple of wind farm going up near us though, so there are some bright spots. Something always seems to happen around here to goose things up.

Quite a number of the movies have been underwhelming this year, too. They are flash-in-the-pan things. Nothing is sticking. We haven't had a "cultural phenomenon" in I don't know how long.

There are also more and more people buying large TVs and of course those damned "fire sticks."

[ takes a break to go look at Melanie's theater's website ]

So after looking at your website, I know you didn't ask for suggestions unless it's something you haven't thought about yourself. So I have a couple of thoughts:

First and foremost, and I don't mean to embarrass you here, but right on your homepage, there is a large headline at the bottom saying "THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE your HOME theatre!" Not exactly the sentiment you are going for, I'm sure. I would just change the word HOME to HOMETOWN and you'll fix that little issue. (I doubt that headline has encouraged many people to actually stay home but hey, it's all about mind-set when it comes to advertising, right?) [Smile]

Now on to the more difficult issue: This is just my own opinion, others might differ, but I think your tickets are really too low priced. You're leaving a lot of money on the table there. It's great to be priced lower than the chains, but you're WAY lower than even the national average.

I notice you are doing a "same price for everyone" ticket. You might want to think about going to adult price and kids under 12 price, at least. That way you could raise the adults without raising the kids, at least at first.

One other suggestion - do you sell gift cards during the holidays? If not....you should definitely be doing that. If you use a computer for ticket sales, it's easy to add gift cards. If you don't use a computer, just get some punch-cards printed up. (I can send you a picture of what we've used both currently and in the past if you like). The best thing about gift cards is, you get the cash up front and a certain number of cards will never get redeemed, so it's pure profit when that happens.

The thing that really caused our gift card sales to take off is, we partnered with the local pharmacy to sell them for us. We still sell them at the theatre, too, but the pharmacy gets all-day traffic and the girls there probably sell at least 85% of our total gift cards, maybe more. We sell the cards on our website too, but "live" sales are the vast majority of the total.

I hope these ideas gave you some food for thought. Good luck!

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-29-2019, 08:03 PM:

I only serviced independent theaters for the last 42 years. First in Illinois, Wisconsin and Northern Indiana... Then in Utah, AZ, NV, WY, ID and Montana. Some were single screens and some were multiplexes.. some pretty large multiplexes and several 100+ screen independent chains. All in all most of my customers have done pretty good, but any of them will tell you its always a roller coaster ride and there are going to be slow times and busy times. Some how they manage to stay a float and quite a few of them actually do very well and have been in business for decades. BAck in the Midwest some customers built big plexes and then sold them out to AMC and Marcus. Not all of them run ads, but the ones that do make a pretty nice haul doing it. I find that the ones that do very well also have captive audiences where it's 75 to 100 miles to the next theater. Places like Casper, WY, Elko, NV, St George, UT go like gangbusters... Casper, WY is just a movie going town period, it doesn't really matter what you play... they come. Same in Elko, NV where the people couldn't get enough 3-D. But places like Powell, WY do well and it is just a twin screen and only about 20 miles north of Cody, WY which has four more screens. You are fairly close to Sioux City... so people going shopping there may be apt to also see movies while there. I have some customers in Central Utah that have that problem. I would assume that over nine years you have experimented and tried everything under the sun. But one thing I have noticed over my time in this industry is that your booker can make all the difference in the world. Utilizing a booker that books lots of screens can give you a bit more flexibility both to get rid of under performing movies sooner because he can move the film to a different location but to get the type of movies in that might do better in your town. I have seen both those things happen quite a few times. But if you are happy with your booker then I can't really give any more suggestions. And if you are doing your own booking... well... thats also part of problem.

Mark

Posted by James Wyrembelski (Member # 9037) on 10-29-2019, 09:15 PM:

Well, we just finished our first full year about 10 days ago on the 19th. We remodeled over a couple years and re-opened in 2018.

It's hard to say how we are doing since there's really not much to go on. It's doing 1 billion times better than it did with the old owner. (They had prints yanked all the time for basically having 0 customers). The first three months we did extremely well given the novelty of it and I had expected that. What I am seeing now is probably more of a normal flow now that we are basically "just another business" in town and not the new shiny toy.

What I haven't seen yet is much of a lift off coming in to November. When I look back, pretty much the only movies that really had us busting at the seams were.....you guessed it...Disney. Anything non Disney either did okay or was rather flat.

I have spoken to a couple other owners and they've remarked that this year it seems as if (like Mike said) nothing is really sticking.

We also tend to book very heavily on the break....there are too many theaters close to me to not do this. Usually filler weeks tend to be quite tepid at best and the terms aren't usually that much better unless its quite old...so I might as well just get the newest stuff anyways. I'd rather have one good week followed by an okay week rather than two tepid weeks back to back.

Regarding ticket prices I'd have to agree. There are plenty around here still doing the 5 dollar admission price. We do 7.00 for anyone over 12, and 5 for 12 and under (or matinees). I see no one batting an eye at the 7.00 price.

I probably will raise ticket prices some time next year as well. The bigger places near us have prices ranging from 9.50-13.00. There's plenty of room for me to nudge it up.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-30-2019, 04:05 AM:

From me as a patron, I used to watch a movie in a proper cinema at least once, more likely twice every week. It's either the wife or a couple of buddies that join me, a bit dependent on the movie, but it's anywhere between 2 and 8 people. It used to be closer to 8 most of the time, but we lost a few souls over time.

My taste is pretty broad, so I tend to go see the biggest blockbusters but also alternative productions, there just needs to be something in there that triggers me to spend the time on a movie. The same is true for my movie-going buddies, my wife included.

When I'm on vacation, I can't help and visit the odd theater. It doesn't matter if it's a single screen or humongous multiplex, as long as it has some "specialty value" I like to see a movie in there. But even then, the movie needs to be at least borderline appealing.

Going to the movies is still a night out for me and usually is good fun. Even if the movie turns out not being all that great, being together with friends and sharing such an experience is good time for me. But as I said, there needs to be something in there to go see that movie.

Now, this year has been an absolute low for me, ever since I started to go see movies on a regular basis. People tend to claim that it is, because I'm getting older... There might be something in there, but it's more than that. Neither me nor my buddies are simply inclined to see new movies, because the premise of most of what was released this year bored them to death.

"It's all the same anyway. It's like you're watching the same movie, just with a different cast over and over again."

That's the actual argument right now not to see a particular movie. It's also harder to motivate other people to go see a movie. "All the same boring stuff."

So, that's why I visited a commercial movie theater just 6 times this year as a patron, down from like 60 times or so last year...

In effect, local cinema businesses had almost no revenue from us up until now and we're generally pretty OK spenders, we don't cheap out on concessions...

So, instead of going to the movies, we end up doing other stuff, like visiting a bar or trying out a new restaurant. Personally, I consider this to be a sad development. I rather watch a movie in a proper cinema.

But I think, we all could see it coming. I remember having such discussions here on this very forum a few years ago. If Hollywood keeps churning out the same templated contraptions time and time again, there will be a moment when people just stop showing up. Maybe that time has come... For me, at least, that reality set in somewhere at the end of last year.

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 10-30-2019, 10:17 AM:

We're likely not a great comparison, we've found that people don't care so much what's playing at the drive-in, they may even prefer the endless recycled action stuff. But we're also the only one and drivable to a fair-sized population. Any year that's dominated by Disney will be a good one for us.

I do however recall when we were being offered a small theatre/bowling alley in a rural town. I combed North America Rentrak numbers for any situation I could find that was more "impossible" but still making a go, or even thriving. Tiffany Theatre in Broken Bow Nebraska was one that stood out. Tiny town, new build (older building repurposed). It didn't make sense for us in the end, but I did learn some things from their story (as well as being a life-long small-towner myself) that we've applied to our drive-in:

Small-town folks will drive to the city if you're offering fewer playdates and/or older titles. Movies seem to be an impulse thing, and most won't go too often, so they'll pay more to see the new titles. With kids/family/school activities happening all week long, a free night could be any night.

We're also up against so many forms of entertainment and activities now. Nobody seems to want to bowl or play tennis anymore, but they'll go to a sports bar and play bocce or pickleball. Kind of the same thing right? I like to think that these new things "rhyme" with the old, they've just updated it.

How to update the classic downtown picture show? I'm not sure. I'm starting to know how to manage our particular venue, but we have the advantage of being the only drive-in left. I think you've asked the right people, there are plenty of kind folk here who know how it's done. My guess is newer films and to try a few more dates. I agree with what folks have said about admission prices, we've found cheap prices draw cheapskates and don't support the business.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-30-2019, 10:36 AM:

We're a single screen arthouse - and a non-profit - , so comparisons are difficult, but yes, off the damn cliff.

We've been running the theatre since 1983, I've been here since 1985. We are also the longest continually operating movie theatre in Alabama (since 1941)

The last five years have seen a steep decline in attendance. In the last 10 years we have bought the building, converted to digital, did an almost million dollar remodeling, and replaced the seats, all of it on fundraised money. Starting a new capital campaign to redo the marquee and front of the building (and to pay off the lingering debt of the remodeling).

Obviously, there is support here for the idea of a theatre. But getting them out of their houses to actually attend is a whole other story. Our audience is very old (a problem among almost all art groups). Getting younger people (in their 40's) is tough as they weren't raised in the same movie going culture as our current audience.

This year we've been adding in more one-off special screenings and more concerts to bring in different audiences (and in the concert case, sell a damn lot of beer). It has kept us afloat, but it has not solved the problem.

Most of the major distributors are no help, and I will leave it at that.

I'm too old to quit, so it's a matter of trying to hold on and keep trying until something happens. If I were 20 years younger, I'd say find someone else to spend their life doing this.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-30-2019, 12:35 PM:

Agreed with Marcel that the movies to come out of Hollywood this year have been abysmal. The Tarantino pic is the only one I've had even the slightest desire to see.

That having been said, could Melanie's dropoff in business be explained by factors in the local economy as well as bad movies? In a small town that is a significant distance from anywhere else (thereby making it difficult for people to come to your theater from out of town), whether jobs have been lost or added, shifts in median salary, that sort of stuff, could have a big impact, I'd have thought. It would be interesting to know if Melanie's direct competitors for out-of-the-house entertainment (e.g. bars and restaurants) have seen a similar fall in business.

If they have, this would suggest that the challenge is to persuade people to get themselves out of the house again. If they haven't, this would support the theory that bad movies is the main problem.

Posted by Ed Gordon (Member # 10866) on 10-30-2019, 06:28 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
Agreed with Marcel that the movies to come out of Hollywood this year have been abysmal...

In addition to that, consider how much more difficult it is for the few independent exhibitors left to get quality content.

And then there is the horrible political environment that generates nothing but bad news. Who wants to go out to anything (other than a Happy Hour perhaps)?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-30-2019, 07:32 PM:

quote: Ed Gordon
And then there is the horrible political environment that generates nothing but bad news. Who wants to go out to anything (other than a Happy Hour perhaps)?

All the more reason to switch off the TV and get out of the damn house. (Although we are a red county in a red state so it's not exactly a horrible political environment here -- the media just makes it seem that way.)

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-30-2019, 10:52 PM:

Trying hard to avoid straying into forbidden territory here, but the politics is part of this problem. It's trying to become a form of entertainment, and doing so by becoming ever more extremist and polarized. CNN and Facebook are doing battle with Fox and Breitbart; and because so much of this plays out hunched over a smartphone or staring at a living room TV, it's another disincentive to get out of the house and interact with people who likely spend less than ten minutes of their day thinking about politics. As in, going to see a movie. Furthermore, during those ten minutes, they think that they want politicians who will just make the nuts and bolts of government work, not the posturing morons that dominate both sides of the aisle at present.

One independent theater owner I was chatting to recently suggested that if you can't beat 'em, why not join 'em, and live stream political event coverage in his theater. He speculated, not unreasonably, that this could draw a bigger crowd than the umpteenth CGI-laden comic book adaptation. My response was that the fallout from those who opposed the event being streamed could be a problem.

Movie theaters have been around for about 110 years, and I don't think they're going to go away any time soon. But symptomatic of the problem we're facing is that the Hollywood establishment sneeringly calls anything they don't make or sell "alternative content." Unless Hollywood figures out how to make movies that people are willing to pay to see once more and pretty soon, Hollywood's output risks becoming the "alternative content" to other mainstreams, IMHO.

Posted by Adam Fraser (Member # 1074) on 10-31-2019, 04:25 PM:

We are up 6% over last year, but down probably over 20% in admissions since the late 90's.

I see far fewer teens and young adults coming in, especially the large groups of 12-16 year olds on "group dates". While they were annoying and needed constant supervision, they did spend a lot of money nearly every week.

We seem to be seeing an increase in attendance among 50+ year olds, and a huge drop in people attending late shows. Over the last 5 years we went from 100+ late shows per year to less than 10. When there are only 10-20 people showing up for the 9:30 show, it is hard to justify getting home at 1-2 AM.

The glut of superhero films also is wearing out its welcome here. The first Spiderman had people lined up around the building to the point we had to turn away people nearly every night of the opening week. Now, even though these newer Superhero movies open up at $200M+, our best weeks are 1500-2000 patrons, when they were 3000-3500 patrons with Spiderman, MIB, etc.

Overall we are doing good, but with the demographic shift there could be trouble ahead in 10 or so years when today's teens should be our primary movie goers.

Posted by Mike Croaro (Member # 3123) on 10-31-2019, 05:00 PM:

When movies were shorter, the "late show" was typically between 9:15 and 9:30. With movies being so long these day, it pushes that late show to 10:00 or even 10:15. Thus older people stop attending the late show.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-31-2019, 05:36 PM:

Movies don't have the excitement and anticipation that used to surround them any more. Maybe there's just too much competition for people's attention today than there was twenty or even ten years ago. Remember the buzz around the first Toy Story movie, for example? Nothing close to that is around the latest Frozen movie. Sure, there are people wanting to see it but it isn't the same.

I live in my theatre like the Phantom of the Opera. I have an apartment behind the screen, which has a lot of advantages in terms of cost. One power bill, one water bill, one property tax bill, etc. And when I'm waiting for the Pepsi delivery or the plumber those guys know to ring the doorbell when they get here so it's very convenient that way as well.

And I have no staff. No worries about if someone is going to show up for their shift, no concerns about theft or someone getting hurt on the job or over- or under-charging the customers. And if there is a night where nobody comes to the show (which is fairly rare but does occasionally happen) I just lock the door and switch the lights off and I'm not really out anything.

I also don't take any credit or debit cards, so I don't have to pay the fees and deal with the hassle associated with that. People around here know to bring money when coming to the show, new customers find out pretty quickly.

Equipment and maintenance costs for digital cinema are awfully high, and the movie companies take a bigger bite of the ticket revenue than they used to. I'm definitely paying far more today than it ever cost me when I was showing movies on film.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 10-31-2019, 05:39 PM:

I tried to send this to you directly, but the forum software said that sending you messages was blocked. Maybe others will have feedback on my ideas, and discount any that have been tried and failed.

Here are a few things that I observed after reading the messages here, and looking at your web site and social media.

Here is our entry for your theater: https://www.bigscreen.com/Marquee.php?theater=8711

I looked at our statistics for your theater, and in the last 4 weeks, you've had 527 views to your theater's information on our site. This is a close second to your nearest theater (CEC Theatres - Norfolk 7 Theatre).

If we go further back in time (90 days), the gap widens a little bit. This is largely due to a marked increase in visits to your theater's information on our site beginning September 1st. (Traffic increased by 2.5x)

Returning to your web site, I noticed a few issues that you may want to consider:

1) The "Buy Tickets Online" ticket is not obviously a link. I didn't realize that it was a link until after looking at it several times, because I didn't read the text on the ticket. I just figured it was a generic movie ticket graphic being used for decoration. That might be just my user error, but something to consider.

2) The "NOW SHOWING" text is a link offsite (IMDb). Likewise, the "About Movie" link is also going offsite. That means that the most important information on the page (your showtimes) is sandwiched between links that don't benefit you (the IMDb doesn't integrate your theater's info anywhere). The primary visual element is the embedded movie trailer, which is great, but it further minimizes your primary information.

Something to consider for your movie information link, is to use our Shareable Links page, which provides your customers with information about the movie, but it also directs them to your showtimes if they click on the Showtimes link on our site afterward:

https://www.bigscreen.com/Marquee.php?theater=8711&view=sharelinks

For example, the relevant link for Abominable is:

https://www.bigscreen.com/NowShowing.php?movie=304548&view=info&zip=68787&lat=42.2314756&long=-97.0178065

You will see that your theater's location is included in that URL, which is what gets them to your showtimes (if they don't return to your site). We also have links to your web site, Facebook page, and Twitter feed, which also helps to keep the attention of your customers, instead of losing them to the IMDb, which doesn't have any of that which benefits you.

3) The links to Facebook do not function. They lead the visitor either nowhere (the link in the grey bar below your supporters section), or to Facebook's main page (link that is at the bottom of page).

4) Your Twitter feed hasn't been updated since Feb 25, 2018. Before that single post, the most recent was Dec 10, 2015. Those factors make your Twitter feed an unhelpful resource for your theater, and anything that doesn't help, detracts from what you are trying to do. If you want to maintain it, then I suggest posting messages at least once daily. Otherwise, I recommend removing it from Twitter and the links from your site.

5) The Twitter link in the grey bar on your site would need to be fixed or removed, as it does not function. Is this section intended for embedded social media modules?

I hope that you find a formula that works for your theater. I see the phenomenon so often when I'm writing articles about theaters closing, where people will be interviewed and they are sad that the theater is going away, but the reason the theater is going away is due to low attendance. Sometimes, this is due to a theater owner not investing back into the theater, so the seats have gone downhill, the bathrooms are sketchy, and the overall moviegoing experience isn't what it should be. However, I think more often is that people take the theater for granted, and they like the /idea/ of the theater, but they don't think to patronize the theater.

It sounds as though this latter scenario is what you're up against.

Is there some way to get more community buy-in? Are there things that you can do that are unique to your community that people would respond to?

I see that you have a tie-in with the Dairy Queen, and that's good.

Are there opportunities with your local high school and elementary school, where you could work with them to build more awareness and goodwill? Presenting at career day, providing tours to school groups, and working with the school district to hold events at the theater are just some things off the top of my head.

Have you ever tried to introduce movies before the show? This requires a certain personality to do well, I think, but getting down in front of the screen and doing a little intro may generate some goodwill and it's a unique thing to your theater that they wouldn't get from other theaters or by staying at home (except if they watch Turner Classic Movies). If the movie you're playing has any giveaway items (T-shirts or other swag), you could give them away before the show.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-31-2019, 05:43 PM:

We dropped our 9:00 show a couple of years ago. The average attendance was 3.
7:30 is now the Late Show and it's attendance is dropping. 5:00 show often does better.
I have threatened on occasion to become the only movie theatre in the world not open at night.

Posted by James Wyrembelski (Member # 9037) on 10-31-2019, 09:46 PM:

quote: Adam Fraser
The glut of superhero films also is wearing out its welcome here.

I'm so glad that's over with. I was getting wore out with them myself.

We also dropped our later shows after the end of the spring season. While some showtimes were worth the time, most saw 10 or less people. Trying to clean the theater between shows was also proving to be difficult while also manning the ticket booth and concession area. I hated having to hold my staff for a "maybe" rush of people. I found most of the frequent late show people just went to the standard 7pm show once they were dropped.

I had a grand total of 2 people inquire as to why there were no 9pm and later shows anymore.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-01-2019, 12:02 PM:

I used to say if a movie was more than 130 minutes long, then we would not have a late show. I had to change that to 120 minutes to allow time for our ads to run.

Then the crowd started dropping for the few late shows we did have. I miss the chaos between shows, but we've mostly reverted to our one-show-per-evening schedule unless it's a super popular movie.

(That's something else, Melanie... are you doing ads? It might be against your religion to do them, as it was mine, but they bring in a lot of cash.)

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 11-01-2019, 01:31 PM:

For me, superhero fatigue is real. Look at what they learned from Star Wars fatigue. Slow down, let people take a breath, and give them a chance to consume something different before the next installment comes along.

I can't imagine what it must be like for a single-screen operation. How do you run the same movie for several weeks in a small town (because of contract stipulations), then have to choose about what to change it out with, when the next franchise movie is coming right down the line? That would keep me up at night...

Posted by Mike Croaro (Member # 3123) on 11-01-2019, 03:08 PM:

I grew tired of the Super Hero movies a couple of years ago. I refuse to see any of the new ones.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 11-01-2019, 04:45 PM:

Where we are located in Northern California, there have been a number of challenges outside of just the ups and downs of the industry.

My particular theatre is in a community have has faced a number of wild fire evacuations over the last 5 years. While only one of the evacuations has directly impacted the theatre, many of the people we serve have been impacted multiple times. Plus our drive-in has been impacted a number of times due to air quality.

Halloween was the first time open since October 26 due to planned power outages. While we were able to open for the first show on 10/26, we effectively lost a full week's worth of businesses because people were spending money in preparation for the outage. Plus, we had been impacted by a 2 day outage just 2 weeks prior.

Aside from this, our company's theatre in Paradise has yet to reopen following the Camp Fire last November. Since I don't pay the bills, I don't know the true financial situation of the company. But I know things are very lean, and having a down year hasn't helped.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 11-01-2019, 05:03 PM:

In germany, 2018 was one of the worst years for the exhibition business ever.

In the UK, however, 2018 was a record year. The UK was down to 54 million admissions in 1984. Since then, admissions increased continuously to a whooping 176 million in 2018.
When you look at their box office top rankings, they watched the same movies as other countries...

https://www.launchingfilms.com/research-databank/uk-cinema-admissions

Even some Disney/Pixar flics performed way under expectations here in recent years. We played e.g. 'Finding Dory' from the start, and that was a desaster - and I am talking admissions, not revenue. Luckily, we usually play quite a few successful german and european arthouse or comedy releases.

- Carsten

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-01-2019, 10:00 PM:

Scott Jentsch's suggestions on Page 1 of this thread are very good. Fixing issues in the theater's web site and maintaining a more active social media presence can only help.

Mike Blakesley's suggestion about pricing and gift cards is worth considering. Ticket pricing for a small town theater is more tricky now than ever though, given the sorry terms the big movie distributors are dictating.

I like Leo Enticknap's point about the local economy overall. If the broader economy is struggling it will negatively affecct all other discretionary, out of home businesses like restaurants, bars and other outlets of entertainment.

Then there's all the stuff that seem beyond control, like the changes in demographics affecting small towns. Many rural areas are shedding young adults like crazy. The bigger cities have more opportunity and a lot more fellow young adults.

In some cases, like here in Oklahoma, the flight of youth is partly self-inflicted. Our state gutted public education funding for several years. Teachers were leaving in droves (and disgust) because they were among the worst paid in the nation and hadn't seen a pay raise in over a decade. Soon families starting following the teachers, packing up and moving. A few more prosperous school districts within Oklahoma benefitted. But many people have been leaving the state for places in Texas and elsewhere. Given the choice, young families aren't going to raise their kids in a town that doesn't invest in the local schools. I get it that no one likes paying property tax or any other taxes. But any town needs young adults and families present to keep the town alive. Recently Oklahoma's state legislature finally noticed the damage being done. They passed a modest teacher pay raise by raising fuel taxes for the first time since 1993. Texas school districts are still coming up here and poaching teachers right and left. We have thousands upon thousands of "emergency certified" teachers filling vacancies in schools. They haven't even finished their educations yet!

Aside from the shifts in economics, demographics and idiocy from elected policy makers, the movie industry is NOT helping matters with their own narrow-minded decisions.

Take Martin McCaffery's situation with his non-profit, art house theater for instance.

For years I've been going on and on about the dangers of shrinking the window between a movie's release in commercial theaters and then on home video. That window is the most narrow with independent, art-house movies. Such movies already suffer on the theatrical side due to a very low number of available screens. Compound that with a select base of customers who support independent, art-house type movies. Some of these movies are available to stream via Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc the same time they're released in theaters. An increasing number of them don't even get to play in commercial theaters at all. The Irishman is one of the year's most anticipated, awards-likely movies. It opened today, but will be on Netflix before the end of the month. And that's Netflix being "nice" to movie theaters.

Politics also weighs-in with art-house movies. For decades many films in that category have dealt with social and political issues, often going left of center. Some aren't overtly political, but still feature characters that don't conform to Bible Belt ideals -such as a love story between gay characters for example. Obviously that doesn't fly with a lot of would-be customers in "red" territory, especially given the intense polarization going on now.

Regarding "super hero movie fatigue," I get it. The frustrating thing is that, at least in Marvel's case, they've done a great job cranking out those movies. Avengers: Endgame had a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Many other Marvel movies have scored in the 80%-90% range. DC isn't nearly as consistent. But The Dark Knight was a truly great film and the first installment of Wonder Woman was very entertaining. As long as Disney and Warner Bros keep doing well with the super hero game we're not going to see the assembly line stop.

I think the broader problem is the paint-by-numbers, Save The Cat!, movies via template production model. It does affect the super hero genre. In Marvel's case, I think they've adopted the same rigorous, self-critical team-oriented approach on story development that Disney pioneered with its animated films. Pixar copied the same production formula. Pixar and Disney both have faltered from time to time this decade by pushing out too many sequels and not staying true to original standards. Pixar threw out much of their original work on Toy Story 2 to almost re-build it completely because the original idea wasn't working. It caused a shit-ton of stress, but they ended up with a far better movie in the end. Today, I don't think Pixar would go to that much trouble. Doing things "good enough" seems to be the business model now. And that goes for all kinds of movies. Not just the super hero, sci-fi variety.

Finally, there are the movie theater customers themselves. We deserve plenty of blame for this crisis. It is a personal choice to acquire a Kodi box or modded Fire Stick that delivers a payload of pirated content. It's a personal choice to search out pirated content online. That has been a driving force at narrowing the theatrical release window. So anyone who watched pirated content to save a buck has absolutely zero right to complain at all when his local movie theater closes. They can look in a mirror and say "fuck you" to themselves.

We're also increasingly fickle and spoiled by the rapidly improving movie-watching experience we can get at home. I saw a big "end cap" of 65" 4K TV sets at Walmart for under $1000 earlier this evening.

quote: Mike Blakesley
Quite a number of the movies have been underwhelming this year, too. They are flash-in-the-pan things. Nothing is sticking. We haven't had a "cultural phenomenon" in I don't know how long.

The big studios in Hollywood need to take chances on NEW IDEAS for that to happen. Star Wars was a cultural phenomenon back in 1977. But no one knew for sure that success would happen. The project was a massive gamble. The actual production was a nightmare for Lucas. The same is true for The Godfather. Francis Coppola worked through much of that production day by day expecting to get fired by Paramount.

Hollywood studios (and the Wall Street people they answer to) don't take chances like that anymore. They don't seem to realize the movie industry is really a global one. Europe and Asia both have movie industries of their own. Given the right circumstances they could invade the US market with superior content and upend Hollywood's racket. Especially if the European and Asian distributors reach out directly to American theater chains,

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-01-2019, 11:14 PM:

quote: Scott Jentsch
I can't imagine what it must be like for a single-screen operation. How do you run the same movie for several weeks in a small town (because of contract stipulations), then have to choose about what to change it out with, when the next franchise movie is coming right down the line? That would keep me up at night...

Oh believe me, losing sleep is something I do on a regular basis. That said, here are my "secrets" for doing the multi-week movies.

1. Pick the product carefully and DO NOT EVER let your personal taste decide. Listen to the booker. (He's right virtually 100% of the time.) Never play something JUST because it's trendy. Check the terms... if it's a Disney movie or anything on the "sliding scale," we're probably better off to play it 3 weeks and face crickets in week 3, than to wait until the 6th week of release and get 1/4 of the crowd, but still have to pay the same high percentage.

2. When playing a movie for more than a week, put the start - end dates on the marquee, website, phone system, in the front windows, wherever. This will help people realize they don't HAVE TO come in on the opening weekend and it will spread the crowd out, thus reducing sellouts (which are aggravating to people when the theater is overly crowded or if they can't get a seat) and giving everyone a more enjoyable experience.

4. Once the movie is running, hit social media every couple of days with something related to the movie. I like to do "fun facts" about the movie we're showing, if I can find enough interesting stuff. (Wikipedia is your friend.) Or, post a picture of a bunch of happy kids. If it's hot out, put up a "cool off with a great movie!" post. If it's cold.... "warm up with a great movie!"

As for what to follow-up a multi-week booking with.... we try never to play two of the same kind of movie in a row; we don't follow an "R" movie with another of the same rating, if we can help it. If we're faced with a choice between two films that both seem good, the higher-grossing movie usually gets the nod. If a movie is getting horrible reviews OR if it is more than a month old, it's almost always better to pass it by.

Something else I have told other small operators...Embrace the R-rated movie. A lot of small theaters like to brand their place as "family friendly" and they think if they never play an R film, families will flock to whatever else they play. That's ridiculous...there are a lot of very fine R-rated films, and several entries in our all-time top 50 are rated R. We are family friendly, but if we're playing something rated R the kids will mostly stay away. If you automatically distance yourself from R films, you're basically telling the grownups you don't want their money. We don't go out looking for R movies, but if it's a hit, we'll play it, I don't give a crap what the rating is.

Posted by James Wyrembelski (Member # 9037) on 11-02-2019, 01:18 AM:

I'm realizing that it can be hard to keep people's attention too. We've gotten some grief lately about never playing movies for adults.

This year was kind of hard as it had a tilt towards family films. Just recently after playing Downton, I had a lot of comments about how nice it was to finally have a movie for just the adults. (Even though we just recently played IT:2, Angel Has Fallen, Downton Abbey, and are now opening Terminator) 3 R rated Films with a period drama thrown in there.

They either didn't know, or simply said that it wasn't something they wanted to see. But in the same breath will claim we never show anything for them. [Confused]

(They sure don't spend at the concession stand like the families do either) But, we don't shy away from R rated stuff either, and it IS nice to see appreciation when we do bring in more adult fare.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-02-2019, 03:54 PM:

Mind you, many adults will not consider an "R" movie to be the litmus test of an "Adult" movie. Horror and Action would tend towards young-adult (teen/college) rather than middle-aged and other classes of adult.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 11-02-2019, 04:40 PM:

quote: James Wyrembelski
I'm realizing that it can be hard to keep people's attention too. We've gotten some grief lately about never playing movies for adults.

We get this all the time, especially at out drive-in. In most cases it's because people's memories don't extend more than a couple weeks.

I had a customer last night going off about how we never play higher quality movies for adults. As he was going to see Terminator: Dark Fate. He made a big deal about how he used to come to the movies all the time, but doesn't anymore because all we play is kids movies and garbage.

Thinking back, I remember one of the first times I truly felt the decline in demand for high quality movies for adult audiences was when Michael Clayton under performed. The movie had a lot of positives, including a popular lead actor and great reviews. But it didn't land with audiences and wound up being just a 2 week picture for us.

Posted by Dan Allen (Member # 3388) on 11-02-2019, 08:28 PM:

We're a 444-seat non-profit Opera House in western New York. Aside from our Cinema Series, we do live events on stage as well as live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, the National Theatre in London, and the Bolshoi Ballet.

We've seen a decline across the board in attendance, mostly in the last 2-3 years. Whereas we used to be much more of an arthouse with a pretty dependable cinema audience, people just won't show up these days for something they haven't heard of (that goes for everything we do).

We're second run, so at least the split is better. And we run our films on Saturday and Tuesday nights. Tonight, we're showing Downton Abbey and there's a pretty good crowd here for it - about 130. Like Mr. McCaffery, our crowd is older, and they decided awhile ago that they don't care for serious drama, so our film choices tend to be lighter, crowd-pleasing fare for the most part.

I think alot of it is the availability of stay-at-home entertainment on bigger and bigger TVs for less and less money. Hell, nobody even needs to leave the house for groceries anymore, do they? For us personally, it's partly being located inside the Village Hall with no marquee. For a theatre that has been around since 1891, there's a shocking number of people who still have no idea we're here. That's not for lack of trying... and we're working on that marquee.

I will say that one thing our movie audiences always seem to enjoy is when our boss steps out on stage to welcome them, talk up the next event, and do a quick giveaway that ties in to the movie (the soundtrack, or book it's based on, etc). That's something they aren't getting at the local movieplex, and word about it does spread.

I hardly post, so I'd like to say thanks to everyone here. I come here almost daily and these forums have helped me in countless ways. And to the OP, I hope things turn around for you - you're asking the right people.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-03-2019, 12:54 AM:

quote: Steve Guttag
Mind you, many adults will not consider an "R" movie to be the litmus test of an "Adult" movie. Horror and Action would tend towards young-adult (teen/college) rather than middle-aged and other classes of adult.

The R-rating doesn't carry the edgy, forbidden (or even "immoral") punch that it did decades ago. Today R-rated Hollywood movies are tame compared to "unrated" content one can watch on premium cable networks or streaming services. Hardcore porn is freely accessible on the web, and that distorted form of sex is tame compared to more grotesque content such as explicitly violent war footage and atrocities -like beheading videos.

R-rated movies from big studios have less sexual content in them than they did in the past. Most movies are R-rated only for violence and profanity. Bare female breasts seems like a rare component in R-rated movies today. There doesn't seem to be a heck of a lot of biblical-oriented protests against violence in film. With that being said, if I was running an independent theater in a small city or town I would book R-rated movies as well as any G, PG or PG-13 shows. R-rated movies are not porn.

Improving residential Internet speeds and the impending 5G conversion in the mobile phone industry is going to make streaming video over the Internet only that much better. Unfortunately it's going to make those little movie piracy devices work better too. Anyway, do like Mike says and book those R-rated movies. Even if it pisses off the pastor at the local church.

quote: Justin Hamaker
Thinking back, I remember one of the first times I truly felt the decline in demand for high quality movies for adult audiences was when Michael Clayton under performed. The movie had a lot of positives, including a popular lead actor and great reviews. But it didn't land with audiences and wound up being just a 2 week picture for us.

That's too bad. Michael Clayton was a very good movie. Great cast, great performances and arguably the best of George Clooney's career.

Unfortunately that's how it goes with "grown up" films. The Usual Suspects played for just one week here in Lawton at the Carmike 8. It seemed like me and the theater's manager were the only two people who watched it locally during its original release. Months later when it came out on home video, and got exposure at the Oscars, people in my town finally started watching it. On their TV screens at home. Then they had the audacity to bitch and complain, asking "why don't movies like this come to Lawton." I had fun telling them, "it did come to Lawton! You just didn't care to find out about it!" Lazy jerks.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 11-03-2019, 03:47 PM:

quote:
The Usual Suspects played for just one week here in Lawton at the Carmike 8. It seemed like me and the theater's manager were the only two people who watched it locally during its original release. Months later when it came out on home video, and got exposure at the Oscars, people in my town finally started watching it. On their TV screens at home.

This is what happened with The Hurt Locker. We played in for one week in August to mostly empty auditoriums. Then it goes on to get the Oscar buzz and it's completely gone from threatres.

Generally speaking I think the studios wind up doing more harm than good when it comes to this dance they do with trying to position movies for an Oscar run. With the rare exception of something like Slumdog Millionaire that takes off late, most of the time they miss a window of opportunity to get their movie into theatres. This just happened with Judy. We had people asking for it leading up to the initial release, but the studio didn't let us have it until 4 weeks later. By this time people had either watched it elsewhere or forgot about it.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-03-2019, 07:56 PM:

Yeah, The Hurt Locker is another movie I watched in the theater, pretty much all by myself. It has been a long time since I watched the show. IIRC, I was a little put off by certain plot points that seemed far fetched.

quote: Justin Hamaker
Generally speaking I think the studios wind up doing more harm than good when it comes to this dance they do with trying to position movies for an Oscar run.

I agree. 30 years ago it was Standard Operating Procedure for an awards-likely movie to open in very limited release, only in the most exclusive of New York and Los Angeles theaters. Perhaps only two theaters in the whole damned country would be showing this piece of Oscar-bait. That crap was normal back around 1990. IIRC, they called the practice "platforming." Open the movie in a couple NY and LA theaters. Then expand to a couple dozen big cities 2 weeks later. Then add a few more dozen bookings the following week and on and on.

I have a theory about that old practice. The movies these studios were promoting were sometimes pretty unconventional and even very risky. Back then all movies were shown on film. It costs a lot of money to strike 1000-3000 prints for a wide release and promote it. So the studios, particularly indies with limited budgets, would sort of ease the unconventional product into the market. If it was well received then they would order more prints, more ads, etc.

Today the situation is very different. There really isn't any need to do this exclusive NY/LA-only bullshit anymore with prestige movie releases. For one thing, nearly all the legit movie palaces are GONE. The damn theaters in New York City are no more remarkable than the ones in Oklahoma City. We have an "IMAX" screen in my town of less than 100,000 people. Next very obvious point, there aren't any film prints anymore. Point #3: movie studios and movie theaters don't spend squat on newspaper ads anymore. Hell, they don't even build web sites for specific movies anymore like they did 20 years ago! Movie fans visit the same few web sites for movie info/news (Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, etc). There's a few different web sites out there just for movie trailers.

With everything being all-digital and so much of a movie's promotional effort happening online in just a scant few outlets why do they even need to bother with the platforming practice now? I guess the only reason I can see is the semi-monopoly the big chains like AMC, Regal, etc have over the vast majority of theater screens. Those guys only want to play mainstream big studio stuff. So a smaller "grown up" movie has to sort of prove itself before it can get any screens in places like Lawton, OK. Unfortunately with the theatrical window being so badly freaking compressed now, any "grown up" art/indie show is just as likely to go immediately from very limited NY/LA theatrical runs to Netflix or Amazon Prime as play in an ordinary middle American multiplex. That's what we're basically getting with The Irishman.

Posted by Jonathan M. Crist (Member # 413) on 11-03-2019, 08:50 PM:

In my area none of the high school crowd will even consider attending a movie theatre that does not have electric reclining seats.

Posted by Sarah Treichel (Member # 10857) on 11-04-2019, 12:11 AM:

I started managing this place last October, started booking in December. We're in a small town that is pretty isolated, 3 hours north of Bangor, and right on the New Brunswick border. The owner made a big effort, but the theater was still in rough shape - generally filthy, painful seats, bizarre layout, little heat, no A/C - just not a pleasant place to come. We've been working on that and also changed our strategy with booking. Basically, I have learned two important things: 1) Disney keeps the doors open and 2) we *must* get the big movies on the break if we possibly can. Some of the bookers this theater has worked with in the past haven't understood that even though we are in very small town far from any big American city, our main competition is 25 mins away in a Canadian city. They have twice the screens and 6-7 times the population, so they seem to be able to get whatever they want to show. Most people here have passports, especially the ones with $$ to spend on concessions. Plenty who don't are happy to watch pirated movies online, so if we wait 3 weeks to open a big movie, most of our audience has already seen it. In between Disney and superheroes, I look for quality, but always try to have a kid-friendly film on one of our two screens, even if it's just ho-hum. Families come out every week and they buy popcorn. Persons of a certain age who also exist entirely outside of geekdom do not. By focusing on family fare and developing a good relationship with (constantly pestering) sales reps, we are actually doing better this year than last, even though we take all of the familiar guff about how we should have had Rocketman instead of Lion King. I booked The Old Man & the Gun. I loved it. Nobody came.

That said, distributors who've decided to limit their releases have really hurt us lately. I just keep telling myself, "Frozen 2 is coming." Then we'll be able to pay our taxes and our vendors.