Movie Theatre Basics 101

[Dennis Benjamin]

Interested in bouncing this off people in this forum.

Movie Theatre basics 101.

Where does a movie theatre make its revenue?

The concession stand.

Would you run your theatre in such a way to jeopardize that revenue? By having multiple movies with the same start time, wouldn't you create a backup at your concession stand and people will just walk past it. Having the newest release film at the same showtime as another film will have more people in your lobby at the same time, right?

Also, a question for you:

Are you more likely to see a 7 pm or later show of a movie as opposed to a movie starting between 6 pm and 7 pm? Don’t most people get off work at 5 pm, eat dinner, then go to the movies? So, a small location would be better off starting their evening shows at 7 o’clock? 7, 7:10, 7:20, etc.

Why in the world would you have a 6 o’clock set of shows? 6:00, 6:10, 6:20, etc. I feel like this would cause less people to go to the movies. Unless its a mega-plex and you have multiple showings of the same title.

Am I onto something here? Or am I just old school?

[Marcel Birgelen]

Why in the world would you have a 6 o’clock set of shows? 6:00, 6:10, 6:20, etc. I feel like this would cause less people to go to the movies. Unless its a mega-plex and you have multiple showings of the same title.

Because the owners are lazy, want to go home early and don't want to pay so many overtime hours for their staff?

[Harold Hallikainen]

Another basic question. How do theater "memberships" get accounted for in ticket sales? If a membership provides free admission to movies or a discount to movies, what happens to the studio cut?

[Randy Stankey]

How do theater "memberships" get accounted for in ticket sales?

My guess:

The theater takes all the money from memberships and keeps it in a separate account. When a customer uses his membership to buy a ticket, the theater takes money from the membership account and uses it to "buy" a ticket which, then, gets processed in the usual manner.

At the end of the month, (or whatever time period) when the books are balanced, the theater takes the leftover funds from the membership account and puts it in its revenue account, thus reaping the profit. (If any.)

[Jon Dent]

Would you run your theatre in such a way to jeopardize that revenue? By having multiple movies with the same start time, wouldn't you create a backup at your concession stand and people will just walk past it. Having the newest release film at the same showtime as another film will have more people in your lobby at the same time, right?

Yes, but it has the benefit of being really simple for our customers to understand: movies are at 4:00 and 7:00 every day, with a 1:00 on weekends, unless they're too long for us to do everything within a three hour window (which is getting more and more common unfortunately). We only have two modestly sized screens and it's rare for both to have 'big' movies at the same time so it's manageable 95% of the time. Plus people here have a hard time passing up the popcorn smell...

And 7:00 does seem to be a sweet spot, as it let's people get their evenings underway while not being too late for the teenage staff.

[Mike Blakesley]

Normally we run one show at 7:30. We used to have a late show on Fri/Sat, but due to low attendance on the late show combined with longer movies making late shows impractical, we stopped that a couple of years ago.

We had the newest Spiderman movie over the July 4 holiday, plus since it was animated I thought it would attract more kids, so we ran it at 6:30 instead of our usual 7:30, so people would be out in time to get to their fireworks fun. Turned out the movie DIDN'T really draw that many kids anyway, but it was nice to get home earlier than usual.

Then we had Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, which due to its length we decided to run at 7:00. That went fine for the first five days, and then on Monday, something happened which I can only attribute to advancing old age: My wife and I both forgot about the earlier showtime and we didn't get to the theatre. About 7:05 we realized the mistake, took off in a mad dash for the theatre, and arrived to find the doors still locked, a crowd of people standing out front, and our two teenage employees (members of the so-called "brightest generation") sitting in the concession stand like a couple of turds, it never having entered their minds to, you know, give us a call, or start selling the damn tickets. So we all screwed up that day. It's amazing that after all these years in the business, stuff still keeps happening for the first time.