Not every theater has the cash for upgrades and maintenance. We really have one chance to make a great impression as people are coming back to the movies, and I still have a large percentage that hasn’t been back since Covid, so the presentation has to be great.” “I’m seeing exhibitors do everything they can to be competitive. “I don’t think you can compete effectively if you don’t have all those dimensions,” Schultz said. Theater owners know that if they can’t offer the experience of great picture, sound, and seating, it’s a tough sell. Their two hours sitting there in a recliner watching that awesome projection, they’re covering a little bit of the cost of that multi hundred-thousand dollar auditorium.” The average customer has no idea what it costs to put together a movie theater. We’re not out there getting filthy rich we’re just trying to make an honest living, and it’s not an easy business. The cost to build that place and staff it is high. “We all know that’s why popcorn and soda costs what it costs at a movie theater,” said Jeff Benson, founder of Cinergy Dine-In Cinemas. The stuff that goes into making a movie look good is more expensive than most moviegoers can possibly imagine. It could be an $80,000-$90,000 investment, and that’s not including sound.”Įxhibitors must choose between upgrading to costly laser projectors, installing premium large-format (PLF) screens, continually performing maintenance on aging machines - or, sacrificing quality altogether. “It’s a big deal when a projector goes down. “It becomes a feast or famine when you get hit with these big numbers,” said Brian Schultz, founder of LOOK Cinemas. Worst-case scenario, that can mean days or weeks of a screen being down. Some exhibitors can afford in-house support, but it’s more common to draw from a pool of contractors in high demand. Today, a repair call demands an expert in the latest technology. If one broke, theaters could be back up within a matter of hours. But if it is great - great, you met expectations.”Ī 35mm film projector was a machine with a handful of parts. “They just assume it’s going to be great when they go, and if it’s not, they talk about it. “Sound and projection is one of those things that people take for granted,” Handren said. Regal Cinemas’ parent company Cineworld is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and closing 39 locations nationwide.Īll of this introduces the last thing theaters need, which is an existential question: If the picture and sound quality that a movie theater promises isn’t there, why should the audience show up? With the box office still in post-pandemic recovery, AMC Theatres currently holds just under $5 billion in debt. Today, those fees have expired and the original digital projectors are out of date or failing outright, servers are crashing, and each service call demands a highly paid IT technician - presuming you can find one at all. Studios agreed to help amortize the costs with virtual print fees of about $100, paid to the exhibitors each time they opened a movie. For theaters, it meant spending as much as $150,000 to install some of the earliest digital projectors. Not that they had much choice: Studios shifted to digital delivery, which eliminated many of their exhibition costs like printing, cutting, and shipping film prints. It’s been 10 years since American movie theaters moved on from 35mm film projectors to digital projection. ‘The Old Oak’ Review: Ken Loach’s Swan Song Is a Contrived Morality Play about Syrian Refugees The question is, what becomes a priority? Does it move faster, can I tolerate taking more of my profits and investing it into the future, or do I not have that luxury?” “You can’t fix it all in one year, so you have to get on a steady diet. “Every one of us has to decide, how much capital can we throw at this problem, the problem being modernizing,” Tim Handren, CEO of Santikos Theaters in San Antonio told IndieWire. However, every leap forward also means a prohibitive expense for theater owners who may be already struggling with the status quo. Today, technology creates the potential for near-constant improvement for the moviegoing experience - Lasers! 3-D! Chairs that move! Until recently, improvements were analog and incremental. Tell me if this sounds familiar: Why are there smudges on the screen? Is the picture supposed to be that dark? Does it sound like one of the speakers is out?Īfter more than a century, the core of the exhibition business remains unchanged: People go to a building where they buy a ticket to sit in a room with the lights off and watch a movie projected on an oversized screen.
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