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dollar theaters and how they come about ...
MetroidZoid
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm trying to wrap my head around a potential business idea, down the road. Just the bare logistics of it. Namely, in our small town of about oh 34,000 with about 50,000 others in the surrounding county, there is one movie theater. There were two, owned by the same I guess you would say chain. One got the upgrades to new projectors, including digital 3D, new sound, a couple of new screens, stadium screening. The other barely floated along with it's outdated rooms until it finally closed. At last point they were trying to bring in income by changing one arcade room into a pay-per-hour LAN party center or something, didn't work. So now there's just the one theater, and their going price for tickets is $7.75 for adult, 3D is like $9 or $10 (maybe more), and matinee is I think $5.50, but whereas they used to have a quite a few showings before 5:00, they've really cut back on them.
Now this old theater is in an older shopping center of town, but it's the kind of place that everyone knows where it is and is used to be the cool hang out theater, even when the new one got built. My thought is this: how would one go about making this a dollar theater? Now, what I had in mind was a theater that showed a combination of second-run movies (which from my understanding, are movies that have been out awhile but still aren't on DVD yet, and studios lease them out for less than premier price?), independent films, and hopefully older movies. The last one is what I'm having trouble grasping. If I wanted to show say Jurassic Park on my big screen, and charge admission for it, how does one go about that? Do you call up Universal and ask permission to use their DVD? Would a Blu-Ray copy of a movie even look decent on a big screen? Are these small-town theaters that show things like a marathon of Halloween movies getting permission to do so or is it under the radar? And how feasible do you think it would even be to try something like this ... in our town, what used to be a retirement town with youth all but staying, there's been a surge of young families now staying in town. New businesses are reflecting that, and I think there's potential for making this place a 'discount theater' or whathaveyou, refurbishing it's arcade, and giving it a new face. Maybe even, down the road, changing out the seating in one screen for tables & chairs, obtaining a liquor license, and having adult only nights. Something to that degree. Thoughts?
Now this old theater is in an older shopping center of town, but it's the kind of place that everyone knows where it is and is used to be the cool hang out theater, even when the new one got built. My thought is this: how would one go about making this a dollar theater? Now, what I had in mind was a theater that showed a combination of second-run movies (which from my understanding, are movies that have been out awhile but still aren't on DVD yet, and studios lease them out for less than premier price?), independent films, and hopefully older movies. The last one is what I'm having trouble grasping. If I wanted to show say Jurassic Park on my big screen, and charge admission for it, how does one go about that? Do you call up Universal and ask permission to use their DVD? Would a Blu-Ray copy of a movie even look decent on a big screen? Are these small-town theaters that show things like a marathon of Halloween movies getting permission to do so or is it under the radar? And how feasible do you think it would even be to try something like this ... in our town, what used to be a retirement town with youth all but staying, there's been a surge of young families now staying in town. New businesses are reflecting that, and I think there's potential for making this place a 'discount theater' or whathaveyou, refurbishing it's arcade, and giving it a new face. Maybe even, down the road, changing out the seating in one screen for tables & chairs, obtaining a liquor license, and having adult only nights. Something to that degree. Thoughts?
MetroidZoid on
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I do know that they can afford to charge less because the films are second-run, and that theaters make the bulk of their profits off concession stand sales, not ticket sales... but I don't know the full logistics of acquiring the rights.
There are also independent movie theaters (not that they show only indie films...they're just independent of the big theater chains), but I have a feeling you need to at least have a critical mass of sufficiently - how do you say? - self-aware people in an area to enjoy those and stay afloat.
Realistically, in an area with fewer than 100K people showing second-run and older films, you'd have to seriously weigh whether your revenue would be able to cover the logistics of simply running the place (leasing the theater, paying wages and insurance, licensing, etc).
And I'm definitely not looking for any illegal means of doing this, I just didn't know if there was some allowance by studios for 'sure you can show our movie on DVD for x amount of dollars' or what.
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That's essentially how it works, but I have no idea about price structure... most of my first-hand info is ten years old at best, and not comprehensive.