Curtains to Drop Early at Edwards

Edwards Theatres announced Wednesday that its Southern California cinemas will not show late-night movies on New Year’s Eve because the company expects only scant audiences.

The theater chain also said it will not have a midnight Imax debut of Disney’s “Fantasia 2000” at the Irvine Spectrum on New Year’s Eve, as it had planned, due to lack of interest.

The remade Disney classic will be shown on New Year’s Day, however, starting at 9:30 a.m., said David Ward, spokesman for Newport Beach-based Edwards Theatres Circuit.

The chain decided to have the last movies of the year begin at 8:30 p.m. because of a history of poor attendance during past New Year’s celebrations.

“We’ve found that late-night shows really don’t do well,” Ward said. “Who’d want to be in a dark theater at midnight New Year’s Eve?”

A spokesman for United Artists, which has a handful of screens in Orange County, said his company too will begin its last New Year’s Eve screenings between 8 and 8:30 p.m., as it has in previous years.

The Edwards Imax theater had considered a midnight debut of “Fantasia 2000” but scuttled it because of poor ticket sales, Ward said.

“Fantasia 2000” is an update and reworking of the 1940 animated classic. It features seven new sequences set to classical music.