“I like to say that it’s like a marriage that’s constantly in therapy,” Austin said. Studios and theaters regularly negotiate over show times. “In order to meet that crush of demand, that schedule then has to be reworked every single week to create an even flow so that it helps the customer have a more seamless experience, rather than dealing with crowds,” he said.
But theaters can help mitigate the risk of everyone showing up at the same time. It’s like when you go to Sunday brunch and you have to wait an hour and a half to get in, Austin said. Otherwise, there will be long lines at the box office, long lines at the food and beverage counters, and long waits for orders at dine-in theaters. You can’t have all your films showing at 7 p.m., one of the most popular moviegoing times, so you have to figure out how you’re going to spread them out, he added. “So if you’re running a theater that has anywhere from six to 25 screens, once you add in films, you have to also build a schedule around the flow of traffic,” he said.
“It’s a gigantic puzzle that’s constantly changing,” Austin said.Įven if a theater knows it will carry a popular film in the upcoming weeks, it can’t guarantee showtimes too far in advance, Austin explained, because the theater has to consider other films it has to show. That’s because that bigger chain has more screens, which means it can gamble more on some of its titles.
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Sometimes customers will point out that a big movie chain has tickets on sale for a particular movie, Austin said, while wondering when CMX Cinemas’ theaters will have them. The size of the theater is another part of that equation. “We have what our complete schedule is for the upcoming weekend.”īut there are exceptions, especially when it comes to big blockbusters, such as “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Showtimes might be listed a month before the initial release, Comess said.Īustin of CMX Cinemas said that scheduling is ultimately a supply and demand issue: “The higher the demand, the earlier the film’s gonna go on sale.”
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“That gives us enough time to update the website, make sure all the deals went through,” Comess said. When Jared Comess, vice president of marketing and public relations at Paragon Entertainment Group, gets questions about scheduling, he likes to advise people to look at the showtimes on Tuesday afternoons. “That’s because they are waiting to see how their current films perform at the box office this Friday and Saturday, which helps them decide what films to drop in order to make space for next week’s new releases,” Long explained over email. Long added that as of Thursday night, his two local multiplexes in Champaign had yet to set most screening times for next Friday. “Theaters get most of their ticket revenue on weekends, so a lot of what determines showtime scheduling at multiplexes is the performance of films the previous weekend,” said Derek Long, an assistant professor of media and cinema studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Setting movie showtimes - their exact times and how far in advance - is a delicate balancing act that takes into consideration the movie’s financial performance, the type of film, moviegoers’ needs and the agreements theaters have with the studios. “Film scheduling is an art, honestly” said Guy Austin, vice president of film and content acquisition for CMX Cinemas, which has locations in several states, including Alabama, Florida and Virginia. But we may not know a lot about the skill it takes to book that film for the theater screen. When many of us go to the movies, we’re aware of the amount of skill that went into the production. Why can’t I get movie times more than a few days in advance? Listener Amy Ford from Suffolk, Virginia, asks:
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Ever wondered if recycling is worth it ? Or how store brands stack up against name brands? Check out more from the series here. This is just one of the stories from our “I’ve Always Wondered” series, where we tackle all of your questions about the world of business, no matter how big or small.
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