CAN MOVIE THEATRES AFFECT HOLLYWOOD PRODUCT?

This post is in response to several emailers responding my post on movies below, emails asking basically the same question: Won't theatre owners rebel against the studios if they continue to produce Left Wing trash that nobody wants to see?

The short answer is "sort of" and "they might if." The theatre owners are the only ones who can bring pressure to bear if they begin to see their investments lose money. Low grosses mean low grosses for them too. The chains like AMC are now very large and if they told Hollywood that they didn't want their movies and theatres began to close and turned into something else that would obviously cause Hollywood to change. I think that five chains now own 60% of the "screens" so if things get dicey theatres might adjust what they are doing. The current wave of theatre building means that the large corporations owe plenty of money to whomever financed the construction.

Another side of this is "block booking," a business practice that is supposed to be illegal, but I hear is done anyway. Block booking means a distrib or studio will tell a theatre owner to take a block of movies along with the big picture they actually want to show or else the theatre will be denied both the feature and a "block" of product put out by the studios.

"If you want Titanic at a split of 90-10 (actual figure) you will have to take ten other pics of questionable quality, but we'll go 60-40 on them." In other words take the ten and we throw in Titanic, turn us down and you get the 1947 version of Titanic and we'll let you bid on some other shit.

Bear in mind that concessions are a huge part of theatre grosses; that a $2.50 coke costs the theatre less than a dime and so on, but some distribs insist on a piece of the concessions too (think the theatres give a gouging studio an honest count?). Big crowds buy big products. Some chains are very small while a few are owned by the same companies that also own studios. Viacom owns Paramount and Vivendi Universal owns Cineplex Odeon etc., but number of theatres is not what you need to know. You need to know the total number of screens. Screens, are the only thing that is important. Some multi-plexes now have 16 "screens" inside a single theatre. Example is AMC which has 210 theatres within the U.S. But those 210 theatres have 2916 screens in the United States (1999 figures, latest available). At the end of 2001, there were 35,153 movie screens in the U.S. but only 6,246 total cinema sites, meaning each theatre had around 5.2 screens.

These 35,000 screens need product, but if the product is not drawing enough patrons the theatre chains will begin to lose money. Theatre chains are not protected from ruin by Left Wing gazillionaires willing to lose a fixed tax deductable fifty mil or so on an individual movie. And theatres have large fixed costs they must overcome; I have no idea what kind of electric bills each screen generates but it must be at least 10 tickets per day, I don't know what their insurance costs are, nor do I know how much of the advertising budget they must share on each picture. Suffice to say that they have a big daily nut.

So as the main studios cut back on production and further reduce the number of "big pictures" (movies that will run for two months instead of two weeks), cut down on the number of total pictures, insist on producing guaranteed money losers, and have movies go straight to DVD, you may begin to see the theatres get tough. When a cineplex converts to a jewelery exchange you will know the time has past. If the audience continues to shrink you can bet there will be "adjustments" both to the share price and the function of a movie theatre.

Below is a list of the chains in the U.S.

* AMC Theatres - 450 theatres - North America's second-largest movie theater chain and planning to merge with Loews Cineplex in the first quarter of 2006
* Carmike Cinemas
* Century Theatres- over 1000 screens
* Cinemark Theatres
* Cineplex Odeon Corporation
* Coming Attractions - As of July 2005, thirteen locations in California, Oregon, and Washington state
* Consolidated Theatres - A Charlotte, North Carolina-based chain that serves several mid-Atlantic states
* Eastern Federal Theatres- Small chain of theatres in central North Carolina that was recently bought out by Regal.
* Empire Theatres - 59 locations, 403 screens - Leading chain of movie theaters in the Atlantic Canadian provinces
* Famous Players - Formerly Canada's largest theater chain, bought by Cineplex Odeon in 2005
* Galaxy Theatres
* Goodrich Quality Theaters - over 35 movie theaters
* Harkins Theatres - Arizona's largest movie theater chain with over 14 theatres and the expansion into California, Colorado and Texas.
* Kerasotes Theatres - 76 theatres with 607 screens, in the upper Midwest
* Landmark Theatres - 58 theatres, 209 screens
* Loews Cineplex Entertainment - 200 theaters, 2,176 screens
* Mann Theatres - 20 theatres, 122 screens in Southern California
* Marcus Theatres
* Marquee Cinemas - A fairly small movie theater chain, operated out of Beckley, West Virginia
* Muvico Theaters - United States chain based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
* National Amusements - 1,300 screens - Parent company of Viacom
* Pacific Theatres
* Rainbow and Magic Lantern Cinemas
* Regal Entertainment Group - 584 locations, 6,273 screens - North America's largest movie theater chain. Includes Edwards Cinemas, Regal Theaters, and United Artists
* Rave Motion Pictures - A fairly small, new, futuristic movie theater chain.
* Encore Cinemas - A small Canadian chain with two locations.