Welcome to the new Film-Tech Forums!
The forum you are looking at is entirely new software. Because there was no good way to import all of the old archived data from the last 20 years on the old software, everyone will need to register for a new account to participate.
To access the original forums from 1999-2019 which are now a "read only" status, click on the "FORUM ARCHIVE" link above.
Please remember registering with your first and last REAL name is mandatory. This forum is for professionals and fake names are not permitted. To get to the registration page click here.
Once the registration has been approved, you will be able to login via the link in the upper right corner of this page.
Also, please remember while it is highly encouraged to upload an avatar image to your profile, is not a requirement. If you choose to upload an avatar image, please remember that it IS a requirement that the image must be a clear photo of your face.
Thank you!
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
What's the latest theatre to close or open you have heard about?
My understanding of Cineplex (which may be wrong) is that all or most of their theatres are multiplexes in larger cities. Landmark's closures all seem to be their smaller theatres in smaller locations.
Has Cineplex announced any permanent closures? I haven't heard of any so far.
In 1998 Cinemark tried to enter England at Liverpool, the Movies 12 - Liverpool. Never happened
Interesting - the late '90s was a time of explosive growth and restructuring for movie theaters (cinemas) in the UK. The company that I worked for at that time (City Screen) went from being a two-site arthouse/mainstream crossover startup to having around 20 screens, plus a distribution arm, within the space of about five years. It was gobbled by Cineworld shortly after I moved on, who essentially rebranded it as their arthouse label. Two of the big multiplex chains, UCI and Odeon, merged, and a huge amount of money was sunk into refurbishing the hundreds of two- and three-screen high street (main street) fleapits that had started life as 1930s picture palaces, were twinned and tripled in the '60s and '70s, and by the late '80s had become mainly cold, damp, threadbare, infested places that one would not really want to see a movie in.
I'm guessing that by the time Cinemark tried to arrive on the scene, the market was already saturated and they found themselves having to claw away share from their competitors, customer by customer. Same thing in reverse when Tesco (one of Britain's biggest supermarket chains), tried to move into America with their "Fresh and Easy" brand. They were up against bigger, better established competitors (though importing one of Britain's worst inventions - the self-service checkout machine - also played a big role in sinking them), and simply could not claw any market share away from them, nor grow the overall size of the market.
The County Theatre in Doylestown, PA is reopening after renovating their two existing auditoriums and adding a new one (it has been shut down due to both the pandemic and construction). The new auditorium is significantly larger than the original two and features 4K RGB laser projection (Barco SP4K series with high-contrast lens) and 7.1 (QSYS) audio via QSC speakers (SC-424 4-way stage channels).
The Alamo Drafthouse in Westminster, Colorado reopens tomorrow after a C1-9 hiatus.
They are showing The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard on their 60 foot "Big Show" Atmos-equipped screen. So far, they've sold 17 tickets across 14 different showtimes over the next week.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is showing on little (constant width, I think) screens that are perceptibly no bigger than my home theater. So far, they've sold 44 tickets across 8 different showtimes.
Cinepoint Six on 12th St in Ogden, Utah is definitely a goner. Word is the owners are going to tear it down and built an apartment tower in it's place. All six booths, TMS and the recliners are for sale...
Magic Lantern in Ketchum, ID lost two of their six screens due to the building owner wanting that space to put in a restaurant.
The Twin Cinema in Jackson Hole was sold and the property which is a really cherry spot in Jackson will be put to other use.. I believe they may add two screens to Movieworks to replace them.
These aren't closings, because they never got built, but references to the new Harkins Colorado locations announced for Aurora and Northglenn have been removed from their Theater Openings page. They still have listings for new theaters in Laveen and Tucson. This is disappointing, but unsurprising.
What is alarming is that the showtime listings for Harkins Northfield 18 end in September, while most of Harkins' other theaters list showtimes through the end of the year. Harkins Northfield is the only cinema in Denver's front range that puts on a reliably awesome presentation, as far as I'm aware. The AMCs, Regals, Cinemarks, and Drafthouses are fraught with sound problems, small screens, constant-width screens, stray light issues, etc. Hopefully, someone is just behind on updating their website...
I stopped going to Harkins Northfield because of presentation issues.
It was usually with their Tuesday Night Classics presentations and was usually bad framing and sound turned down way too low; they had to be running their 650s in the 4s.
Sorry to hear of the slow sales for Alamo Westminster, though honestly they haven’t been showing anything I wanted to see until I saw Jaws hit their schedule for July and Austin Powers for August.
I did go to the Scorsese series in the small theater at Sloan’s Lake.
There’s just no content; Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is a future rental at best, not worth premium prices.
Depending upon the timing I can see going to the Big Show screen for Top Gun: Maverick and the new Ghostbusters, and just maybe the new Bond.
There are still lots of rumors the Aspen Grove Alamo will never reopen, as Aspen Grove may become yet another mixed use retail/housing development and Alamo doesn’t fit with that new concept since an apartment complex could be built where it sits now, and Alamo certainly wouldn’t mind the cost reduction.
I stopped going to Harkins Northfield because of presentation issues.
It was usually with their Tuesday Night Classics presentations and was usually bad framing and sound turned down way too low; they had to be running their 650s in the 4s.
I'm sorry to hear that. I don't bother going to the Tuesday Night Classics unless they are on the big Cine-Capri screen (I can already watch classics on a decent screen at home), and everything I've ever seen on the Cine-Capri has been terrific. I hope you told someone about the issues. They are pretty responsive.
There’s just no content
There's plenty of content. That's the whole point. There are hundreds of movies that people love and want to experience again (and share with their children who have never even seen them). These titles regularly outperform new releases (on a limited basis and in certain markets). There's a 7 billion dollar industry built around the fact that customers want to revisit their favorite movies with excellent picture and sound, but some exhibitors seem willfully ignorant of this fact, despite the data from their own ticket sales.
At the Alamo Drafthouse Westminster location, over the last few days, there have been crammed showings of Blade Runner 2049 on small screens while the Big Show auditorium sat nearly empty showing F9.
It's safe to assume they've lost sales to classic films due to people looking at the seating chart and thinking, "There aren't any good seats left," and I know for a fact they've lost sales due to people looking at it and thinking "That screen doesn't look much bigger than what I've got at home." This happened repeatedly before the pandemic and based on how they are programming the Westminster location, it appears it will continue, almost certainly with Raiders, Jaws, T2, Pulp Fiction, and more. Maybe even Austin Powers.
And sadly, Harkins seems to have dropped the ball as well. Back before the pandemic, they were showing some of their Tuesday Night Classics in their premium auditoriums and they were consistently drawing larger crowds than whatever new release played there the night before or the night after. Now, they are running them on small screens again, while their premium screens sit nearly empty. Sometimes literally empty.
Interesting that others seem to have encountered poor presentation at the Harkins Tuesday night classics. We went to some of them at the Redlands, CA, theater, before the pandemic, and I was pleasantly surprised at most of them. My only (very minor) gripe was that they weren't able to close the masking to 1.37 for Meet Me In St. Louis, but the audio was at a decent volume: given that it's a mono movie, I was expecting the worst. But all the others were presented very nicely, I thought. And the $5 admission was an absolute bargain.
Tweet
Comment