Why release movies to limited venues?

I had planned to see Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium this weekend, only to find it is a limited release. Why do the movie companies do this?

OK, so it seems it was in limited release early in the week, but now in full release.

But I still wonder why some movies see limited release.

I’ve wondered about this myself. To my knowledge, *Mirrormask *was never shown in a first-run theatre in Montreal, despite having been advertised in local listings. When I called the distributer, they said it must have been a mistake, but wouldn’t specify whose.

There are many reasons.

Mirrormask was probably a ‘mistake’ on the advertising end or they only had a tentative booking from the theatre. Let’s say Mirrormask was going to open on Friday the 14th. The movie playing from the 7th to the 13th does very well on the weekend (7th 8th and 9th) so the distributor ‘talks them into’ holding it. Thus there is no room at the inn. Or MM has been playing in other markets and the box office has been ‘soft’, so the theatre backs out of playing it or the distributor abandons the idea of opening it.
Some movies open limited because Lars and the Real Girl is not something that plays in every little 8-plex. Prints, advertising and even the shipping costs of opening in a market must be weighed against how much profit they think the film will make. For some movies, it’s a far better strategy to make 20 prints, open in ‘select’ markets and then move those prints from market to market. A print of a movie runs at least $5,000. Will it generate 5k in rental from the theatre? Plus the Xk advertising in newspapers? Spiderman 3 will do that. Mirrormask won’t.
(zebra has worked over 20 in the industry, both in exihibition, (movie theatres) and distribution (a studio))

That’s very interesting, Zebra. I never realized movie bookings could be so fluid, or that prints cost that much. How can the movie making industry (and I mean that in the most literal way) justify charging $5000 for a projectable copy of a film when videocassettes and DVDs cost pennies to make? Is this why theatres are testing out digital projection?

Technicolor is the lab that makes the prints. There are some others but they are the main lab. A film is so much better quality than a video or a DVD that there is no comparison.

Have you ever seen a slide? You know, old school vacation images? That is one frame of 35mm film. A movie has 24 of those per second of film. A two hour film is thousands of feet. You have to have a process that ensures the color and contrast are consistent not just thru one print but all prints. The DP or cinematographer will watch various prints and check the quality before giving the OK.

Then there is sound encoding. Besides the standard optical track, there are several ‘digital’ sound tracks. Dolby digital, DTS, (do they still do SDDS?) All of those are put down on every print and it isn’t simple.

So, it’s expensive. One catch in the system, you do get a volumn discount, so if you are ordering 3000 prints, your cost per print can come down, and I’m sure the major studios get a break over the ‘little’ ones because they oder tens of thousands of prints per year where some small company my only order a few hundred. So a small art film, released by a true indie company, has even higher hurdles.

Oh and Monday morning is always a huge day for the distribution/exhibition industry. Many heated discussions are held on what movies will ‘hold’, or stay in a complex and which ones will go. The grosses of all the films are analyzed, one each and every screen and a hold or final decision is made.

The limited release model was the standard for movies prior to the 70s. Major films would go to one high-end theater in a handful of cities for a week (at least), then it would trickle down to other cities, or other theaters in the same city. A movie would open in New York and LA, but if you lived in Schenectady, it would be a few weeks before it got there.

The idea was to create buzz by being exclusive, and the support the movie palaces by giving them first crack.

Eventually, people realized that opening up in thousands of screens got a bigger opening weekend, but until recently, the opening weekend was not the be-all of movies (now, you need a big opening).

Now, limited release is for films not expected to be blockbusters, or, occasionally, for good films that are hard to promote; the limited opening gives word of mouth a chance to build.

Beverly Hills Cop was the first movie to be released with over 1000 prints for it’s opening day.

When I was a kid, we didn’t get Star Wars in Oklahoma City until October or November.

And conversely, if you have a stinkeroo film, you will want to get it to lots of screens before word of mouth tells the audience not to go see it.