In early November 2018, I bought tickets for our whole extended family to go see Bohemian Rhapsody, because my mom was turning 70 and that is what she wanted for her birthday. The show I bought tickets for was for December 30th. A few times since then, I have tried to buy advance tickets for movies, but no show times were available. It turns out that, all of the sudden, EVERY single movie theater doesn’t know what it will be showing this weekend, and won’t sell you tickets for this weekend, until Tuesday or Wednesday. What gives? I asked this question on another forum, and the “best answer” selected was “movie theaters don’t know which movies they will be playing in two weeks”. But they apparently used to. So what changed?
What changed, I think, is that a lot of theaters don’t even know if they’ll be open in a few weeks. Theaters are closing all over the place.
While movie ticket sales were, indeed, down a bit (about 4%) in 2019, I think that it’s a bit overblown to suggest that many theaters are unsure if they’ll even be in existence in a few weeks.
Also, while you, personally, may be seeing theaters closing by you, that’s not actually a national trend. This chartshows that the number of screens overall in the US has been pretty steady at around 5600-5800 for the past decade.
What I suspect is happening is that theaters are trying to be more nimble in how they decide which films to put on which of their screens (and I, too, have noticed that it’s become difficult to buy tickets well in advance). Movie distribution in the US is pretty close to 100% digital now, as I understand it, so a theater can easily swap out films between screens (or even run the same film on all of their screens). My suspicion is that they pay close attention to how ticket sales for each film are going on a daily basis, and that they’re now waiting until fairly late in a week to decide what the next week’s lineup will be.
It still seems to be the case that, for a big blockbuster, like Rise of Skywalker or Avengers Endgame, the theater chains are still encouraging long-leadtime presales, at least for the opening weekends. But, those now seem like they may be the exceptions to the rule.
I think you nailed it by explaining digital delivery. They don’t have to receive and return film reels anymore. Except I still don’t understand why it seemingly happened all at once. It seems that all of the theaters near me - AMC, Regal, Loews - even CineBistro - all stopped selling advance tickets at around the same time. If I check any of those theaters right now (or even go through Fandango), the latest I can buy tickets is for Tuesday. And today is Sunday. If I want to buy tickets for Wednesday, I cannot buy them (in my area) more than a day in advance. So, to me, it seems to be something driven by some sort of industry-wide policy, not individual theaters choosing what they want to show.
Along with the theaters wanting flexibility in terms of which theater to show which movie, they’re also (in my experience) not just selling general admission tickets. Instead, when I buy a ticket in advance (or even at the box office), I select a particular seat or set of seats. Remember that the individual theaters within a multiplex vary in number of rows and number of seats in each row. Some, like me, are very particular when choosing seats.
I think they are just relocating to be closer to where the money is. The total number of theaters does not seem to be declining, they are just declining in certain places. The price of movie tickets has way outpaced inflation. Now, it can easily cost $60 to take a family of four to the movies. If you live in Manhattan and make $120,000 a year, spending $60 to take your family to the movies seems trivial. If you live in Numnuts, Idaho and make only $40,000 for essentially the same job, spending $60 to take your family to the movies seems significant. So I think theaters are moving to areas where people can more easily afford to go to the movies. But none of this has anything to do with how far in advance you can buy movie tickets, which is what I was asking.
I am not sure how introducing assigned seating would require abolishing advanced ticket sales. You can still assign seats if you sell them in advance. But even so, I guess the part I least understand is why advanced sales worked fine for the movie theater industry in November 2018, but no longer works for them 15 months later. It seems to me that something big happened - a big decision by a movie executive, or a big change in laws about ticketing, or a big change in how revenues are split between theaters and distributors and studios. But apparently, no one else here knows what happened either.
I doubt it was a law change. It’s possible that it was a change in how one of the big studios handles distribution, but if that had happened, I’d think you would have found something to back that up.
Now, my assumption is that advance ticketing, in conjunction with reserved seating, requires the theater owner to know (a) what films they are going to show on a particular date, and (b) in which auditorium, before they can put tickets on sale for that date.
My WAG is that, within the past year or two, one of the big theater chains realized that, once they had fully instituted reserved seating, with the exception of the opening weekends of big blockbusters, relatively few people were buying tickets more than 24-48 hours in advance.
So, since they saw little downside in waiting to plan most of their auditoriums’ lineups more than a few days in advance, and since they’re trying to make sure that they have as many seats filled as possible, they tinker with which films they show, on which screens, at the last minute. Is Star Wars keeping more butts in seats in week 3 of its release? Keep it in the bigger auditoriums, and put the week’s new release in the smaller ones. And, they can do that up until a day or two before the date of show, without an issue, since very few people look to buy tickets that far in advance for most films.
If my WAG is accurate, that chain found that they could increase their occupancy rate (i.e., % of total available tickets sold for a date) by doing things this way, and the other chains followed suit.
But, again, that’s just a slightly educated guess.
Yeah. To put things in more specific terms, why would a theater want to commit to selling a ticket for “Doolittle” in two weeks time, when there’s a chance that it would be a flop. Better to hold off on scheduling, so that if it’s a hit, they can schedule 3 of their 25 screens to show it every 2.5 hours, and if it’s not, they can drop it entirely (there’s a certain advantage to the customer too - since being about to respond to demand quickly means that folks who want to see the big hit this weekend can get tickets more easily than they would otherwise).
The US did not have assigned seats?
You can buy advance tickets using Fandango and choose what time you want to see the movie.
It does in some theaters. Again, Fandango will be your friend in the US at least.
Until maybe the past decade, assigned seating in movie theaters was very uncommon. Movie tickets were nearly always general admission.
Over the past few years, the big chains have started to upgrade the seats in their theaters, and many of those chains have instituted assigned seating as part of ticketing.
Ok, thanks.
I was surprised since the handful of times I have watched films in US theatres, there was assigned seating. The exceptions being art house flicks.
Yup. I’m American. When I visited Europe as a teen in the 1980s, I was surprised by two things at the movies there: assigned seats, and commercials along with the trailers (previews). The US started adopting both these things around the early 2000s, as I recall.
The thing that surprised me most was that they don’t put butter on the popcorn. That still annoys me, even more than the product ads before the trailers.
Mind you, two nights ago I went to a movie theatre here and was pleasantly surprised that they didn’t show any ads at all. First time that’s happened to me since moving here in 2003. I hope this is some new and trend-setting policy of the theatre here as opposed to a one-off oversight. I guess the only way to find out is to visit the same theatre again for the next film I see.
What I’ve noticed is that theaters will commit to what films will open and play for several weeks in advance but not particulate showtimes or how many screens. This makes adavance sales very tricky.
I’m sure that’s not it. I’ve never heard of a business not doing presales because they think they might have to close. I mean, once you do that, you might as well announce a closing date, since you’ve entered a positive feedback loop.
This has to be it. The increased flexibility of being able to schedule films to theaters based on near-term anticipated viewership is way more valuable than the tiny fraction of sales you might lose because someone can’t buy tickets a week in advance. You probably don’t lose any sales in the latter case unless a competitor offers advance sales, and the market segment of people who plan their movie watching that far in advance is so small that it’s not worth other drawbacks to compete for.
Are you sure you actually bought tickets in early November for the end of December? Because having tickets available two months out has been pretty rare for awhile. It’s not something that just changed in the last year. Usually the only time tickets are available that far in advance are for opening weekends of big releases like Star Wars and Marvel movies. Bohemian Rhapsody came out beginning of November. I can’t image any theater knowing exactly what times it would be showing two months later.
Exactly. Pre-sold tickets does nothing for them really other than raise their risk that they’re going to incur poor customer relations when they need to rearrange what and when movies are showing in their theater.
AFAIK, they’ve NEVER let you book more than a week out, except when it’s a big blockbuster like “Rise of Skywalker”, and they usually send out emails letting you know that you CAN register early.