• Fri. Dec. 15, 7:30PM, 10:30PM
  Sat. Dec. 16, 3PM, 7:30PM, 10:30PM
  Sun. Dec. 17, 3PM, 7:30PM
  Mon. Dec. 18, 8PM
  Tue. Dec. 19, 8PM
  Wed. Dec. 20, 8PM
  Thu. Dec. 21, 7:30PM, 10:30PM
  Fri. Dec. 22, 3PM, 7:30PM, 10:30PM
  Sat. Dec. 23, 3PM, 7:30PM, 10:30PM
  Sun. Dec. 24, 4PM

The way AMC has it listed is Pre-Release Special Engagement
And Special Engagement 10 Days Only on another part of the page.
NY/LA/SF: Dec. 15th
Expanded Release: Dec. 25th
Wide Release: Jan. 19, 2007
 

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Posted by Wayne Keyser (Member # 2420) on 11-16-2006, 04:30 PM:
 
Okay, okay ... $25 "Pre-Release Special Engagement" ... something of similar caliber/buzz as LORD OF THE RINGS would still sell out, but DREAMGIRLS???

How about just padlocking the theater for the first ten days?

You'd do better trying this crass publicity stunt with BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE 3-D or maybe PEEWEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, THE RESTORED DIRECTOR'S CUT.
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 11-16-2006, 04:33 PM:
 
Wayne = !
 

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Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 11-16-2006, 04:55 PM:
 

quote: Wayne Keyser

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How about just padlocking the theater for the first ten days?

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• Movie: $50.00
  Dinner:$60.00
  Parking:$20.00
  Snack Bar:$10.00

Total for evening:$140.00
If you use the subway minus $12.00 from parking. (subway $2.00, one way per person)
Total: $128.00
Admission breakdown: $10.75 ticket plus a $14.25 program....Total $25.00
 

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Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 11-16-2006, 06:07 PM:
 

quote: Bill Gabel

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Admission breakdown: $10.75 ticket plus a $14.25 program....Total $25.00

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THAT'S interesting. Are they splitting the pricing to avoid admission taxes on better than half the cost? How could Paramount receive percentages on the $14.25 if it wasn't actually "admission"?
 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 11-16-2006, 06:48 PM:
 
The normal price of tickets here in NYC is $10.75. So if you paid $25.00 for this special engagement. And if the movie sucked, that special program costed you an extra $14.25. and 125 minutes of time. The Ziegfeld is the last large theatre left in NYC. Some people like it and some people don't, like preferred the Astor Plaza to the Ziegfeld.
 

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Posted by Chad Souder (Member # 343) on 11-16-2006, 07:20 PM:
 
Didn't Dances With Wolves (1990) also have an intermission? I don't think Lou did his research very well.
 

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Posted by Jon Miller (Member # 163) on 11-16-2006, 07:37 PM:
 

quote: Bill Gabel

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In LA at the ArcLight Cinerama Dome in Digital Projection.

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???

For $25 I'd expect a 35mm Showprint presentation run by the theatre's best projectionist, assigned to run only that screening. Not to mention on a clean, tuned-up projector with a new or low-hours lamp.

Am I asking too much?
 

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Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 11-16-2006, 08:31 PM:
 

quote: Chad Souder

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Didn't Dances With Wolves (1990) also have an intermission? I don't think Lou did his research very well.

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quote: Bob Maar

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The last official road show was "Man of La Mancha," another film based on a Broadway musical, in 1972.

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Without debating what constitutes an official roadshow release, I believe the most correct/practical answer (at least for the U.S.) would be "Last Tango In Paris" which had some hard-ticket, reserved-seat bookings in the major cities and was released after "Man Of La Mancha."
 

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Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 11-16-2006, 09:35 PM:
 
Dances with Wolves did have an intermission, in the 4hr european version.
 

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Posted by Wayne Keyser (Member # 2420) on 11-16-2006, 09:40 PM:
 
Guys, it's DREAMGIRLS -

Parking: $20.00
Dinner: $60.00

"Hmmmm ... you know, we could say 'to heck with it, skip the movie and just go home and cut to the good part"...

Movie: $0.00
Snack Bar: $0.00
Total for the evening: $80 and at least as much fun.

Not that I have much against DREAMGIRLS, I just think it probably makes way better live theater, and the hype offends my hype-bombarded sense of decency.

Re: roadshows:

I was watching the last of the BLUE COLLAR COMEDY TOUR shows on Comedy Central - video shot at DC's Warner Theater - my family barely believed me when I told them the last time I was there, I saw the roadshow CLEOPATRA (before they cut 40 minutes and Liz Taylor's rear out of it).
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-17-2006, 01:05 AM:
 
You guys are missing the point of this whole thing. It really isn't about quality or anything of the sort. (Big surprise.)

This whole road-show thing is an Oscar baiting stunt. The movie is a front-runner for the Academy Awards.
 

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Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 11-17-2006, 09:10 AM:
 
Dreamgirls =
 

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Posted by Jeremy Jorgenson (Member # 2989) on 11-18-2006, 12:19 AM:
 
In addition to the other post '82 films already mentioned, Branagh's Hamlet had an intermission when I saw it.

Interestingly, I came across this review of Magnolia

http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=342

which, if you read in the 4th paragraph down says:

quote: Magnolia review

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The last major domestically released film to feature an intermission was Richard Attenborough's "Gandhi" back in 1982.

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quote:

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And, given the complaints about high prices last year, which industry types naturally ignored, the consequences of the recently announced plan to charge $25 for “Dreamgirls” in its exclusive run at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles, the Ziegfeld in New York and the Metreon in San Francisco probably should be seriously thought out. It may be a “toe-in-the-water” test of the revival of roadshow-type production and presentation, of which Steven Spielberg was a fan, and for which a price increase may be necessary for the implementation of certain experiential cinema technologies, but it will only work if audiences feel the film and the technology are worth the additional cost, as they did in the early days of roadshowing in the Fifties. Though [in Los Angeles], the ArcLight, Bridge, El Capitan, and Grove appear to have been successful with such aspects of roadshowing as higher prices and reserved seats, the regular audience at these theaters are exclusively well-heeled Westside trendoids, less affluent film buffs who live near them being unable to afford to attend on even a regular basis, and I have not heard of such techniques succeeding or even being tried in other parts of town or the country, with the possible exception of equally trendy Manhattan.

There is really nothing about “Dreamgirls” or its presentation to make the higher price seem worth it to the majority of potential moviegoers. On the surface it appears to be nothing more than a megabuck remake of “Sparkle” (1976). Yes, the show has name recognition. So did “The Wiz,” “The Phantom Of The Opera,” and “Rent.” Most theater fans consider film versions to be inferior to stage versions, especially of musicals. And there is a generation gap issue here, even with black audiences. But, like the public embrace of repurposed films in Imax, the hype equating a higher admission price with something special, even if it really isn’t, may be enough to get a sufficient number of trendoids in to allow Paramount and Dreamworks to claim the price increase was a success and they or other distributors to try it with another film, probably a $300 mil+ presumed sure thing that turns out not to be.

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quote:

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given the complaints about high prices last year, which industry types naturally ignored,

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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With this phrase, Rick Mitchell proves that he is an idiot.

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And it proves you're giving an out of context opinion.

Read the whole article and I predict you'll change your mind about the writer. I pasted only the "Dreamgirls" roadshow portion given the subject of this thread. There's much more to the article, however, which happens to be a sequel to an article written a year ago about the state of the industry.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-12-2006, 09:18 PM:
 
I can understand how the Ziegfeld could get away with charging $25 for this kind of a show, given the customers are getting a 50 page booklet (likely from a limited printing run) and being able to view costumes and set designs from the movie. Not exactly the sort of thing hundreds of other locations will be able to offer.

Those customers will also have the bragging rights to say they watched the movie before most everyone else -provided this movie is the sort of thing you even want to brag about seeing first.


How is the Ziegfeld presenting this show? 2K digital projection? That's not a very "exclusive" way to show movies anymore.

Rick Mitchell mentioned these sort of high priced engagements may be used as a way of funding certain "experiential cinema technologies." Has Rick Mitchell been keeping up with certain trends in cinema technologies?. They sure don't point at all in any direction relating to high quality road shows.


I'd be willing to pay extra to see a feature film natively shot in IMAX or 5/65mm. Pay extra to see 35mm projection of the average shot in Super35 movie? No. I see nothing special at all about any movie shot with some sort of glorified HDTV video camera. It's easier, but still a step down from 35mm. And it's really silly to take any sort of video-sourced movie like that and blow it up to a large format process like IMAX. That's just a waste of emulsion.

Right now everything is trending toward video and shorter release windows. So the whole IMAX or 5/70 thing is just a non-starter. But then so is that whole revival of the road show thing. It might be able to work a few times here and there at 1000 seat theaters in Los Angeles and New York. But that's also where it will end.

I'm certainly not going to shell out $25 per ticket to watch a movie in an average sized 200-300 seat auditorium in a process not all that different from what I can find at many other theaters.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-13-2006, 02:05 PM:
 

quote: Michael Coate

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Read the whole article and I predict you'll change your mind about the writer.

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I don't have time to read the whole thing at this moment, but I looked it over. He says the industry could benefit most from making more movies that MUST be seen in a theatre to take advantage of the whole experience cinema has to offer. A good idea, sure - but too much of the home audience simply does not care enough about the whole experience. They just want to "see the movie." They don't care if the picture is cropped, the sound is mono, or the color is goofed up. As long as plenty of dialogue is coming out of their surround speakers, they're happy.

The best way to improve the theatrical bottom line, which of course will never happen, would be to put off the DVD release for say, a year or two. Book the movie in fewer screens to build excitement, rather than having 25 showtimes a day. Advertise and promote the movie while it's still in theatres so it would build an audience, rather than burn-out the ad budget in the opening couple of weeks. Of course, all this is based on a requirement that the movie would have to be good to start with.

But even given the good ideas in the article, his notion that the industry has ignored the complaints about prices is still dumb. Nobody's "ignoring" anything....there's just nothing that can be done about it. Everything costs more nowadays. The complaints are silly anyway. If people want all the slam-bang of the big screen, it's got to be paid for. Movies are still a bargain compared with all other out-of-home entertainment.

The solution to the complaints is educating people as to WHY movies cost what they do. And if movies were suddenly half the price, the DVD people will still wait for the DVD to come out since they know it'll be just a couple of months, so nothing would be gained. That's why a l-o-n-g window would help business more than anything.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-13-2006, 03:35 PM:
 
The problem is those investors who directly fund movie productions, as well as company share holders, want the movies paying for themselves as quickly as possible. I guess they couldn't negotiate a good interest rate on the loans they took.

From a sheer mathematical standpoint I can understand their perspective. I doubt if I'd want to take a movie that cost $200 million of borrowed money to make and have it play only in a handful of theaters for a year or two. The chances of taking a horrible bath in interest losses are too great.

The entire paradigm of movie business is very different today from what it was decades ago. Studios back then actually had the money in the bank to afford green lighting a production. On top of that, people didn't have all the forms of entertainment we have today. What did they have in the 1960's? Radio and three channels of fuzzy black and white TV? There wasn't any competition for viewers coming from the Internet, 500 channels of digital cable or satellite TV as well as blood and guts games on X-Box 360.

These days if you want to make it difficult or expensive for a viewer to see one show, he may just say "fuck it" and go watch something else instead.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-13-2006, 11:40 PM:
 
The writer makes another point that I hadn't really thought of, mostly because I run a single-screen theatre. He says that in the past, people would go to movie palaces to see the one movie with other "like-minded" fans of that same movie. Whereas now, adults will go to a multiplex to see something like "The Departed" and not only have to deal with a giant mall parking lot, but have to put up with hordes of other people in the concession and lobby, like screaming babies waiting to see "Happy Feet," or a flock of snotty teenagers going into "Borat." So they don't feel like their experience is "special." It's more of a "chore."

Personally I've had mostly good experiences in the few times I've gone to big-city plexes, but that might be because we usually make sure to avoid the brand-new releases and/or weekends.
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-17-2006, 04:26 PM:
 
I for one would expect that for my $25 for a seat at this DOG of a film, I would rather they had decent barf bags at each seat instead of playbill booklets. But aside from my personal, substantial aversion to seeing DREAMGIRLS, just having reserved seats does not a Roadshow make. In fact, reserved seats is the LEAST important aspect of this type of presention. The MOST important being the title -- it certainly has to be a HOT title with heavy pre-release publicity. And it most certainly has to be, as Rick Mitchell pointed out, a substantially higher quality presentation technology, to which I would say that it had to be shot on FILM, and that being 65mm and if not a 70mm release print (although there would be no reason not to strike 5/70 for a house like Ziegfeld, but the very least a 35 reduction EK showprint with NO VIDEO intermediate at all -- that's the kind of quality of which "Roadshow" presentations are made. Anything less is just marketing hype.

And one last thing about reserved seats -- the fact that the big Z has a very mild sloped floor and in the front rows it even seems to have a reverse slop upward, it makes for relatively poor sightlines. And although I love the Roadshow mystique, I sure don't want to pay $25 and wind up with some big doofus plopped in front of me blocking half my view of the screen. I still would want to pick my own seat if all the other aspects of a Roadshow presentation are there. What advantage does reserved seats give the theatre anyway? Or the patron, for that matter? The patron would only have an advantage if he could pick and choose his reserved seat, not if it were just assigned to him.

Now if someone actually knows that this is a 2K "roadshow" presention at the Ziegfeld, then those who are running that theatre (is it still Clearview Cinemas?) and Paramount excs should have a special place in the lowest ring of hell RESERVED FOR THEM. And me, excuse me while I reach for a barf bag with the DREAMGIRLS logo on it!
 

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Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-17-2006, 06:16 PM:
 
Amen Frank...AMEN.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-17-2006, 07:44 PM:
 

quote: Frank Angel

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I sure don't want to pay $25 and wind up with some big doofus plopped in front of me blocking half my view of the screen. I still would want to pick my own seat if all the other aspects of a Roadshow presentation are there. What advantage does reserved seats give the theatre anyway?

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I agree, reserved seating really sucks ass.

The motive behind reserved seating only seems to be about crowd control and avoiding groups of people standing around in the aisles trying to find a seat in the dark theater while the movie is already playing. But I'll bet that shit happens anyway.

I believe the best movie theater seats need to go strictly in a first come first serve basis. If I get to the show before everyone else, I get dibs on the seat I want the most. The people who can't be bothered to show up to the theater until the movie is nearly done with previews should be stuck finding seats off on the sides or down in the front row.
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-18-2006, 09:27 AM:
 
If they made me Cinema King and I were running a REAL roadshow engagement and charging $25 a seat, NO ONE would have a chance in hell of getting seated after the posted start time. And that would be clearly posted at every ticket POS, be it the box office, the internet site, newspaper ads or whatever. It would be well known. It would be printed on the ticket as well too.

We don't let late comers into our live shows after they start -- that's a rule most every performing arts venue holds strictly to and it's insisted on by the artists themselves. Of course for live shows the artist will designate a point in the performance where late seating can happen at some natural pause in the performance were the artists and patrons will not be disturbed by late seating. These points are between numbers or act or sometimes even as long as to the first intermission. Late comers get coralled in front of monitors in the lobby where they can watch the show until the pause.

For a Roadshow movie where the only break would be the intermission....hey, to bad -- they wait until then or learn to get their sorry asses into the theatre on time. People paying $25 who got to the theatre on time shouldn't have to have slackers climbing all over them during the show.

This is why slackers are happy I am not Cinema King.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-18-2006, 01:02 PM:
 
I think most viewers find it annoying when others arrive to the movie late and are stumbling around blocking the view of the screen while they try to find a seat.

The one that takes the cake is when a big group of people arrives late to the theater. We've all seen this. It might be a family with several relatives coming along. Or it's some other kind of group. Here's a head scratcher: they couldn't get their shit together enough to get to the theater early but the assholes expect to sit all together in the same row!

As Murphy's Law always tries to screw anyone who plans ahead, that extended group of late comers often winds up wanting to sit in the same row where I'm seated. There's not enough seats on either side for that group to sit together in one row single file. So they start asking people to move over a few places, myself included.

Sorry, but I'm not moving.

I'm keeping the seat I picked. They can sit on either side of me if they like, but I'm still not moving. Sure, call me an asshole. Summon the manager. I'm still not moving.

Through simple planning involving a little invention known as a clock, I managed to get to the theater about 15 to 30 minutes early so I could pick a seat facing the center of the screen and in a proper relationship to the auditorium's sound system.

Frankly that group of late comers can move to a different row or something instead of making me move. They arrived at the theater late which translates to them not giving a damn about having a seat in the theater's sweet spot anyway. I'm not going to reward their tardiness by giving up the seat I earned by arriving early.

 

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Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 12-18-2006, 05:53 PM:
 
We have been operating a seat reservation service for 38 years. You can choose your seat on the internet, at the ticket window or (with staff guidance) over the phone.

At the cinema, you are ushered to your seat.

If you are late, your reservation is cancelled and you take pot luck. If you are early and you haven’t chosen well, the cashier can re-allocate the best available seat/s for you.

For some shows, we prominantly advertise that latecomers will not be admitted.

The only people who object to our booking system are latecomers and those who want to stage a military coup at the ticket window and change our policies.

Of course, all seats are not allocated for all sessions. Even ata reasonably busy session you could find a good unreserved seat, as long as you arrive 15-20 minutes before start time. We don’t show commercials, so there is no reaso to want to arrive late.

Unfortunately, the local authorities forced a new design on our little auditorium (despite public opposition) and we now have across aisle where the best seats used to be. So we are in the process of re-thinking the whole procedure.
 

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Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 12-19-2006, 03:11 AM:
 
From Box Office Mojo:

quote:

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Reporting sell-outs for 21 shows at three theaters in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City, Paramount and DreamWorks' musical Dreamgirls grossed $378,950, averaging $126,316 per site. The opening was pitched as a premium movie-going event with a $25 ticket price, and the movie will hold at three theaters until Christmas day, when it rolls out to over 800.

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quote:

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Reporting sell-outs for 21 shows at three theaters in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City, Paramount and DreamWorks' musical Dreamgirls grossed $378,950, averaging $126,316 per site. The opening was pitched as a premium movie-going event with a $25 ticket price, and the movie will hold at three theaters until Christmas day, when it rolls out to over 800.

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quote: Richard P. May

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According to published figures, all shows in all theaters over the past weekend sold out. Per-theater average was about $120,000.

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