Wakanda and Strange World for $1.50

[Martin McCaffery]

Unless the theatre is not accurately reporting its grosses, who could Disney be "not aware"?

[Mike Blakesley]

I have a feeling that area of the country has enough "bigger city" locations that this particular place is just flying under the radar, so to speak.

I struggle with the price issue and absolutely hate it when I have to raise prices, but we are still about half the price of the "city" theaters and not one person ever complains about our ticket or concession prices. (Currently $8.75 for adults, $6 for kids) On the contrary, in our online reviews, anytime people mention the prices, they comment how low they are. So, I'm in the camp of "let's make some money and put in some improvements once in a while." Also we have a bank payment to make, so there's that.

I am well aware that "most people" never go to the movies, but I think even if tickets were a buck apiece, "most people" still wouldn't go. Most people don't go to basketball games, either. It's just all in what people want to do for out-of-home fun.

[Mark Lane]

This is a great thread and a subject I am very interested in.
I report my numbers every week. I know our reps look at them because they have contacted me when there has been a tech issue or when they have a question. Our prices are listed on those reports, including our low prices and any showing we have for a dollar. I know our studio reps look over our reports. It was based on these reports, Disney allowed us out of our agreement to keep Black Panther for three weeks.
From my understanding from talking to the studio reps, theaters are ranked based pretty much by how much money they make the studio. If I sell a million tickets for a dollar each, I would be ranked high and could get the movies on the break and the perks that come with it. If I sell tickets for $10.00 each but only sell 100 tickets I would send the studio small checks and my ranking would be low.

It also help us that we have no near by competition. The nearest theater to us is about a half hour drive. If we were seen as taking business from a theater that makes the studio more money, we might not be able to get the movies on the break. The studio is going to take care of the theaters that take care of them. I think a great deal of this comes down to the bottom line. If the theater that charges $1.50 is making enough money to make the studios happy, and not seen as taking away from higher priced theaters, they have a better ranking. If they are in an area that doesn't have any competition, their ranking might not need to be that high.
That is my understanding based on what the reps have told me.

[James Wyrembelski]

I eliminated ticket categories and now do a flat 7.00 across all showtimes and ages. Never heard a word from anyone about the change and it never appeared to change fluctuations on certain days/times. Sunday matinees still do as well as when they were all 5.00 a head. We ran 7.00 adult and 5.00 12 and under for the first couple years we were open. Im lucky in that I own the building outright, so there's no mortgage hanging over my head. However, this is my primary job that cuts me a paycheck to eat. I'd sweat charging 1.50 per person and hand over 65% of that. What we get from admission really does help pay the bills.

Like Mike, we often get comments about being half the price of any plex close to us. There are two within a fairly short drive of us. The price reflects not only my need to keep my own home warm and the ability to eat, but what happens when there's a major mechanical failure that needs addressed ASAP. I need to charge enough to always have padding for the "what ifs". But there's certainly merit in running discount specials/days for sure but a 1.50 normal price seems insane. Perhaps the reps for that area of the country just run differently and really aren't noticing? A mystery.

This is also why I generally encourage new folks to keep open grosses. I think it helps all of us when we can compare similar locations and see what works and what doesn't. It's also nice to see just how much smaller locations actually do contribute. The bigger guys could care less about me and more often than not, us smaller folks are almost never competing.. Although it would be nice if you could see grosses nationally rather than district. It's funny to me that we can't see upper peninsula locations as they belong to the Minneapolis branch yet we're in the same state!

[Martin McCaffery]

It's funny to me that we can't see upper peninsula locations as they belong to the Minneapolis branch yet we're in the same state!

Yeah, I can see parts of GA and TN (because they are in the Atlanta territory), but can't see Mobile, AL because that's in the New Orleans territory.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I am well aware that "most people" never go to the movies, but I think even if tickets were a buck apiece, "most people" still wouldn't go. Most people don't go to basketball games, either. It's just all in what people want to do for out-of-home fun.

There will be a correlation between ticket price and tickets sold, but it will be very hard to quantify. Ever since the pandemic and the general inflation going on, movie ticket prices around here have seen a serious bump. What I hear from people that generally go to the movies, is that they claim to have become more selective in the movies that they go to. Still, there is often a discrepancy between what people say they do and what they actually do...

[Mitchel Wagner]

There will be a correlation between ticket price and tickets sold, but it will be very hard to quantify. Ever since the pandemic and the general inflation going on, movie ticket prices around here have seen a serious bump. What I hear from people that generally go to the movies, is that they claim to have become more selective in the movies that they go to. Still, there is often a discrepancy between what people say they do and what they actually do...

I think that there ofcourse is going to be a correlation between ticket price and tickets sold. However I don't see that work in the cinama where I work, but I think if we could pull a stunt like Wakanda Forever for 1,50$ that would help a bit I think...

Our biggest issue is that we have 3 cinemas in 1 town. 1 being a commercial cinema with 8 rooms. 1 arthouse cinema backed by the comercial cinema (The building that is the arthouse cinema now used to be the old commercial cinema, it has the same owner. And ourselves. We are a independent arthouse cinema, backed by the local government.

Our regular tickets are 9 euros, and 6,50 for children up to 12 years old.
The other Arthouse cinema asks 12 euros for a regular ticket whereas their commercial counterpart has a regular ticket for 10,70

So although we're the cheapest in town, people have a hard time finding us. Ofcourse because we're an arthouse cinema our audiance is different and more select, even still....I don't see a correlation for us at this point.

[Frank Cox]

There might be something special going on with Wakanda Forever.

The theatre down the road from me (in a town that's about about three times bigger than here but still a single screen) did a free admission show of Wakanda Forever last Sunday for their Santa Claus Day.

[Mark Lane]

There might be something special going on with Wakanda Forever.

The theatre down the road from me (in a town that's about about three times bigger than here but still a single screen) did a free admission show of Wakanda Forever last Sunday for their Santa Claus Day.

The movie theater might be covering Disney's cut. We have done that. If someone brings in a dozen eggs from their farm to trade for a movie ticket, we just over the studio percentage ourselves. Doing it for a new movie on a larger scale would be expensive.
You can always ask your Disney rep if you can do a free showing like the theater down the street. The Disney rep will tell you want is possible.

[Armand Daiguillon]

Unless the theatre is not accurately reporting its grosses, who could Disney be "not aware"?

Unless they request a BOR they usually just see a gross total on a long list, unless there is a real red flag they do not typically look beyond that gross total.

I had a theater in my area go to $6 all the time pricing. This caused an uproar and when I reported it to Disney they said that they'd look into it. They (and the others studios) allowed it because they were getting 100% film rent at that price, that kept their grosses per ticket in line with other theaters in the market.
They would not have allowed a theater to charge $1.50 as that would (in a competitive area) attract everyonne to the discount theater and Disney would lose money.

[Martin McCaffery]

But they do get BOR's and electronic reporting to Comscore means the distributors can see exactly how many people bought how many tickets at what price. And you know they have apps written to do just that. I've had distributors request corrections over .01 rounding errors in a BOR.
I told the story elsewhere on here about how well Disney watches over all of us, but will repeat it now. About a year ago we showed the National Theatre Live performance of the play War Horse. We sent the grosses to Comscore. A few days later we were contacted by Disney politely inquiring whether we had cleared the screening of War Horse and if so, when and with whom. They, of course, thought we had screened the Steven Spielberg movie based on the play, which Disney owns. They accepted our explanation and no harm done. But they are watching.

[Mike Blakesley]

But they do get BOR's and electronic reporting to Comscore means the distributors can see exactly how many people bought how many tickets at what price.

I don't know what the studios can see - but the data that we get on Comscore only shows the total grosses. I can't even look at my own actual daily ticket sales numbers on that platform -- just the dollar amounts per day. I think per-hour is also available but I've never looked at that. So I expect what happens is, the studio gets a long list of all the grosses, and if they want to "drill down" more into the data, they can -- but unless they're suspecting fraud, there's really no reason that a studio bean counter would want or need to look at a daily boxoffice report that I can think of.

So my guess is still that this theater is just posting decent enough numbers for their population and the studios haven't bothered to drill down to see the actual number of tickets being sold. As Archie Bunker once said, "They have bigger fish to fly."

[Armand Daiguillon]

But they do get BOR's and electronic reporting to Comscore means the distributors can see exactly how many people bought how many tickets at what price. And you know they have apps written to do just that. I've had distributors request corrections over .01 rounding errors in a BOR.
I told the story elsewhere on here about how well Disney watches over all of us, but will repeat it now. About a year ago we showed the National Theatre Live performance of the play War Horse. We sent the grosses to Comscore. A few days later we were contacted by Disney politely inquiring whether we had cleared the screening of War Horse and if so, when and with whom. They, of course, thought we had screened the Steven Spielberg movie based on the play, which Disney owns. They accepted our explanation and no harm done. But they are watching.

Yes - they CAN but they don't. Again - the sales people look at the theaters they are reposible for in their area, all they generally look at is gross totals on a spreadsheet that lists all their locations. If a gross does not stand out as odd they will often not notice. That is different from billing where yes - they may haggle over a penny, but that that penny is from a gross total, they dont look at individual bor's unless there is an issue. (they dont have time for that day to day) Thats just how it is ....

[Martin McCaffery]

So my guess is still that this theater is just posting decent enough numbers for their population and the studios haven't bothered to drill down to see the actual number of tickets being sold.

We send attendance, gross, tickets sold in each category to Swift every evening. There is definitely an electronic record of all sales. You and I aren't paying to use Comscore/Swift. Disney et al are, and one thing they pay for is access to the raw data. We are also not billion dollar industries who pay millions every year to accountants to track everything. They don't have to look at individual reports, they have machines that are programmed to do that for them. They know if someone is violating the MLA. What they choose to do about it is up to them.

[Mike Blakesley]

Of course I'm sure they have much more data than they need. That doesn't mean they're looking at all of it. The machine that spits out the red flags probably has a human assigned to it, and that person's job is to pick their battles. They probably can't get to everything.

I told our booker about this place and he is guessing that they are probably paying studios the minimum per-cap on the tickets and making it up on quantity of concessions sold. It could be a family operation that's run on a shoestring and who knows, maybe the owner is a rich person using it as a tax writeoff.