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Topic: Carmike Acquires Sundance

Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-06-2015 03:58 PM

Isn't this what got them into trouble the last two times?
Carmike Buys Sundance - Variety

quote:
Carmike Buys Sundance Cinemas for $36 Million
OCTOBER 6, 2015 | 01:48PM PT
Brent Lang
Senior Film and Media Reporter
@BrentALang
Carmike Cinemas will acquire Sundance Cinemas for $36 million in cash, the country’s fourth largest theater announced Tuesday.

The deal adds 37 screens and five theaters to Carmike’s network, including locations in San Francisco, West Hollywood, Houston, Seattle and Madison, Wis. The chain is owned by actor Robert Redford’s Sundance Group.

After the transaction is complete, Carmike will operate 274 theatres with 2,909 screens in 41 states. In June, Sundance Cinemas tapped Salem Partners LLC, a Los Angeles-based investment bank, to find a buyer.

The move comes during a period of consolidation in the U.S. exhibition space and at a time when many theater are adding extra amenities as a way of differentiating the experiences they offer from the one made possible by improved home entertainment systems. Sundance has embraced that philosophy since its launch in 2007. The chain boasts reserved seating for all shows, as well as bistro fare, and cocktails, beer and wine at several locations.

“We expect that this acquisition will allow Carmike to capture proportionally higher attendance rates for non-blockbuster titles and provide additional luxury expansion opportunities and meaningful cost synergies as we increase scale to optimize film exhibition and other support costs,” said Carmike’s President and Chief Executive Officer David Passman in a statement.

Carmike said the acquisition is projected to add incremental revenue of $24 million and EBITDA of $5.6 million to its financials. The company’s stock was trading up .41% at $22.04 in after-hours trading.

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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-06-2015 05:36 PM

It's never been formally announced, but it seems to be common knowledge that Landmark is up for sale as well. I hope Carmike leaves these sites alone, especially the WeHo Sunset 5, where I go a LOT. I would hate to see independent/docu/foreign cinema lose its first run exhibition venues. Its already been sad enough to see the rep houses go.

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Terry Monohan
Master Film Handler

Posts: 379
From: San Francisco CA USA
Registered: May 2014

posted 10-14-2015 11:08 AM

That's why the Sundance Kabuki Theatre in SF does not advertise daily in the SF Chronicle anymore. This is Carmike's first theatre in SF now and things will change at this cinema like what they have done by pulling the listings. Century/Cinemark and Landmark will get the tourist business in SF as they do run ads. The out of town people look in the paper for a movie to see while in SF. The two AMC cinemas in SF are getting very rundown, seats ect and they don't get the visitor business either because they don't do any advertising. I can go see the same movie on a weekday and AMC is near empty, the Century/Cinemark has way more people inside at least during the summer tourist time. I can bet attendance will drop at the old Sundance Kabuki in SF now that Carmike has It and not doing any ad notice. Time will tell. Things are not going well at the Sundance/now Carmike Kabuki in SF, a week ago with the 3-D movie 'The Martian' showing in Dolby 3-D in the large cinema on a Sat night they were still washing the 3-D glasses and mine were still semi wet and had water stains on them, I had to wipe them better and they still had a problem. Lets hope the Carmike guys can improve the'Kabuki' Theatre in San Francisco and give us a good presentation that we don't find sometimes at AMC/Century and Landmark in SF.

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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-14-2015 11:26 AM

Newspaper ads? How passe. I don't think I've looked in a newspaper for a showtime in at least five years, and I see a lot of movies in first run theaters, and I see a lot of movies out-of-town in first run theaters. Much easier to look on-line or at a location-based app like Fandango. Here in New York City I don't think any of the three major daily newspapers even publish movie times anymore.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-14-2015 01:16 PM

quote:
meaningful cost synergies as we increase scale

I bet if you asked this guy what me means by "meaningful cost synergies" he'd just give you a blank stare.

Why don't they just come right out and say "We hope to make a lot of money off of this deal."

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-15-2015 07:38 AM

Isn't this sort of like Yugo acquiring Cadillac? I don't know how the Sundance chain is, but Carmike has historically had a pretty bad reputation (with a few exceptions, obviouslly). Will they know how to market to the art-house crowd, which has very different expectations than those of the typical Carmike customer?

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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003

posted 10-16-2015 10:11 AM

One item in the press release that I found interesting is that Carmike is licensed to use the Sundance name on the existing locations only. They cannot expand the brand to more locations.

That seems an odd thing to stipulate to on Carmike's part, unless they are going to use this acquisition to build their own arthouse brand, leveraging the Sundance name as a transitional starting point for that new brand.

If they were to pick up Landmark as well, I could see them turning the Sundance locations into Landmark locations and using the Landmark branding.

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Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-16-2015 10:27 AM

quote: Scott Norwood
Will they know how to market to the art-house crowd, which has very different expectations than those of the typical Carmike customer?

They tried doing Art House years ago and failed miserably, as they did with Pub and Movie concept. A bankruptcy and new corporate leadership may make Art work for them if they want to put the time and money into what is really a boutique part of the business. If they want to go after Alamo they most likely get their butts kicked.
If they want to go after small local arthouses like us, we know how to lose money better than they do. AMC is trying it now here. The distribs go along, but we significantly outgross them. The movie we just finished played at AMC and bombed miserably for two weeks. We played it one week, bombed miserably, but tripled their gross. C'est la vie.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 10-16-2015 01:17 PM

I think Carmike can only, at best, try to improve operations at these Sundance locations and not mess around with the art house/indie content formula already in place. Carmike is pretty ill-suited to expanding art house fare into the typical markets where they have a presence: large towns to small cities in the 20,000 to 200,000 population range.

Lawton is a good example of a typical Carmike market. Indie movies don't play well here at all at traditional multiplex theaters. Every once in awhile Carmike and Starplex both will try booking a non-mainstream flick and that kind of movie almost always plays to near empty houses.

I think the reason for this is big chains like Carmike make little if any effort at all to get involved in the community so they can advertise movies in unconventional ways. The general public around here only finds out about upcoming movie releases based on national advertising campaigns (TV commercials mainly), Internet ads on popular sites and movie trailers played in the theater before other features. Carmike doesn't advertise in the local paper anymore. As far as I can tell they have no locally-based social media presence.

Basically the typical big theater chain marketing effort gives indie movies no chance whatsoever of attracting any reasonable number of viewers.

There are people in this area who are interested in small budget, independent movies. The Trail Dance Film Festival is in its 10th year and hosted nearby in Duncan, OK. They have at least a couple dozen different regionally produced movies play there each year. Anyone operating a indie oriented movie theater needs to get involved and advertise in these kinds of festivals. They have to get plugged in with the local college crowd and arts community. I've seen no effort on the part of Carmike to do this.

The Vaska theater here in Lawton is trying to do some of these kinds of things in order to survive. They managed to get a digital projection system installed to maintain a steady supply of content. A couple weeks ago they screened Hollis, an indie movie produced in this region in conjunction with Main Street Oklahoma. They're screening revival content (such as The Lion King this weekend). The Vaska is showing Rocky Horror Picture Show on Oct. 24, and this theater is actually pretty well suited for it since it has a stage for all the live participants. They're running a classic Pac-Man & Galaga tournament tomorrow afternoon.

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