Thursday, July 29, 2010

This trailer make no sense but looks cool.

The movie is directed by Zack Snyder who did 300 and Watchmen. I like the imagery but have no idea how it all compiles into a movie?!


Next Week's films Jul 30 - Aug 5



I've gotten behind on these again. The only new movie available to play for next week was The Last Airbender which I don't plan to play. The Karate Kid and Prince of Persia had both come available in the last couple weeks so I choose those. I'm not sure how Prince of Persia will do as it wasn't exactly a huge hit but I think it will do well enough to play it.


The A-Team is available but I can't split it so it probably won't be played. We are going to be closed for three playweeks for renovations as of Aug 6th. The timing is actually kinda good. I'm running out of movies to play. This has been a weird summer with a lot of disappointing movies, most of which we have either already played or won't be playing. Most of the movies currently playing now are hits that will keep playing first run for a while like Toy Story 3 and Inception. All the big summer movies have opened so there isn't a lot of new product coming out to bump older films off the screens. Whereas something like Iron Man 2 takes up several screens in a multiplex opening weekend the films left this summer are the kind that only take one.


About the only film that might have been available for the following week is The Girl Who Played With Fire and I think there's still no extra prints so even if The Hyland drops it the print will go off to another first run theatre.


I expect to reopen on Aug 27th with Toy Story 3 and Girl Who Played With Fire but we'll see what happens.

Bollywood Films.

Just a quick post regarding a comment left on a previous post asking about Bollywood (Indian) Films. The ones that have played over the last couple years were put on by others renting out Western Film. They sold the tickets etc. I haven't heard from them for a while so they may not wish to do any more. The attendance was never super high.
I tried to put on Bollywood films myself a couple times but I didn't know how to market to the proper community.

The basic problem is we have to wait 2-3 weeks after the films have been released in order to play them. We have to wait until a theatre in Toronto is done with a print before we can show it. The piracy is so bad on Bollywood films they are basically dead by the time we can show them.

I do find it frustrating as I'm constantly being asked to show Bollywood films but then not enough people show up when we do. Piracy is a two way street, if people are willing to watch the pirated versions then theatres won't be able to play them.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Next Week's Films Jul 9 - 15



I'd already scheduled in Robin Hood so I only needed to decide on what late show to play. Shrek 4 was available but obviously isn't well suited to a late show. It will play starting Jul 23 at 7pm and matinees. The only other movie that the booker was checking on was Get Him To The Greek which ended up holding so it wasn't available to us. I would have put it in a the late show if it had come available. I was considering keeping Iron Man 2 as a late show but wasn't sure. Robin Hood is quite long which would make the Iron Man 2 show at 9:45 and Iron Man isn't exactly a short film. The evening shows of Iron Man have done quite well. The matinees were a bust but I think a lot of that was due to the holiday weekend and people being out of town. Bringing back Date Night as a late show has worked reasonably well. So I decided to keep Iron Man 2 for a late show. I'm also doing a bit of experimenting with matinees. I'd going to run matinees of Robin Hood to try to gauge how non kid's movies will do. I'm also going to run matinees of Iron Man 2 partly to see if the first weekend was a fluke and to give people who didn't come last week a chance to see it.


Considering how the matinees for How To Train Your Dragon did I was truly shocked we didn't get more people for the Iron Man matinees. It was very out of character as Sundays are almost always busier than Saturday but we ended up having no one show up for the 1:45 show on Sunday?!


So the Robin Hood matinees are at 1:30 and the Iron Man 2 matinees are at 4:15. This is the first time I've run two different movies as matinees, I hope it's not too confusing.


Sex and the City 2 is already booked for the following week and will probably be followed by a late show of Get Him To The Greek. I doubt Robin Hood will do well enough to keep for another week.