AMC Theatres Grapples With Nearly 10 Percent Attendance Drop In Latest Quarter
(www.hollywoodreporter.com)
TheImpressiveX
moviesI regularly go to the theater. There hasn't been a movie released in months that I'm willing to go pay for
Only iron lungis is the only movie I've been to in 6 months and all the trailers that played in theater for other movies were boring. Odd it is though that a bunch of them were squid game style "what if the government/the elite was hunting people for sport"/other conspiracy tropes coming out around the time of the Epstein files
More annoying that AMC bought out basically every local theater and then shot themselves in the foot, so there's not many alternatives.
Local theaters usually do community events and have a play theater for live productions that keeps the business going.
AFAIK AMC only does latest releases and sometimes reruns during low traffic.
Consistently crappy theaters, other customers who don't care about the movie, on their phones and talking, and staff that are both not paid enough and told not to deal with those problems.
All of that for now 20 per ticket, double that if you want snacks. My local indie house shows movies with none of those problems.
And half an hour of ads
I also don't have any of those issues at home. Relative screen size is comparable (probably bigger at home, in terms of viewing angle). No annoying people at all. Snacks cost supermarket-prices. I also don't have to travel there and back at specific times, can pause to pee, good stuff!
Movies may be a few weeks or months later, but who cares. If anything I got a backlog to still watch anyway. I can no longer see any advantage to going to a cinema.
My spouse has gone all in on the gd rumble-seats in Cinemark theaters. Even dumb movies we’d never go see, they’re like “does it have rumble seats? ‘cause I’m there.”
For me it’s just the comfy-ass recliners. One of the Regals near me swapped out all of the chairs with comfy recliners and— my god— sitting through a 3 hour movie was a comparative cakewalk to how it used to be.
I haven’t got any AMCs near me, but it sounds like they haven’t put in the same efforts on seat situations. You can have all the Dolby, XD, THX etc stuff you want, but the chairs are a big part of it.
—that said, we also have a lovely historic theater near us that’s oozing character and ambience, so… it’s an uphill battle for all chain theaters in our area afaic
If only they'd upkeep the recliners.. my theather converted around covid, and half of the them are non functioning now. Broken buttons mostly, but it's especially bad around the center positioned seats everyone always takes.
I used to be an usher a while back and cleaning the basic foldy seats are no bueno, especially on kid/family movies— people are slobs. Shrek 2 was the WORST by far to clean up after, and it was in theaters for so long.
I cannot imagine how long and how much work it would take to thoroughly clean some of the recliners I’ve seen.
Coupled with that, nearly every chain cinema near us has cut staff/concessions down to combining concessions and tickets into the same booth/register, and the ushers are a skeleton crew.
They’re looking for a quick-fix/lowest effort draw for an audience and are only halfway there ‘cause uhhh ineptitude or greed or both. And it sucks ‘cause I’d hate to see all of these places shut down.
…although, one of them shut down near us and got bought by a local guy who has spruced it the hell up, so. We’ll see what happens.
I've heard from a few friend's kids that cleaning the recliners is basically easy mode. They're not cloth like the old founding seats so everything just wipes right off.
Dunno if that holds for all, just local anecdotes
Came here to say pretty much the same thing. There are a few AMC theaters near us that my wife and I enjoy going to from time to time. But it’s clear they aren’t doing anything when it comes to maintaining & repairing their seats. They were awesome when the theaters were newly renovated, but the last time we went one of our seats was broken so badly we couldn’t sit comfortably in it. Luckily there were plenty of empty seats so we could move easily.
the landmark “4d” seats that move/rumble make any movie with flying so fun. They still haven’t gotten the technology precise enough for well timed jump scares in horror movies though.
[off topic]
I've had it happen twice. I'll be in an airplane, watching a movie, and there's a big battle scene. The plane hits turbulence and the fight becomes much more exciting.
I can understand the appeal of the rumble seats.
I found the rumble seats very off-putting, so I turned it off after a few minutes. Turns out, you can’t turn these ones off, just down. Very frustrating two hours.
You should probably buy her a vibrator.
I will say the small 10 screen AMC near me has nice seats. It has a bunch of small theaters that are pretty comfortable.
The giant AMC at the mall 30 minutes north of me has huge theaters full of crappy seats.
It depends on where you go.
I went to an amc for the first time in about seven years last week and despite there being a giant “Dolby” logo out front that made me think they’d at least have decent sound, the soundtrack in the theater I was in was hardly stereo, with the voice channel coming from the upper left of the screen and the music and sound effects from the lower right. Was not a good experience.
Screens are dimmed to save money, shows out of focus because no one GAF.
Films are plummeting in quality, Melania won't save AMC.
The last movie I saw in an AMC theater was Avatar: Fire & Ash in IMAX ($20 for the 3D, which imo was worth it for the 3 hours), and before that was Way of Water a couple years before.
My usual Christmas routine is to get a group of friends together for a restaurant meal and then a movie. Usually we'll pick something like Jumanji or Aquaman or Anchorman II.
Last two years, no one wanted to see any of the movies playing. Not 'I don't feel like going to the theater today' it was that none of the movies showing appealed to anyone.
Announce what time the movie actually starts and pay ushers to enforce good behavior and you’ll fix those attendance drops right quick. There’s still demand but the movie theater experience is so awful even cinephiles won’t brave it anymore.
I have little to no interest in going to a movie theater. Not just now, but very likely ever again.
I just don’t see the appeal—the crowds are so consistently awful, unless you wait until a given movie’s theatrical run is almost done and no one else is there. But by then, sometimes the movie is already in streaming and I can watch at home.
I CAN be convinced to support business models which seem innovative, however.
For instance, theaters have offered different ticket prices for both age (children/seniors) and time of day (matinees). I would ENTHUSIASTICALLY support a theater which innovated on those points.
For instance, keep early movies cheap for kids. However, retain special “child” pricing throughout the day. I would love to see ticket pricing for children increase by lower ages and later times.
Take a 2-year old to an 11a movie? 5-bucks.
Take a 2-year old to a 9p movie? 500-bucks.
Also, usher enforcement of etiquette should become more aggressive. I wouldn’t mind a police detail enforcing that shit…just be clear with the tickets.
You want a police detail enforcing a ”quiet” theater—buy that ticket and pay the higher price.
You want a cheaper ticket and watch with a bunch of people playing on their phones and talking, go cheap and don’t complain.
Some people love the theater—it’s big, it’s loud, it’s fun. If you like it, go for it. In my opinion, anyone with even a modestly decent modern TV and sound system can wait a bit to catch their movie on streaming and always have a better experience.
I won't even go to AMC at all anymore because they're the only (non-indie) theater around that still has crappy seating.
Nevermind how few movies are worth seeing, paying $20+ to see a movie, how the concessions are expensive garbage, and shows have 20-40 minutes of ads before they begin.
Give me an Alamo Drafthouse or similar and better movie selection, and I'll be at the movies nearly every month.
It's more than 20 usd for a ticket in sweden (snacks unreasonable priced here as well) and amc is the same chain just with another name to make people belive it is national (Filmstaden). How is it in other countries?
Bummer, I like going to the movies.
