I think it was interesting that the Radison gave the theater an open-ended lease so that the operators could take a chance on the space. And there’s still the potential to use the second (empty) theater in the future if it works out.
Wow, did you see the calories listed on the vid screens here? It made me never want to eat or drink anything at a theater again. Popcorn, a drink and a hot dog adds up to a person’s entire suggested calories for a day! Ugh!
Following up on Kram Sacul’s comment about the screen size, a lot of theaters use to install 2:1 ratio screens as a compromise in showing widescreen and regular-width films. Panavision movies will fill the full 75-foot width, (but be only 31-feet high), while Academy widescreen movies will fill the full 38-foot height (and be 70-feet wide). If the theater had a 2.4:1 screen, Academy widescreen movies would only be 57-feet wide and 31-feet high, which would look small. So this allows widescreen movies to be wider, and regular ratio movies to be larger. I hope one of Cinematreasures' subscribers will be able to report on this theater soon.
There’s more pictures of the AMC here. It looks beautiful.
I share Cris Utley’s concern about the other theaters. It’s not going to be a very nice viewing experience if half of the theaters have 180 seats and 20-foot wide screens.
Sounds like a game of chicken. Two competing lifestyle centers in the same city, with two competing multiplexes. Plus Sumner Redstone has made it virtually impossible for National Amusements to get any loans to open this place. I’m betting NA is going to be a no-show when Ridgehill opens.
It probably goes without saying, but the Cinema de Lux at Legacy Place is killing the nearby Dedham Community Theatre.
“Nearly two months after the opening of the Showcase Cinema de Lux movie complex at Legacy Place, the historic Dedham Community Theatre is struggling. Its sales are down significantly, including what owner Paul McMurtry calls “some glaring examples of business being very slow†— such as a few nights when the theater closed early after no customers came for the 7 o’clock shows.
“McMurtry said he had never experienced that since he bought the theater in 2002.”
While talking to the reporter for the story, the general manager called up to the projectionist to cancel a weekday 4:45 pm showing. There were no customers
It’s pretty sad. It also comes at a time when the indie circuit is pretty slow too.
I liked the fact that the owner said he would waive the rent for 7 months. After all, it’s only been vacant for 15 YEARS! With all the time, money and effort the community is thinking of putting into this project, you would think the landlord would be a little more generous!
It could be because we don’t know much about which Showcase cinemas will be sold. Sumner Redstone tried selling off about 90 theaters earlier in the year, but he didn’t get any takers. So it’s just too early to say.
There’s a video of the renovation that’s been posted here. The front of the theater will have 80-100 seats with tables, and then another 100 in back. That’s still pretty small. The town is looking to raise $500,000 for the project.
Wow! This newspaper article is a well-researched litany of what not to do when buying an old theater. Paid $2.4 million for the theater in 1998, spent money renovating it, borrowed another $4 million at 12.5% interest in 2007, now owes $10 million total.
Also a 20-screen multiplex opened half a block away that shows some indie movies, the city holds free concerts right in front of the theater, and there was seven years of downtown construction that kept people away from the area.
On the positive side, it does sound like the owners tried everything to attract audiences. They ran everything from Jewish film festivals to Mexican wrestling. Some of the reviews at Yelp complain about rowdy crowds and even rowdier security at concerts.
It just sounds like the potential grosses weren’t enough to handle a half-million dollar-a-year-plus debt payment in addition to the regular expenses of running an old theater.
Anyone been to one of Cinemark’s XD Extreme Digital Cinemas? The Pittsburgh theater is charging $10.50 for a ticket (versus $8.25-$8.50), but the newspaper article says the theater only has 240 seats. You can easily promise wall-to-wall screens, but if the auditorium is only 25-feet wide, you only get a 25-foot wide screen. I wonder if it’s worth the extra money or is just a marketing twist.
I also thought the final paragraph is interesting:
“The arrival of Cinemark could turn up the heat on nearby Showcase Cinemas West, which opened three decades ago and boasts large but older auditoriums.”
Do people want smaller, newer “viewing rooms” that frequently sell out during busy times, or the 1990’s large stadium-style auditoriums?
I hate to admit it, but people seem drawn to new and shiny theaters, and apparently people have gotten use to eating while watching TV, so now they’re conditioned to want to chow down when they’re at the movies, which is what the new theaters are offering.
It’s funny to think of it, but the old-time theaters use to ban food from the auditoriums. It was considered distracting to patrons. How things change.
The Beacon Hill had a Stanley Kubrick film festival in 1974 (I believe) and showed the uncut 2001: A Space Odyssey in SuperPanavision 70 in quadraphonic sound. So not quite Cinerama, but a great experience anyway. During the “apes” sequences in the beginning of the film, you could hear the apes all around you from the four channels. It was the best sound I had heard in a theater.
By the way, the Boston Theater is the RKO Boston. I guess they renamed it because RKO was a competing film company at the time.
It’s nice that they needed a super-sized Pet Smart in Boise rather than a multiplex. But I’m guessing it was your typical cinderblock mall cinema, just waiting to become obsolete.
I like this idea. Cinemark sees an opportunity and is going for it. I’m not exactly supporting the idea of paying an extra $3 to see a movie on a wider screen. Nearby Showcase Cinemas in Randolph has a couple of 60-foot screens and I wouldn’t want to pay anything extra for that. The old idea use to be that you could make more money by servicing more people at one time rather than charging extra.
But I’m in favor of anything that fights this current trend of making shoebox cinemas with small screens and soft sound volume. And I can see the justification for paying extra for a really good sound system and some sound insulation, as well as the extra real estate.
With IMAX cheapening its own experience, and simply blowing up 35mm Hollywood films to show in its theaters, Cinemark can provide almost the exact same experience. So I say go for it, Cinemark!
I know I’m not the intended client of this kind of business model, but I just can’t see spending any money to see a movie in a tiny home theater-like viewing room. I can do that at home.
I sent a complaint to National Amusements via its Website about my disappointment with the design of the Legacy Place theater. I received the following answer from Joe Norman, who’s the manager there:
“Thank you for taking the time to write about your experience at Showcase Cinema de Lux Legacy Place. I was disappointed to read that your first visit to the theatre did not live up to your expectations. Showcase Cinema de Lux has many modern amenities asked for by our guests which the old Dedham Showcase did not including: Starbucks Coffee, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, Famous Famiglia Pizza, Nathan’s Hot Dogs, Studio 3 Restaurant, a baby grand piano in the lobby, a family concession seating area , a coffee lounge, 2 birthday party rooms, numerous plasma TVs, high definition projector TVs in the lobby showing cable channels or DVDs of upcoming releases, and our Lux Level Lounge where you can enjoy a cocktail and a dinner either before or during your show.
“Our auditoriums have higher risers for better visibility, wall to wall screens, high seat backs for better comfort, Dolby digital sound, two auditoriums with satellite reception for events like live operas and concerts, two other auditoriums cable ready to broadcast events like Red Sox games, and three digital projectors capable of showing the latest is 3D films. While not every theatre is as large as our biggest theatre, we do have several auditoriums on the 8-15 side of the building which you did not see that are larger than those on the 1-7 side.”
Joe then offered me a “personal tour to show you all these areas including the projection booth and Lux Level Lounge. My hope is that after my tour, perhaps you will give us another chance to impress you when you want to see your next film.”
I’m afraid I passed on his offer because, for me, it’s all about the movies and not about eating or drinking my way through a film.
But my major disappointment is the size and layout of the auditoriums. Theaters 1-6 range in size from 99 seats to 180. Theater 7 has 420 seats. Although the screens are wall-to-wall as Joe wrote, the auditoriums are long and narrow. To show widescreen movies, a curtain drops down from the top of the screen to shrink it height-wise rather than curtains opening up to widen the screen length-wise. Ugh! Shades of the old Dedham Showcase!
The stadium seating starts a good way back from the screens with rows of seats in front of it on a flat floor. The viewing angle is terrible from the floor, and you’ll get a stiff neck if you try to watch a move from there. From the stadium seating, the screens are too small. The seats are uncomfortable, particularly the armests which seem too high and too short. I had circular red marks dug into my forearms from the cup holders fairly quickly because that’s where my arms wound up.
Apparently, Showcase is no longer interested in big screens with big auditoriums, such as they built in Randolph. That is so ‘90s. Now, it’s all about trying to charge you big bucks for fast food, and serving you beer and wine in the Lux Level to make even more money. Showing movies is only the excuse to get you there. This theater reminded me of a modern version of the old Copley Square Theater.
I was reading some of the older posts from earlier this year, and I just wanted to clarify that the corridor or alleyway that ran between Tremont Street and Mason Street and led to the rear of the Opera House is still there. I walk by it every day. You can see a picture of it wedged between two apartment buildings here and the back view here courtesy of Google Street View. It was restored a few years ago as part of the Opera House renovation.
It’s actually nothing more than a few steel I-beams holding the facades on and a roof. There is no marquee on it, but you can see where it was, and the glass doors, I believe, are always locked, although they might help in bringing in deliveries from Tremont. The white stone is similar to the white stone used on the facade of the Opera House on Washington St, and they may date to the 1940 renovation.
The city of Boston has a policy of keeping old alleys intact. For example, there’s a passageway from Temple Place to Winter Street that probably dates back to when Sam Adams lived there. Or it’s also possible that the Opera House owns that slim piece of property. But it’s still there preserved.
Interesting editorial. Sort of confirmed what I guessed. They have 20 people running movies people aren’t going to. Neither article indicated if these 20 people helped out at other events in the theater.
This is one of the problems with academic non-profits. No one is even interested in breaking even or making a profit until the funding runs out. Some of the students said they didn’t even know there was a theater on campus until this editorial ran. Other students commented that the theater was running movies with no one even in the auditorium. I guess it wasn’t anyone’s job to advertise its events.
Newsreel theaters existed before the advent of television. They were usually small, slipped into storefronts, sheds, etc. They seem to have been near bus stations and railway stations and were designed to help people kill time while waiting for a bus or a train. TV put them out of business.
You really need a good business plan if you’re planning to do anything with an old theater. The heating and air conditioning costs have been brutal lately, and any older structure will constantly need fixing and repairing. Plus a lot of landlords are crazy, demanding high rents, yet perfectly happy to keep theaters vacant (making no money) for years until someone can meet their price.
If you scan through old news stories here you will read about people who have spent their life savings to re-open an old theater, only to be broke and out of business anywhere from six to 18 months later. So you have to think things through carefully and have a solid strategy.
I liked the comment from a downtown business owner. He said “he worried the competition could result in neither theater being built.”
This is like a game of chicken — see who blinks first. In Massachusetts, we had a similar situation ten years ago when Hoyts and Showcase wanted to built competing multiplexes within 200 yards of each other. Hoyts backed down and Showcase won.
Another point is that one of the 10-screen theaters would only have 1400 seats, which is an average of only 140 seats per screen.
I hate this new trend of going back and building “viewing rooms” like in the 1980s. Showcase just built a 15-screen theater in Dedham, MA with an average of 200 seats per auditorium. Half of the screens are viewing rooms of between 98-180 seats.
Most of the readers here would rather have a cinematic experience instead of watching movies in basically a home theater. Why go out to the movies when you can watch them at home on a 52" screen?
Well, this is the endless debate, isn’t it? 35mm or digital?
All movies will continue to be available on 35mm film for a long time to come. So having a nice 35mm projector or two in the projection booth is a good investment. And 35mm allows you to play any kind of film, from new releases to second-run, from revivals to old classics.
The studios are trying to use digital to save money because they’ve backed themselves into a corner with tent-pole releases going out to 4,000 screens. At $2,000 or more a print, you’re looking at an $8 million cost just for prints. If they can reduce that cost by half, they’ll be happy.
But about half of the theaters are probably not going to be able to afford going digital, so the studios will continue to make prints, probably for the next 10 years or more.
The key advantage to digital is that audiences think they give a better presentation. So if you can beat out your local competition and charge a little bit more by going digital, then use it as a marketing and promotion tool and go digital. And if you have a lot of opera lovers or teens who want to see concert videos of acts like Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Bros. then definitely do it to get those audiences.
But the consensus is that film will still be around for a long time.
I read the article about the theater on the student newspaper Website. The theater costs $233,000 a year to run. The student activities fund pays $150,000 a year, and the theater has not been coming up with the $83,000 a year to close the gap. Sounds like there’s something wrong here.
Also, I took a look at their schedule. The theater is closed Sundays and every other Monday, and a lot of the most popular movies, like Zombieland, Star Trek and Rocky Horror Picture Show are free, while they’re charging for films like Land of the Lost, Evangelion: 1.0, and Food, Inc. For October, they’re only listing a handful of movies and days opened, so it’s probably being used for other events.
I guess the University has to decide whether the theater is a business or a freebie for students – whether they want to give away its product or sell it.
Also, I love the last line of the story. The University doesn’t believe in free speech or the First Amendment since the “working” students are prohibited from speaking to the school press.
From the Boston Herald story, Michael Moore said “…because I just refurbished a hundred year old movie theater that I run in the small town where I live.”
“I’ve turned it back into the way that it was, a beautiful movie palace. So, now I’m an exhibitor and I go through all of the stuff of having to deal with these guys, the studio, on the exhibition end.”
Sure sounds like it’s his theater and like he’s running it.
I think it was interesting that the Radison gave the theater an open-ended lease so that the operators could take a chance on the space. And there’s still the potential to use the second (empty) theater in the future if it works out.
Wow, did you see the calories listed on the vid screens here? It made me never want to eat or drink anything at a theater again. Popcorn, a drink and a hot dog adds up to a person’s entire suggested calories for a day! Ugh!
Following up on Kram Sacul’s comment about the screen size, a lot of theaters use to install 2:1 ratio screens as a compromise in showing widescreen and regular-width films. Panavision movies will fill the full 75-foot width, (but be only 31-feet high), while Academy widescreen movies will fill the full 38-foot height (and be 70-feet wide). If the theater had a 2.4:1 screen, Academy widescreen movies would only be 57-feet wide and 31-feet high, which would look small. So this allows widescreen movies to be wider, and regular ratio movies to be larger. I hope one of Cinematreasures' subscribers will be able to report on this theater soon.
There’s more pictures of the AMC here. It looks beautiful.
I share Cris Utley’s concern about the other theaters. It’s not going to be a very nice viewing experience if half of the theaters have 180 seats and 20-foot wide screens.
Sounds like a game of chicken. Two competing lifestyle centers in the same city, with two competing multiplexes. Plus Sumner Redstone has made it virtually impossible for National Amusements to get any loans to open this place. I’m betting NA is going to be a no-show when Ridgehill opens.
It probably goes without saying, but the Cinema de Lux at Legacy Place is killing the nearby Dedham Community Theatre.
“Nearly two months after the opening of the Showcase Cinema de Lux movie complex at Legacy Place, the historic Dedham Community Theatre is struggling. Its sales are down significantly, including what owner Paul McMurtry calls “some glaring examples of business being very slow†— such as a few nights when the theater closed early after no customers came for the 7 o’clock shows.
“McMurtry said he had never experienced that since he bought the theater in 2002.”
While talking to the reporter for the story, the general manager called up to the projectionist to cancel a weekday 4:45 pm showing. There were no customers
It’s pretty sad. It also comes at a time when the indie circuit is pretty slow too.
Read the full article at Wicked Local.
I liked the fact that the owner said he would waive the rent for 7 months. After all, it’s only been vacant for 15 YEARS! With all the time, money and effort the community is thinking of putting into this project, you would think the landlord would be a little more generous!
It could be because we don’t know much about which Showcase cinemas will be sold. Sumner Redstone tried selling off about 90 theaters earlier in the year, but he didn’t get any takers. So it’s just too early to say.
There’s a video of the renovation that’s been posted here. The front of the theater will have 80-100 seats with tables, and then another 100 in back. That’s still pretty small. The town is looking to raise $500,000 for the project.
Wow! This newspaper article is a well-researched litany of what not to do when buying an old theater. Paid $2.4 million for the theater in 1998, spent money renovating it, borrowed another $4 million at 12.5% interest in 2007, now owes $10 million total.
Also a 20-screen multiplex opened half a block away that shows some indie movies, the city holds free concerts right in front of the theater, and there was seven years of downtown construction that kept people away from the area.
On the positive side, it does sound like the owners tried everything to attract audiences. They ran everything from Jewish film festivals to Mexican wrestling. Some of the reviews at Yelp complain about rowdy crowds and even rowdier security at concerts.
It just sounds like the potential grosses weren’t enough to handle a half-million dollar-a-year-plus debt payment in addition to the regular expenses of running an old theater.
Anyone been to one of Cinemark’s XD Extreme Digital Cinemas? The Pittsburgh theater is charging $10.50 for a ticket (versus $8.25-$8.50), but the newspaper article says the theater only has 240 seats. You can easily promise wall-to-wall screens, but if the auditorium is only 25-feet wide, you only get a 25-foot wide screen. I wonder if it’s worth the extra money or is just a marketing twist.
I also thought the final paragraph is interesting:
“The arrival of Cinemark could turn up the heat on nearby Showcase Cinemas West, which opened three decades ago and boasts large but older auditoriums.”
Do people want smaller, newer “viewing rooms” that frequently sell out during busy times, or the 1990’s large stadium-style auditoriums?
I hate to admit it, but people seem drawn to new and shiny theaters, and apparently people have gotten use to eating while watching TV, so now they’re conditioned to want to chow down when they’re at the movies, which is what the new theaters are offering.
It’s funny to think of it, but the old-time theaters use to ban food from the auditoriums. It was considered distracting to patrons. How things change.
The Beacon Hill had a Stanley Kubrick film festival in 1974 (I believe) and showed the uncut 2001: A Space Odyssey in SuperPanavision 70 in quadraphonic sound. So not quite Cinerama, but a great experience anyway. During the “apes” sequences in the beginning of the film, you could hear the apes all around you from the four channels. It was the best sound I had heard in a theater.
By the way, the Boston Theater is the RKO Boston. I guess they renamed it because RKO was a competing film company at the time.
There’s a link to a nice video showing more of the theater.
Good for Vogel in keeping this drive-in open.
It’s nice that they needed a super-sized Pet Smart in Boise rather than a multiplex. But I’m guessing it was your typical cinderblock mall cinema, just waiting to become obsolete.
I like this idea. Cinemark sees an opportunity and is going for it. I’m not exactly supporting the idea of paying an extra $3 to see a movie on a wider screen. Nearby Showcase Cinemas in Randolph has a couple of 60-foot screens and I wouldn’t want to pay anything extra for that. The old idea use to be that you could make more money by servicing more people at one time rather than charging extra.
But I’m in favor of anything that fights this current trend of making shoebox cinemas with small screens and soft sound volume. And I can see the justification for paying extra for a really good sound system and some sound insulation, as well as the extra real estate.
With IMAX cheapening its own experience, and simply blowing up 35mm Hollywood films to show in its theaters, Cinemark can provide almost the exact same experience. So I say go for it, Cinemark!
I know I’m not the intended client of this kind of business model, but I just can’t see spending any money to see a movie in a tiny home theater-like viewing room. I can do that at home.
Unfortunately, ushers are long gone from most movie theaters, so no one is there to escort you out. It’s a free-for-all at most theaters.
I sent a complaint to National Amusements via its Website about my disappointment with the design of the Legacy Place theater. I received the following answer from Joe Norman, who’s the manager there:
“Thank you for taking the time to write about your experience at Showcase Cinema de Lux Legacy Place. I was disappointed to read that your first visit to the theatre did not live up to your expectations. Showcase Cinema de Lux has many modern amenities asked for by our guests which the old Dedham Showcase did not including: Starbucks Coffee, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, Famous Famiglia Pizza, Nathan’s Hot Dogs, Studio 3 Restaurant, a baby grand piano in the lobby, a family concession seating area , a coffee lounge, 2 birthday party rooms, numerous plasma TVs, high definition projector TVs in the lobby showing cable channels or DVDs of upcoming releases, and our Lux Level Lounge where you can enjoy a cocktail and a dinner either before or during your show.
“Our auditoriums have higher risers for better visibility, wall to wall screens, high seat backs for better comfort, Dolby digital sound, two auditoriums with satellite reception for events like live operas and concerts, two other auditoriums cable ready to broadcast events like Red Sox games, and three digital projectors capable of showing the latest is 3D films. While not every theatre is as large as our biggest theatre, we do have several auditoriums on the 8-15 side of the building which you did not see that are larger than those on the 1-7 side.”
Joe then offered me a “personal tour to show you all these areas including the projection booth and Lux Level Lounge. My hope is that after my tour, perhaps you will give us another chance to impress you when you want to see your next film.”
I’m afraid I passed on his offer because, for me, it’s all about the movies and not about eating or drinking my way through a film.
But my major disappointment is the size and layout of the auditoriums. Theaters 1-6 range in size from 99 seats to 180. Theater 7 has 420 seats. Although the screens are wall-to-wall as Joe wrote, the auditoriums are long and narrow. To show widescreen movies, a curtain drops down from the top of the screen to shrink it height-wise rather than curtains opening up to widen the screen length-wise. Ugh! Shades of the old Dedham Showcase!
The stadium seating starts a good way back from the screens with rows of seats in front of it on a flat floor. The viewing angle is terrible from the floor, and you’ll get a stiff neck if you try to watch a move from there. From the stadium seating, the screens are too small. The seats are uncomfortable, particularly the armests which seem too high and too short. I had circular red marks dug into my forearms from the cup holders fairly quickly because that’s where my arms wound up.
Apparently, Showcase is no longer interested in big screens with big auditoriums, such as they built in Randolph. That is so ‘90s. Now, it’s all about trying to charge you big bucks for fast food, and serving you beer and wine in the Lux Level to make even more money. Showing movies is only the excuse to get you there. This theater reminded me of a modern version of the old Copley Square Theater.
Sounds bad. His comments are pretty cryptic. Something’s wrong.
I was reading some of the older posts from earlier this year, and I just wanted to clarify that the corridor or alleyway that ran between Tremont Street and Mason Street and led to the rear of the Opera House is still there. I walk by it every day. You can see a picture of it wedged between two apartment buildings here and the back view here courtesy of Google Street View. It was restored a few years ago as part of the Opera House renovation.
It’s actually nothing more than a few steel I-beams holding the facades on and a roof. There is no marquee on it, but you can see where it was, and the glass doors, I believe, are always locked, although they might help in bringing in deliveries from Tremont. The white stone is similar to the white stone used on the facade of the Opera House on Washington St, and they may date to the 1940 renovation.
The city of Boston has a policy of keeping old alleys intact. For example, there’s a passageway from Temple Place to Winter Street that probably dates back to when Sam Adams lived there. Or it’s also possible that the Opera House owns that slim piece of property. But it’s still there preserved.
Interesting editorial. Sort of confirmed what I guessed. They have 20 people running movies people aren’t going to. Neither article indicated if these 20 people helped out at other events in the theater.
This is one of the problems with academic non-profits. No one is even interested in breaking even or making a profit until the funding runs out. Some of the students said they didn’t even know there was a theater on campus until this editorial ran. Other students commented that the theater was running movies with no one even in the auditorium. I guess it wasn’t anyone’s job to advertise its events.
Newsreel theaters existed before the advent of television. They were usually small, slipped into storefronts, sheds, etc. They seem to have been near bus stations and railway stations and were designed to help people kill time while waiting for a bus or a train. TV put them out of business.
You really need a good business plan if you’re planning to do anything with an old theater. The heating and air conditioning costs have been brutal lately, and any older structure will constantly need fixing and repairing. Plus a lot of landlords are crazy, demanding high rents, yet perfectly happy to keep theaters vacant (making no money) for years until someone can meet their price.
If you scan through old news stories here you will read about people who have spent their life savings to re-open an old theater, only to be broke and out of business anywhere from six to 18 months later. So you have to think things through carefully and have a solid strategy.
I liked the comment from a downtown business owner. He said “he worried the competition could result in neither theater being built.”
This is like a game of chicken — see who blinks first. In Massachusetts, we had a similar situation ten years ago when Hoyts and Showcase wanted to built competing multiplexes within 200 yards of each other. Hoyts backed down and Showcase won.
Another point is that one of the 10-screen theaters would only have 1400 seats, which is an average of only 140 seats per screen.
I hate this new trend of going back and building “viewing rooms” like in the 1980s. Showcase just built a 15-screen theater in Dedham, MA with an average of 200 seats per auditorium. Half of the screens are viewing rooms of between 98-180 seats.
Most of the readers here would rather have a cinematic experience instead of watching movies in basically a home theater. Why go out to the movies when you can watch them at home on a 52" screen?
Well, this is the endless debate, isn’t it? 35mm or digital?
All movies will continue to be available on 35mm film for a long time to come. So having a nice 35mm projector or two in the projection booth is a good investment. And 35mm allows you to play any kind of film, from new releases to second-run, from revivals to old classics.
The studios are trying to use digital to save money because they’ve backed themselves into a corner with tent-pole releases going out to 4,000 screens. At $2,000 or more a print, you’re looking at an $8 million cost just for prints. If they can reduce that cost by half, they’ll be happy.
But about half of the theaters are probably not going to be able to afford going digital, so the studios will continue to make prints, probably for the next 10 years or more.
The key advantage to digital is that audiences think they give a better presentation. So if you can beat out your local competition and charge a little bit more by going digital, then use it as a marketing and promotion tool and go digital. And if you have a lot of opera lovers or teens who want to see concert videos of acts like Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Bros. then definitely do it to get those audiences.
But the consensus is that film will still be around for a long time.
I read the article about the theater on the student newspaper Website. The theater costs $233,000 a year to run. The student activities fund pays $150,000 a year, and the theater has not been coming up with the $83,000 a year to close the gap. Sounds like there’s something wrong here.
Also, I took a look at their schedule. The theater is closed Sundays and every other Monday, and a lot of the most popular movies, like Zombieland, Star Trek and Rocky Horror Picture Show are free, while they’re charging for films like Land of the Lost, Evangelion: 1.0, and Food, Inc. For October, they’re only listing a handful of movies and days opened, so it’s probably being used for other events.
I guess the University has to decide whether the theater is a business or a freebie for students – whether they want to give away its product or sell it.
Also, I love the last line of the story. The University doesn’t believe in free speech or the First Amendment since the “working” students are prohibited from speaking to the school press.
From the Boston Herald story, Michael Moore said “…because I just refurbished a hundred year old movie theater that I run in the small town where I live.”
“I’ve turned it back into the way that it was, a beautiful movie palace. So, now I’m an exhibitor and I go through all of the stuff of having to deal with these guys, the studio, on the exhibition end.”
Sure sounds like it’s his theater and like he’s running it.
But then again, it is Michael Moore!