What has happened with movie tickets?

[Tired_and_Cranky]

Fandango used to let you buy tickets at least for next weekend’s shows by Monday. Now, not so much. Recently I wanted to get tickets for Ford v. Ferrari and I had a rare night free to watch it one Saturday. I couldn’t get tickets on Fandango so I assumed the movie was dropping out of the local theater and that I missed my chance. I made other plans. When Saturday rolled around, it was still playing but they had already missed their chance to sell me a ticket. It’s over a month later, the movie is still in theaters, and I still haven’t had another chance to see it.

[control-z]

Yeah I see what you mean OP. My local Alamo seems to only be selling 3 days in advance for popular movies right now.

[suranyi]

@bump

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.

One exception is for one night special event movies, like what Fathom presents. Operas, concerts, that kind of thing. Those you can still get tickets for months in advance.

[bump]

@control-z

Yeah I see what you mean OP. My local Alamo seems to only be selling 3 days in advance for popular movies right now.

Mine has a lot of showtimes up to exactly one week out (1/29 as of today), with only special events listed after that (one showtime a day of some older movie every couple of days, it looks like)

[Doug_K]

@bump

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.

For as long as I can remember for the most part movie schedules have been announced on the Wednesday before, for the week running Friday-Thursday. I worked for a theater for about a year in college. With the sole exception of Superman II, even the manager never knew before Wednesday what we’d be showing the next week.

[elfkin477]

@bump

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.

Heck, most of the theaters around here won’t even tell me what’s playing on Saturday before the Wednesday/Thursday in the same week.

[MandaJo]

@TomValois

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.

On assigning seats . . . My local multiplex has several different sized theaters. . .some with half the number of seats as the biggest theaters. So they may know they are showing a title, but they want to wait to decide which goes on which screen.

[glee]

Here in the UK, I can book local cinemas a week in advance, using a credit card.
This includes assigned seating.
I can also pick the tickets up at the cinema when I arrive for the film.