What's the latest theatre to close or open you have heard about?

[Jim Cassedy]

The question is, will Sony go for the dollars and drop Alamo's
"ejected without a refund" policy for talking/texting? Will they allow repertory
showings of non-Sony product going forward? For that matter will they show
new non-Sony product?

Both these topics, and more, were addressed in an Alamo internal communications memo sent to
all employees in which they said that "there will be no change in Alamo's 'culture" or policies',".
they also said: "this acquisition will not change how we partner with our other film studio partners
or affect the variety of films we play".

Now, having worked for several large corporations that have undergone mergers or acquisitions,
I've learned to take all of these types of statements with a dose of skepticism. Lets face it, Sony
doesn't exactly have the greatest track record of long term commitments to cinema related stuff.
(ie: SDDS, The elimination of their professional cinema business, etc)

Also, kiddies, in 1999, SONY opened what was (and still is) the largest multiplex cinema in
downtown San Francisco. (16 Auditoriums + IMAX) Somewhere I have pictures I took in
the original booth, which was almost a city block long. The name SONY THEATERS was
emblazoned in big letters on the front for about 6 years before they jumped ship on that
venture, although I'm not sure why they left, since it pretty much has the highest box office
numbers in SF every week. (despite the occasional stabbings and gang fights there)
When Sony left, LOEWS ran it for a while, and a few years later, it was acquired by AMC.

On a personal note, not long after they opened in 1999, I went there and interviewed for a
job, even though I was already employed elsewhere. At that time it was all 35mm platters,
with small SONY (of course) projectors used for pre-show advertising slides. The job
interview with their HR guy went well, and the next week they called me back in for a 2nd,
interview with their Projection Manager, and a few days later they actually offered to hire me.
Well, let me tell you, in all the jobs offers I've gotten in my adult life, this was the only one that
actually offended me. The salary they offered was insulting- - and this wasn't an 'entry level'
position. . you had to know more than the average platter monkey to handle that place. I said
I'd think it over and get back to them - - but I never did. They tried contacting me a few times
after that- - but I never returned their calls. . . and that's my Sony story.
.

[William Kucharski]

Also, kiddies, in 1999, SONY opened what was (and still is) the largest multiplex cinema in
downtown San Francisco. (16 Auditoriums + IMAX) Somewhere I have pictures I took in
the original booth, which was almost a city block long. The name SONY THEATERS was
emblazoned in big letters on the front for about 6 years before they jumped ship on that
venture, although I'm not sure why they left, since it pretty much has the highest box office
numbers in SF every week. (despite the occasional stabbings and gang fights there)

Credit where credit is due though - they do an absolutely incredible job when they run 15/70; I suspect they use contract staff for that.

The Sony verbiage about no changes at Alamo is verbatim from every acquisition press release, ever.

In most cases, it changes within one financial quarter, if not within a few weeks.

Look for changes to their menu, too.

[Bobby Henderson]

Interestingly, in NYC, the average number of screens has been dropping a bit as theaters close. It peaked at 8.74 screens per theater in 2022 and it's now 8.32.

Highly populated cities like New York City, and Manhattan in particular, are in a uniquely troubled situation. While there is more than enough of population to support commercial cinemas the property values too damned high. A commercial cinema operation either can't afford the lease. Or the landlord refuses to renew a theater's lease, opting to get a different business into that spot, a business that can pay much more money.

Cinemas are increasingly being priced out of city centers. The cost of that is the movie industry loses more and more high profile, showcase locations. Things like world premiere events at flagship cinema locations help build the marketing buzz before a movie is released to the general public. There is a big difference between holding a red carpet event at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood versus doing it at a mall off I-15 in Ontario.

Does everything come full circle?

In this case, not quite. When movie studios and cinemas were vertically integrated the general public had far fewer choices of entertainment. Broadcast television was still in its infancy in 1948 when the Paramount Decree was put into effect.

Today people have so many more choices of entertainment. The major movie studios of today are small compared to the major studios of the past. They produce fewer movies per year. Of the ones they do produce, they're often co-produced and co-financed by other production companies.

There is still a moral hazard of sorts with a company like Sony pushing its studio product thru Alamo Drafthouse locations. But I think even they would understand it would be a suicidal idea for those theaters to show only Sony Pictures content. They're not making enough movies to keep a rotation of fresh product moving through the screens of a multiplex. I want longer theatrical release windows, but the days are long over when a movie could keep playing on a single screen for several months or even a year.

I think the biggest danger with major studios taking over theater chains is they could collude with each other to shut out cinema screen access to smaller independent production companies. It already feels like that is the case when you visit any mainstream suburban multiplex. You have to visit a specialty theater in a big city to be able to see art indie content on any dependable basis. It's either that or catch the show via a streaming service like Netflix.

[Mike Blakesley]

The Sony verbiage about no changes at Alamo is verbatim from every acquisition press release, ever.

That's for sure. My day job is, I run an independent Carquest auto parts store. When the Carquest parent company was bought out by Advance Auto Parts a few years ago, they told us over and over that nothing major would change, it would be business as usual, and we would now have access to Advance's warehouses as well as our own, making us by far the largest supplied parts chain in the country.

Then they immediately started making changes, swapping product lines for cheaper ones, closing distribution centers, shedding company stores, consolidating or eliminating corporate jobs, tightened return policies, raised costs on services, made us buy case lots of hundreds of things we used to buy by the 'each,' and basically implemented every bogus "enhancement" in the book, each of which was touted to make things better for us, but in reality just cost us more money and/or increased our workload, or both. The whole operation is being run by a bunch of algorithms. And their stock has been tanking lately.

So I do fear for the future of Alamo Drafthouse (A Sony Company), and Carquest.

[Ian Puffenberger]

Off-topic from Alamo, but this is devastating for the Northern Virginia side of the DC area:

https://www.ffxnow.com/2024/06/14/th...tarting-monday

Icon is absolutely the best theater in the region: the best collection of screens with 9 out of 14 scope including four huge PLFs with Dolby Atmos. Their presentation has always been top notch. Obviously there's no way of knowing what will change or how long they'll be closed but a "newer smaller chain" doesn't imply any more confidence than if it was one of the behemoths. Tysons is a very busy area but it's heavily screened, with 38 in about one square mile including an AMC at the Tysons 1 that's the busiest in the region. And the rent at Icon's location has to be astronomical.

Back to Alamo, in the mood I'm in I'd just expect the worst. They're run by the same person, for now, but now he has bean counter bosses. Of course they'll play more Sony movies, probably starting with anime. Of course prices will go up and quality will go down, probably with the food first as that's secondary to what people go there for. There will probably be less local beer and more Sapporo-owned stuff. They might try and force the franchise locations to either sell or be cut off to do their own thing. And of course other studios will try to get in the game now.

Regarding overscreening in general, AMC is the worst example. They built so many 24 and 30 plexes in the megaplex boom of the late '90s and early '00s and now they can't begin to fill them. They've been walling off most of these by half, so a 30 becomes a 17 (they keep the four big ones in the middle), a 24 becomes a 14, etc. But those are still too big. Any newly built theater never has more than ten screens or 1500 seats, because it's just impossible to fill more than that.

There was discussion that it would take much of this decade to see the full fallout of the pandemic in the cinema world, then Spidervengers and Top Gun came along and everyone forgot about it. Well guess what: we're sure as shit starting to see the fallout now.

[Lyle Romer]

Off-topic from Alamo, but this is devastating for the Northern Virginia side of the DC area:

https://www.ffxnow.com/2024/06/14/th...tarting-monday


Regarding overscreening in general, AMC is the worst example. They built so many 24 and 30 plexes in the megaplex boom of the late '90s and early '00s and now they can't begin to fill them. They've been walling off most of these by half, so a 30 becomes a 17 (they keep the four big ones in the middle), a 24 becomes a 14, etc. But those are still too big. Any newly built theater never has more than ten screens or 1500 seats, because it's just impossible to fill more than that.

In hindsight it was crazy for AMC to build those megaplexes. However, at the time it made some sense. It allowed things like running 5 or 6 prints of the big releases to even out the flow of customers for more efficient staffing and also allowed them to hold things for several weeks in the smaller auditoriums. In those days, smaller plexes would have to cancel shows (either by scheduling or suddenly having "technical problems") so that they could interlock the blockbusters on multiple screens. As the industry has changed it makes no sense to have more than 10 screens. For a new build, it makes no sense to me to build an auditorium that doesn't at least have a 40' screen. With large TVs being the only product that doesn't suffer from crazy inflation (actually they seem to deflate), why would anybody spend money to watch a movie on a postage stamp screen when they can watch it at home on a huge TV in a few weeks?

[Bobby Henderson]

The stadium seated theater building boom of the mid 1990's put the cinema industry into uncharted territory. Plenty of bad things resulted from it. All those 24 and 30 screen builds put AMC into bankruptcy. Newer stadium seated theaters killed off a lot of arguably better premiere-class theaters boasting bigger screens, higher seat counts, better equipment and better skilled crews. The theater chains got obsessed with having multiplex sites boasting the most screens rather than the best screens.

Today the race to bottom is in another stage with all the damned recliners. It's commonplace now for a multiplex to have rooms with well under 100 seats and a NOT-impressive sized screen to match the tiny scale.

I don't think it's a bad thing for a multiplex site to have a couple or so smaller houses with modest seat counts. But I think the industry needs to get back to building huge auditoriums for the event movies when they open. It's a different feeling walking into an auditorium that has 1000 or more seats and a scary-good sound system to go with it. I'd certainly skip the living room couch to see a movie in that kind of environment. In the past I've driven 200+ miles each way to Dallas to see movies in that kind of setting. I can't make myself drive to the other side of town to watch a movie on a not-all-that-big screen.

[Mike Blakesley]

The Vue and Brew, a 3-screen combination theater and coffee shop, in Laurel MT, population 6000, is discontinuing showing first run movies. They're planning to stay open, but they'll only show sponsored matinees and private shows. They opened about 10 years or so ago, but they have been operating on only one screen for several months now (I'm sure expensive repairs are needed on the other two projectors) with inconsistent showtimes.

Laurel used to have a single screen theater called the Laurel Movie Haus, with a German pub theme. It was really a cool place. But it burned down and they were without a theatre for a few years until the Vue and Brew opened. According to a post on their FB page, they've been averaging an unsustainable 9 people per showing over the past few months. I don't know what went wrong.

[Lyle Romer]

The Vue and Brew, a 3-screen combination theater and coffee shop, in Laurel MT, population 6000, is discontinuing showing first run movies. They're planning to stay open, but they'll only show sponsored matinees and private shows. They opened about 10 years or so ago, but they have been operating on only one screen for several months now (I'm sure expensive repairs are needed on the other two projectors) with inconsistent showtimes.

Laurel used to have a single screen theater called the Laurel Movie Haus, with a German pub theme. It was really a cool place. But it burned down and they were without a theatre for a few years until the Vue and Brew opened. According to a post on their FB page, they've been averaging an unsustainable 9 people per showing over the past few months. I don't know what went wrong.

Is Laurel closer to Billings than you are? I guess I could play with google maps but where is the fun in that?

[Mike Blakesley]

Yes, it’s only about 15 mins from Laurel to Billings. For us it’s about 100 minutes.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The Brew N View did not have any regular scheduled maintenance according to the person I talked to. If they failed to run the projectors for a couple hours a week, then they likely have bricked media blocks, and or IMB's. But 9 people a week...Sheesh!

[Jim Cassedy]

Sony/Alamo announced today that they are in the process of acquiring the necessary
leases and permits to re-open the 5 theaters in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and the
one in Minnesota that were closed when the franchisee who operated them went
bankrupt. Due to the number of locations involved and other variables, they will not
re-open all at once, and the exact timeline for any of the re-openings was not announced.
But whenever that happens, they will be "Alamo owned and operated" venues.

[also, there is no truth to the rumor going around that Sony is going to make them
start popping their corn in fish oil or adding sushi flavored milkshakes to their menu]

[Martin Brooks]

That's for sure. My day job is, I run an independent Carquest auto parts store. When the Carquest parent company was bought out by Advance Auto Parts a few years ago, they told us over and over that nothing major would change, it would be business as usual, and we would now have access to Advance's warehouses as well as our own, making us by far the largest supplied parts chain in the country.

Then they immediately started making changes, swapping product lines for cheaper ones, closing distribution centers, shedding company stores, consolidating or eliminating corporate jobs, tightened return policies, raised costs on services, made us buy case lots of hundreds of things we used to buy by the 'each,' and basically implemented every bogus "enhancement" in the book, each of which was touted to make things better for us, but in reality just cost us more money and/or increased our workload, or both. The whole operation is being run by a bunch of algorithms. And their stock has been tanking lately.

So I do fear for the future of Alamo Drafthouse (A Sony Company), and Carquest.

Not a good comparison. A Carquest Auto Parts store and Advance Auto Parts are in the same business and presumably sell the same products. So it's natural that there would be changes to gain efficiency and improve profits. It's normal for an acquiring company to combine back end operations, accounting, acquisitions, HR, product lines, etc.
But Sony doesn't currently own another theater company. So there's nothing to combine Alamo with, aside from perhaps I.T., and finance. Also, an Alamo guy is still going to run Alamo. But the question is, why did Sony get back into the theatrical business after it was a disaster for them the first time around and especially at a time when the theatrical business is doing so badly? Loew's Cineplex (which included the Sony theaters) declared bankruptcy in 2001. Almost 1.5 billion tickets were sold in North America in 2001. This year, it's going to be around 635 million. Unless Sony is looking for a tax loss.

I don't think there's any fear of Alamo only playing Sony films because Sony doesn't produce that much. They're going to release 15 films this entire calendar year. That's not enough to keep a multiplex filled. That's more than Warner, Disney or Paramount, but fewer films than Universal (22 films).

[Ian Puffenberger]

Off-topic from Alamo, but this is devastating for the Northern Virginia side of the DC area:

https://www.ffxnow.com/2024/06/14/th...tarting-monday

After being closed all of four days, Tysons Showplace Icon at The Boro reopened June 21 as Look Dine-in Cinemas at The Boro.

https://www.ffxnow.com/2024/06/18/ne...con-in-tysons/

Also Marquee Cinemas Southpoint 9 in Fredericksburg, VA closed on June 30. This was my middle school, high school, and summer-breaks-from-college theater and I have lots of fond memories there, perhaps most notably seeing each Lord of the Rings film multiple times. It opened in April 1998 with five stadium and four sloped theaters; the two scope screens were THX certified. But none of them were very big and even before the pandemic it failed to keep up with the times, especially with two more modern theaters in town. My brother worked there as a 35mm projectionist for a couple years in the 2000s and was there for their fairly early conversion to digital in 2007.

[Leo Enticknap]

From ScreenDaily:

Cineworld reportedly looking to close up to 25 UK cinemas

By Geoffrey Macnab

UK-based exhibitor Cineworld is reported to be looking to close as many as 25 of its worst performing UK cinemas, to re-negotiate rents with a further 50 and ring fence the top performing 25 sites.

Sky News today reported these proposals will be formally outlined to creditors in the coming months as the troubled cinema giant, which is being advised by restructuring specialists AlixPartners, looks to streamline its UK business.

The reports of the swingeing cuts come as rumours swirl about what is happening at the Cineworld sites involving equipment leaseback deals and as-yet-unpaid unpaid rents.

A Cineworld spokesperson said, “We continue to review our options but we don’t comment on rumours and speculation.”

The company’s main landlords are understood to include such major companies as Legal & General and Landsec.

Some observers are describing the current restructuring as being for the long-term benefit of the sector. “Valuations [in cinema exhibition] are at an all-time low,” one property expert told Screen. “That mainly reflects the fact that no-one quite believes the credit of these businesses and that they have been waiting for this restructure for the best part of two or three years.

“The market needs to get this out of the way, understand how these businesses will look going forward and accept a haircut on rent if they have to, but their valuations will hopefully improve as a consequence of the certainty and the clarity.”

If the 25 Cineworld sites are closed as predicted, there is likely to be a scramble among other operators to acquire at least some of them.

When Tim Richards, CEO of cinema outfit Vue, was asked this week whether his company might look to take over sites from rival operators, he replied: “Absolutely. They would need to be qualitatively complimentary with our circuit but I think we’ve already demonstrated over the last 20 years that M&A and purchasing cinemas is part of our DNA.”

One question yet to be addressed is the level of job losses that the cinema closures will cause if they go ahead.

But the question is, why did Sony get back into the theatrical business after it was a disaster for them the first time around and especially at a time when the theatrical business is doing so badly?

My guess would be for the same reason that Netflix bought the Egyptian and Disney has the El Capitan: as a public-facing shop window. Even if it no longer contributes much to the bottom line, a theatrical release still, in many people's minds, distinguishes a "proper" movie from a straight to video job or a TV show, and Sony now has a prominent theater chain, with brand recognition, which which to market its movies. Furthermore, Sony could potentially leverage these sites to promote its consumer electronics products, too.