Monday, May 14, 2007

Single / early shows only?

During the summer there are a lot of weeks we only have one show at 7pm with no late show. There's a few reasons for this.

-With fewer students around there are fewer movies that are worth playing, for example I might play something like 28 Weeks Later during the school year but probably won't during the summer.

-The crowd is different, we tend to get a lot more faculty, off-campus, and families during the summer. As another example I probably wouldn't have played Wild Hogs during the school year. This crowd tends not to go to the late shows.

- last year it seemed like almost every week there was only one movie I wanted to play anyway. During the summer you tend to get big movies and lots of small movies that don't do well. This summer may be different, it looks like there's going to be lots of good movies.

- long movies- Spiderman, Harry Potter and Pirates 3 are all almost three hours long with trailers. That makes a late show at 10pm which doesn't always work for the reasons listed above. Even during the school year that's getting late for us.
A couple of my staff and I were talking about whether to play a late show of Spiderman when we get it. I honestly couldn't decide whether I should or not. I figure I'll wait and see how long it takes to get it. I may also use it as an experiment. Play a late show and see how it does to gauge whether I should show late shows of the other big movies.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Will you be showing Hot Fuzz?

WesternFilm said...

I'm pretty sure we will. It wouldn't be my first choice but I think the next couple weeks there won't be a lot to choose from anyway.

Anonymous said...

I would love to see Waitress this summer. It is playing in Toronto but not even in London yet. :(

WesternFilm said...

Waitress is a pretty small release so I'm not sure what will happen to it. I'd like to see it myself. I think Nathan Fillian is pretty interesting and funny. He was great in Serendity. The word is Keri Russell does a great job as well.
I just noticed Waitress is distributed by Fox which probably means I won't be able to play it. Fox often puts conditions on their bookings that preclude us from playing their films.