Theater Firms Think Big to Bring Back ‘Lost’ Movie Patrons

Box office receipts are down, and the home video market is thriving. So movie theaters are doomed.

Right?

Wrong, if the amount of building, buying and renovating is any measure.

“There are no less than 1,000 new screens this year in the country (which has a total of about 20,000 screens), and some 1,500 are planned for next year in new and expanded locations,” said Robert Selig, president of the Theatre Assn. of California--a trade group representing the 2,000 motion-picture theaters in the state.

An estimated 10% to 12% of these are planned in California, which last year had the highest number of movie screens for any state in the nation. Texas was second, and New York was third.

Frills Are Back

More screens mean more competition, which theater owners are already getting in bushels from the home-entertainment industries.

To compete with each other and lure people away from their videocassette recorders and cable programs, theater owners are offering bigger, cleaner, more technologically advanced, comfortable and architecturally interesting facilities than have been built during the past couple decades.

The frills are back. Selig explained:

“Multiplex theaters that replaced movie palaces abandoned the glamour and illusion of going to a movie. There was no lowering of the lights and parting of the curtains, but now this is returning.

‘All Over America’

“Theater owners are still plexing (building more than one auditorium in a complex), but there is improved seating and the latest in sound and projection--all aimed at making moviegoing an event in competition with home entertainment.”

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, just returned from Austin, Tex., where he visited a complex that has, he said, “sound that embraces you, brand new seats that have lumbar support, a rocking effect and a head rest; floors that are canted so you can see over the tops of other heads, and large screens.”

“This is happening all over America,” he noted. “These theaters are especially good for viewing epics. You can’t duplicate that experience in your den.”

But theater owners didn’t design these theaters just for showing epics. “It is a reaction to a changing society where more alternative entertainment possibilities exist than a decade ago,” Valenti agreed. “Now we have satellite earth stations that enable up to a thousand TV stations to be picked up.

Building Larger Theaters

“We have cable with 40 or 50 channels. And, of course, we have the VCR. All are part of a new environment, and the theater owners, who are smart, are gearing up to meet this new competition.”

No theaters are being built the size of the movie palaces of the ‘20s and ‘30s, which had several thousand seats in a single auditorium. But neither are there any theaters being built like the multiplex, pillbox type that have catered to 100 or so patrons at a time in shopping centers for the past several years.

Bernard Myerson, president and chairman of board of the New York-based Loews Corp. movie theater chain, said, “We’re building some 40,000- to 60,000-square-foot complexes in metropolitan New York and Texas with auditoriums from 400 to 900 seats.”

Loews is known as the senior citizen of movie theater operators. “I think we opened our first (movie house) in 1908,” Myerson said. But even a relative upstart such as Mann’s, which has built many shopping center movie complexes, just opened a sixplex in Denver with auditoriums ranging in size from 200 to 400 seats.

Increasing Its Holdings

American Multi Cinema, which purports to have introduced multi-screens in 1962, is also building several complexes and plans to increase its holdings from 1,100 to 1,500 screens at this time next year to 2,000 in 1989, according to Robert L. Friedman, president of AMC International.

The building housing the 14 theaters expected to be under construction in July for AMC in the Century City Shopping Center will be “bigger than a football field,” Friedman added, and auditoriums there will seat from 200 to 550 people.

Selig said even many of the existing multiplex theaters with 100 to 175 seats are being expanded to seat 500, 600 and even 700 people, and the screens themselves are “changing to a ratio that fits the larger auditoriums.

“The ratio is being substantially increased from the early days of plexing, when there were postage-sized screens in cracker-box auditoriums,” said.

‘No Bad Seats’

Sometimes, he added, theater operators are experimenting with curved screens and something called “stereo surround-sound” to give viewers a sense of greater involvement.

The AMC theaters planned in Century City will have surround-sound, which Michael Strle, shopping center general manager, described as “computerized so there is optimum sound from each seat.” And the theaters will also have computer-designed, state-of-the-art floors--”so there are no bad seats (for viewing),” he added.

“They will also have a continuous-loop projection so that for block-buster films, one movie can appear on all 14 screens, or different movies can appear on each screen.”

Next to the theaters will be what Greg Rutkowski, AMC vice president-west operations, called an “international, gourmet food court to accommodate theater users.”

He also anticipates “some exceptional marketing” at the theaters, which are due to open next spring or early summer. Asked if promotions might be like those in a new theater complex in Belgium where the ushers wore safari hats to tie in with the movie “Out of Africa,” he said, “Sure, I think we’ll see things like that happening in Century City.”

Friedman said, “We take pride that our theaters are not just a screen and a seat.”

Robert Sunshine of the Theatre Equipment Assn. in New York, said that AMC architects are working on new theater configurations “to bring people closer to the screen.” One way is to turn the theater from a vertical to horizontal position so that the projection length is shorter, he explained.

AMC also conducts academies to train personnel in how to treat customers and maintain theaters.

Theater owners are generally trying to provide “better patron services,” Selig said, “and that includes cleaning up (spilled drinks and popcorn) between performances. We’ve also had trouble with talking in the audience--something we think was born and bred with videocassettes in the homes. Theater owners are starting to use ushers more to tap people on the shoulders and keep things under control.”

‘Like Going to Restaurant’

The aim of all these efforts is to get people into the moviegoing habit so they go more frequently.

“We want going to the movies to be like going to a restaurant, where people go even though they don’t know what they’re going to order,” Friedman said.

His company is carrying the concept beyond U. S. shores.

In January, AMC International opened its first theater complex out of the country in the town of Milton Keynes, 35 miles northwest of London. It is a 10-plex in a triangular-shaped, 85,000-square-foot building that Jonas Rosenfield, president of American Film Marketing in Los Angeles, said “revolutionized exhibition in England, which had been on a steady slide with dilapidated, run-down theaters for the past 10 to 15 years.”

Theaters Opened Abroad

AMC is the first American company to open theaters abroad in years, Friedman noted. “A number of circuits had theaters overseas before the (1948) Paramount decree forced producers and distributors to divest because of unfair competition,” Selig explained, “but those are largely gone now. AMC is really pioneering this new movement.”

AMC is negotiating to operate theaters in Sidney, Australia; Singapore, Japan and Germany.

At the same time, however, the Hoyts Corp. of Australia and Cinema International Corp. N. V. (CIC), a Dutch company, agreed in principle to participate in a joint venture for construction and operation of luxurious multi-cinemas across Australia. Paramount Pictures and MCA are equal shareholders of CIC.

Several U. S. distributors are expanding their exhibition interests, although a handful--Fox, Warner and MGM--must get federal court permission, according to the Paramount consent decrees to acquire theaters, Fred Haynes, assistant chief of the U. S. Justice Department, explained.

Acquisition Plans

Cannon Group announced its intention in May to acquire Commonwealth Theatres in the Midwest; Columbia Pictures Industries bought Walter Reade Organization last January, and Paramount Pictures agreed in principle to acquire 24 Trans-Lux theater screens earlier this month. Cannon already owned theaters in Great Britain, and Paramount owned theaters in Canada.

Cineplex Odeon out of Canada has purchased a couple of American theater circuits and is planning to joint venture an 18-screen complex with MCA in MCA’s 420-acre entertainment headquarters in Universal City.

Lawrence D. Spungin, executive vice president of MCA Development Co., said, “It should be the centerpiece to the whole Cineplex chain” but noted that specifics are “still a bit premature.” “We’re still developing plans,” he explained, but construction is expected to begin after Labor Day and be completed by mid-summer, 1987.

Cineplex Odeon is also involved in restoration, giving what Spungin termed “a new look” to the run-down Gordon and Fairfax theaters in Los Angeles. “They’re both Art Deco,” he said.

Divided Old Landmark

Like Allen Michaan’s Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland. Michaan, owner/president of Renaissance Rialto Theatres in San Francisco, took the old landmark, divided it into two auditoriums--one with 900 seats, the other with 500 seats--and turned adjacent retail space into two other theaters, one with 200 seats, the other with 300 seats, one with an Egyptian atmosphere, the other with a Moorish style.

His current project is the Fox in Oakland, a 3,600-seat single-screen national landmark he described as “an elaborate, elaborate theater, an Indian Brahmanian temple.” In turning the theater, vacant for 12 years, into several auditoriums, he intends to maintain the style.

“We have our own ornamental plaster shop, and we do the design, clay sculptures and molds for our interior decoration work. Then we have it painted and installed,” he said. “We try to offer our audiences something different.

“For example, the Egyptian theater has twinkling stars that we created for the ceiling, and we also put in a Tiffany window at the Grand Lake.”

‘Different From Home’

He also bought a Wurlitzer organ and installed it at the Grand Lake for intermission entertainment. How about adding vaudeville? “We might at the Fox,” he replied. “Its stage is large enough.”

Roger Brown, Grand Lake theater manager, called Michaan “the guy who figured out that people will go to theaters because they’re different from home, but if you push them into little shoe boxes, they won’t go out.”

Box-office figures show they’re not going out as much as in the past. Movies made an estimated $3.75 billion in 1985, in contrast with $4.03 billion in 1984, according to a report in the trade magazine Variety, and the top 25 grossing films from Jan. 1 through Memorial Day brought in $54.4 million, compared with $66 million for the top 25 for the same period last year.

In the meantime, Allen Schlosser of the Electronic Industries Assn., said that as of June 1, “we believe that the household penetration for VCRs is at 35%.” He expects $13.2 million in VCR sales this year, in contrast with $11.9 million in 1985.

Market Researched

“For the first five months of this year, we’re running 17.5% of last year’s pace for the same time period,” he said, “so $13.2 million could be conservative.” Since 1981, he’s seen a tenfold increase in VCR sales.

So what makes theater owners and others who are building, buying and renovating optimistic?

“Because professional research indicates there is a market,” Selig said.

Videocassettes aren’t a threat, he emphasized, “because motion picture theaters are and will remain the primary market. The video and motion picture industries depend on us to sell a picture. You can’t develop word-of-mouth advertising from three people sitting at home, watching a movie and drinking beer.”

Distributors control first-run movies and how long it takes for them to appear on movie channels and on cassettes, he added.

Viewed in Positive Way

Larry Gleason, new head of distribution of Dino De Laurentiis Corp., views the current activity to upgrade theaters in a positive way “because the quality of presentation has a lot to do with distributors’ gross and potential.”

And Robert Wise--who produced and directed “The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story” and other award-winning films--said, “All of us who make films think this activity is a very good step forward.

“I’m terribly pleased to see theaters rebuilt, revitalized, and built new. Over the years, so many theaters were let go. Now more are being freshened up and kept clean. The whole atmosphere is more conducive to encouraging people to come for an evening out.”

He attributed the decline at the box office to the type of pictures being shown. “I assume the quality is not as strong as last year,” he said.

Saw Frequent Threats

Hugh Thomas thinks the same. At 67, he works as a projectionist for Metropolitan Theatres Corp. in Palm Desert. “But I’ve been in this business all my life,” he said. “I owned and opened theaters. The industry and I were infants at the same time.”

Through the years, he saw the movie theaters threatened by radio, phonographs, the Depression and World War II.

“TV was going to kill off movie theaters, but TV survived at first with nothing but old movies,” he reminisced.

Movie theaters survived then as they will now, he said, despite the inroads video sales have made on the box office.

‘Nicer Than Living Room’

“Studies have shown that home video viewing is strongest during the first year of ownership and then it drops off significantly,” he noted.

Anyway, he figures amenities like the new chairs his firm imported from France “with arm rests as big as a gallon jug” and “sound and projection that is unsurpassed” will help. “The theater lobby must be nicer than a person’s living room,” he said. “Otherwise, why go out?”

Still, he argues that the most important thing in a movie theater is the movie:

“If you have a picture that somebody really wants to see, they’ll pay you $50 to see it in an outhouse.”

Myerson says there is “a lot of overbuilding (of movie theaters).”

But Richard Graff, president of marketing and distribution for MGM Entertainment Co., said, “In this business, there are good times, and there are not so good times, and when we have good pictures, there aren’t enough screens.”