Date embargo?

[Frank Cox]

I have specific "confirmed" playdates for three movies but I have been told that I am not allowed to advertise those dates until, in two cases, a certain date and time in the future, and in one case at a time to be determined and communicated to me later. Really specific times too, right down to the hour.

So I guess I can put up the posters and say "coming soon" but I can't say exactly when even though I really do know.

I have never encountered this before and now I have three in a row.

It's their rules and I'll follow them but I don't understand why. Wouldn't it be in their interest to have their movies advertised with specific playdates as soon as possible? These are three different companies so it's not just one guy's bright idea.

[Martin McCaffery]

If it were just one, I'd say the film release date is not 100% locked in. Three must be some sort of new conventional wisdom in Hollywood. Maybe it has something to do with Social Media (tm), and wanting to have their advertising campaigns synced to their schedules? Who knows?

[Mike Blakesley]

Who ever said studios knew what they were doing? They'll outright refuse a booking that would net them thousands of dollars, just because the theater doesn't have enough open weeks in their schedule. So they'll take $0 over thousands. It's going to happen to me this summer at least twice thanks to some studios' lengthy playdate requirements.

They'll send 10 different one-sheets of the same title (with different characters) to a theater that doesn't have the space to put them up, but they won't send us one copy to stick in our front window.

Or they put out one-sheets without the movie title on them.

[Jim Cassedy]

I'm not in the management end of things, but twice this year, I've already run a couple of advance
previews that pretty much had the same restrictions. On one of them, the theater was allowed to
advertise the preview, and they could give a general release date (ie:"Coming In August") but we
couldn't confirm exact playdates or even IF we were actually going to show it when it came out.
On the 2nd one those previews -- we couldn't even announce what movie we were playing- - in
fact, the studio came up with a totally bogus title, and even a bogus movie poster to put in our
electronificated poster frames, and so the people who came, thought they were coming to see a
completely different movie than what they bought tickets for. They weren't told until about 5min
before the movie what they were going to see. As far as I know, nobody complained or asked for
their money back because 1) the movie turned out to be a sneak preview of "a major Hollywood
production" - -AND one of the starts was there to do an intro & short Q&A - and also everybody
got free t-shirts and some other swag. In fact, even < I > didn't know exactly what we were
playing until about 48hrs before the show, as I was also given a "bogus title" to work with.
(and they gave me shirt and some stuff too for putting up with their silliness)

[James Wyrembelski]

My favorite is when they overnight trailers on little thumb drives. 99% of the time it's for a film we would never even show, let alone the trailer.

[Frank Cox]

Best one I've got is back when the digital cinema was a new thing. I usually got the Trail Mix drive on Thursday and didn't get it one week. During the Sunday matinee I thought, Gosh, that didn't show up. I suppose I should tell the Technicolor people before someone asks me where it is or something.

So I phoned and told them about mid-afternoon on the Sunday.

About three hours later I had a hotshot courier walk in my door at the start of the evening show carrying a Trail Mix drive. He said they called him to pick it up at one of the theatres in Regina and bring it here for me.

On a Sunday afternoon. For a trailer drive that I didn't really care if I got or not -- I just reported it so nobody would blame me for losing it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I have specific "confirmed" playdates for three movies but I have been told that I am not allowed to advertise those dates until, in two cases, a certain date and time in the future, and in one case at a time to be determined and communicated to me later. Really specific times too, right down to the hour.

Did the message include a section where it told you that it will self-destruct in 10 seconds?

I'm afraid it's a case where some studio execs start to believe their own movie-BS. There must be a name for such a thing...

[Randy Stankey]

What next? Are they all going to start driving around in Oldsmobile Silhouettes?

After all, it IS the Cadillac of minivans!

[Darin Steffl]

Best one I've got is back when the digital cinema was a new thing. I usually got the Trail Mix drive on Thursday and didn't get it one week. During the Sunday matinee I thought, Gosh, that didn't show up. I suppose I should tell the Technicolor people before someone asks me where it is or something.

So I phoned and told them about mid-afternoon on the Sunday.

About three hours later I had a hotshot courier walk in my door at the start of the evening show carrying a Trail Mix drive. He said they called him to pick it up at one of the theatres in Regina and bring it here for me.

On a Sunday afternoon. For a trailer drive that I didn't really care if I got or not -- I just reported it so nobody would blame me for losing it.

I had something similar but I was the theater that Deluxe called looking for a drive to borrow. Another theater in Minnesota had a corrupted drive for a feature so Deluxe called nearby theaters who still received hard drives (we did before moving to broadband delivery) and asked if we could give our drive to a courier who would deliver it to the theater with a bad drive. I never knew that was a thing until they called asking but it makes sense that this is faster for same day emergencies than overnighting a drive. They just want to get every feature on screen as soon as possible. I thought it was cool that this was possible and gives me some confidence in Deluxe's ability to help us if we run into a similar emergency.