The 16 plex at BayFair mall has become an 8 plex

The 25 plex at Union City has become a 10 plex

The Jack London 9 is now a 5.

The Hacienda 20 is now an 8

The Concord 14 is now a 6

The Pinole 10 is now a 5

The Crow Canyon 6 is now a twin

The Festival 5 is now a triplex

Century Park 12 is now a 6 plex and the 16 is now an 8

The 1000 Van Ness 14 is now also a 6

The Plaza 10 is a triplex

The Metreon (15) is now a 6 plex

And there are 13 prints of Pearl Harbor in Sonoma County and at least as many Shrek's.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Another local independent has in its ad:
"This weekend, why bother with long lines, sell-outs and over crowded parking lots? That WWII flick will be around all summer. See a Four-Star film at the Drexel this week!"

The local 24-plex has only 12 titles. The local 30-plex has 5 Pearl Harbor, 5 Shrek, 3 Knight's Tale, 2 Angel Eyes, and 4 Mummy Returns.

Not much variety this weekend, that's for sure.

EDIT: Oops, I didn't notice Ky had already listed this one in his original message; sorry for the repeat. And I was wrong, it's only 10, not 11.

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Just a quick run down the newspaper listing. This is by no means scientific ...

385 first run screens
237 screens not running a 2nd, 3rd or 4th print
61 prints of The Mummy Returns (15.8%)
82 prints of Pearl Harbor (21.3%)
78 prints of Shrek (20.3%)

Most prints of a movie in a single complex:
- Mummy: 4
- Pearl Harbor: 5
- Shrek: 4

Most impressive reductions in screen count:
- Showcase Westland: 8 screens showing 3 movies
- AMC Livonia: 20 screens showing 9 movies

You can definitely expect these three titles in your stockings this Xmas.

4 Pearl Harbors (3 of which interlock two screens each)
5 Shreks
2 Angel Eyes
3 Knights Tales
4 Mummy Returns

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Furthermore, studios get pissy about it. Interlocking two houses means that one or more of the other prints doesn't get shown. Even if the print were to be booked to interlock, they still don't like it. Essentially, interlocking means that you magically enlarged the house. If that show doesn't sell out you are wasting space. It's much better to show two prints that start at different (staggered) times. That way you have a better chance of getting more people in each house.

If you have a problem with an interlocked print you will potentially inconvenience more people. If you have two prints and one of your houses goes down you can offer them tickets to the next showtime. If there are two prints the customers will only have to wait for an hour or so. If there are more than two prints they will have to wait even less. If your projector goes down for more than one show and you don't interlock you can recover more easily by shuffling prints so your lowest grossing movie gets cancelled and the highest grossing movies just move to another house. If you interlock there is less chance of finding a combination of house placements that will keep your business intact until the problems can be solved.

Auditoriums with more than 1,000 seats are disappearing (and it is all but unheard of for any new theater to feature a room of that size). What I see far more often now is the 24-plex or 30-plex fitting into a building that would have housed only a 12-plex back in the 1980s. I still can't get over the time I visited the AMC Odyssey 30 theater at Grapevine Mills shortly after it opened a few years ago. The theater showing "Amistad" couldn't have had more than 50 seats in it. The new Central Mall 12 theater here in Lawton has some pretty small screening rooms. The biggest one has 232 seats with a number of others at just under 90 seats.

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