Sunday, September 02, 2012

Why Western Film isn't playing Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

We've had a fair number of requests for the movie but it looks like we won't be playing it. There's a few reasons for this, some of which intertwine.

#1 The distributor is Fox Searchlight. Fox puts restrictions on bookings which prevent me from playing a lot of their films. They won't allow the screen to be 'split' with another movie that week so Marigold would have to be given it's own week. I maybe could have done that if we had gotten it during the summer.

#2 The students are back and we need to play as many popular films as possible in September. Generally Sept is our busiest month and offsets losses from the quieter months. If I could play something like Ted after a 7pm screening of Marigold that might work but Fox won't let me.

#3 The movie has been playing at various theatres in the city for the entire summer. The Hyland has had it for many weeks. I figure the odds are good a lot of the people who want to see it have already seen it.

#4 We weren't able to get it during the summer because The Hyland kept playing it and we have to wait for them to finish.  Even if they dropped it the 35mm film print probably would have left to go to another city.

#5 To be blunt, we would sell hardly any snacks to the crowd that would come to Marigold. I could live with that if we could have played it during the summer when there wasn't a lot of other options.

#6 Some of the adult crowd seems to avoid the campus during the school year.

#7 The crowd that would have come to Marigold won't go to late shows so I couldn't play Marigold twice a night yet couldn't play something more appropriate for late shows due to Fox's rules.


That's an unusually detailed explanation but it was a really tough call on this film.

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