Single screen booking: Not for the faint of heart

[Bill Seipel]

Look at this ridiculousness:

Next to the actual theater I assist with, I operate an art gallery and coffee shop.

The gallery features seating for maybe 25-30. I have a small projector ceiling mounted (10 foot ceilings). Nothing even home-theater level of extravagant.

I want to show reparatory titles there once a month. Swank wants about $200 a title. Fine.

But they say I cannot advertise in the paper, no radio, no television, and I cannot have a billboard that shows the title of the film!

I feel like asking them, "Are you sure you want to do this? Because it doesn't sound like you want this to succeed..."

And yes, I'm sure they'd rather people go see the newer film next door.... which is bombing.


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Has anyone ever had success bypassing these bookers and dealing direct with studios? I've heard rumors.....

[Ryan Gallagher]

So this must be some weird clause for non-commercial theatre spaces? Are you charging an admission price?

[Scotty Wright]

I wonder if we have the same contract with swank. We’re an educational institution technically, but both theaters are imax under contract. The second theater we’ve started pushing more repertory non-imax and imax catalog titles, some of which we acquire through swank. But we primarily advertise over social media, email newsletters, and our website. Our rep program is hard to nail down far enough in advance for traditional news media to advertise.

[Bill Seipel]

So this must be some weird clause for non-commercial theatre spaces? Are you charging an admission price?

Correct. This is my art gallery with a projector and seating for maybe 30 to 50 tops.

Films are FREE admission.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Correct. This is my art gallery with a projector and seating for maybe 30 to 50 tops.

Films are FREE admission.

Yeah there is the rub, free admission. They don't want you to compete with any venue that has films where they get a portion of the tickets and maybe concessions too. The distribution/license fee is kinda the bare minimum. There is also a lot of language that seems to protect the advertising content and restrict it from aleration for media formats it was not intended for, admission price aside.