Boxoffice - April 2018

$6.95
APRIL 2018
T H E 2 0 1 8 C I N E M A C O N I S S U E
COVER STORY
JAMES CAMERON AND
ROBERT RODRIGUEZ
TEAM UP TO BRING
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL
TO THE BIG SCREEN
PAGE 88
The Official Magazine of the National Association of Theatre Owners

hello
>> Our industry is naturally
drawn to using superlatives, and
we won’t be making any exceptions
for this year’s CinemaCon.
With an all-time high of 11
studio presentations, the latest
edition promises to be bigger
and better than ever before. This
month’s issue of Boxoffice is a
good indication of the event’s growing magnitude; the
magazine you’re currently holding features an unprecedented
number of pages and advertisers, along with
contributions from writers covering the latest trends
and topics in global exhibition. The health and vitality
of this industry are visible in these pages, especially as
Boxoffice enters its 98th year of publication—a strong
signal of the momentum in our industry.
The exhibition business is taking a global turn. This
multinational trend not only applies to the world’s major
exhibition circuits—evidenced in our Global Giants of
Exhibition ranking (page 118)—but also to the host of
vendors who, like our teams at Boxoffice and Webedia
Movies Pro, have colleagues in offices around the world.
This transition goes beyond business headlines,
encapsulating important advances in expanding the
moviegoing experience—such as the recent lifting of a
35-year ban on cinemas in Saudi Arabia. NATO’s John
Fithian will be moderating a discussion on the newly
opened market with a panel of some of the industry’s
most influential figures on the first day of CinemaCon.
Achievements like the one in Saudi Arabia highlight the
importance of a collaborative approach to ensure that
cinemas maintain and prolong their current standing
as a premium entertainment option. I understand this
to be one of the top priorities of the Global Cinema
Federation (GCF) for the coming years. Cinépolis CEO
Alejandro Ramírez Magaña (interviewed on page 134),
who serves as the chair of the Global Cinema Federation,
is the recipient of this year’s NATO Marquee
Award and will participate in a one-on-one discussion
on the GCF alongside the UNIC’s Phil Clapp following
the International Day Luncheon at CinemaCon.
Incidentally, our rapidly globalizing industry has
helped bring about a welcome wave of inclusion and
diversity, just as Hollywood studios begin to capitalize
on the rewards of inclusiveness when it comes to their
tentpole productions. Some of the biggest box office hits
from the last 12 months have embraced diversity—Black
Panther, Wonder Woman, and Coco to name a few—a
trend I hope becomes a cornerstone of this industry.
As the exhibition community grows to be more
inclusive, we are also seeing shrinking barriers when it
comes to understanding the habits of cinema audiences.
Digital ticketing and marketing for cinemas is currently
undergoing a major revolution as distributors, exhibitors,
and vendors all begin to discover the potential
rewards that data analytics can bring.
We have begun to keep track of that growth with the
launch of Boxoffice Profile, our business-intelligence
platform developed in collaboration with the French
data research firm Vertigo. You can find an excerpt of
our initial results in this issue (page 120); it examines
audience demographics around the release of Tomb
Raider and analyzes the moviegoer’s journey from finding
a show time to anticipating the title for his or her
next visit to a cinema.
The current energy around innovation in this industry
reminds me of a phrase that appeared behind my
Webedia Movies Pro colleague Stan Ruszkowski as he
was presenting at the UK Cinema Association’s conference
in London last month: “Moviegoing has never been
more exciting.” While the threats and challenges loom as
large as ever, we must also keep sight of the key opportunities
this era can bring. It’s a pivotal time for moviegoing,
and we couldn’t be more excited to continue
covering it in this and all future issues of Boxoffice.
Julien Marcel
Chief Executive Officer
Boxoffice Media / Webedia Movies Pro
2 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

2018 VOL. 154 NO. 4
COVER STORY
FIRST LOOK
88 128
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL
Producer Jon Landau and director Robert Rodriguez bring the
iconic manga character to life.
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely speak
with Boxoffice about their working in the MCU.
THE AWARD WINNERS
NATO MARQUEE AWARD: ALEJANDRO RAMÍREZ MAGAÑA, CINÉPOLIS 134
CINEMACON HALL OF FAME: TOM CRUISE 140
EXCELLENCE IN EVENT CINEMA: THE WALT DISNEY STUDIOS 186
BERT NATHAN MEMORIAL AWARD: BRIAN BIEHN 188
COMSCORE BOX OFFICE ACHIEVEMENT: THE WALT DISNEY STUDIOS 190
CINEMACON PASSEPARTOUT AWARD: KURT RIEDER 192
CAREER ACHIEVEMENT IN EXHIBITION: ROBERT CARRADY 194
TRADE SHOW PREVIEW
& NEW PRODUCTS
Event Cinema Association Conference / 72
Event Cinema Sees Strong Growth Around the World / 80
MPAA Chief Talks World Exhibition / 84
Can Hollywood Remain Relevant as Chinese Tastes Change? / 102
Global Giants of Exhibition / 118
OnScreen 204
ANNOUNCING
THE INDEPENDENT CINEMA ALLIANCE
100
INTRODUCING
BOXOFFICE PROFILE
BY VERTIGO
A brand-new market research initiative
designed to gather demographic data on
key elements of a consumer’s moviegoing
experience
Avengers: Infinity Wars / Disobedience / Backstabbing for Beginners / I Feel Pretty / Overboard
Racer and the Jailbird / Tully / Breaking In / Revenge / The Seagull / Life of the Party / Book Club
Deadpool 2 / On Chesil Beach / Pope Francis: A Man of His Word / Show Dogs / Solo: A Star Wars Story
8 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

CONTENTS
DEPARTMENTS
2 HELLO
16 EXHIBITION BRIEFS
40 EXECUTIVE SUITE
44 PROGRAMMING
46 NATO NEWS
48 CHARITY SPOTLIGHT
50 INDIE FOCUS brought to you by Spotlight Cinema Networks
56 INVESTOR RELATIONS
58 SOCIAL MEDIA
62 MOBILE TICKETING
70 CARA NEWS
94 COMMUNITY OUTREACH
102 CHINA MARKET
104 IMMERSIVE CINEMA
106 CLASSIC CINEMA
114 EXHIBITOR MARKETING
126 LEVERAGING INNOVATION brought to you by Atom Tickets
200 3D CALENDAR brought to you by RealD
202 EVENT CINEMA CALENDAR
218 BOOKING GUIDE
224 MARKETPLACE
Boxoffice Magazine has served as the official publication of the National
Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) since 2007. As part of this
partnership, Boxoffice is proud to feature exclusive columns from
NATO while retaining full editorial freedom throughout its pages. As
such, the views expressed in Boxoffice, except for columns signed by
NATO executives, neither reflect a stance nor endorsement from the
National Association of Theatre Owners.
BOXOFFICE ® (ISSN 0006-8527), Volume 154, Number 4, April 2018. BOXOFFICE ® is published
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APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 11

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EXHIBITION BRIEFS
GOODBYE PIZZA, HELLO COSMIC CINEMAS’ KITCHEN
IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME–BUT FIRST YOU HAVE TO SMASH IT.
COMING SOON: ENTRYWAY, TICKETS, AND BAR
COSMIC CINEMAS MAKES HUDSON, NY, DEBUT
>> Cosmic Cinemas is putting the finishing
touches on its debut restaurant/movie theater
concept, which will offer fresh, made-to-order appetizers,
entrées, beer and wine, and mixed drinks
before and during the showing of first-run films.
Other special programming will include celebrity
appearances, premieres, and themed festivals.
Renovations include a lounge with an expansive
bar and theaters equipped with luxury seats, stateof-the-art
screens, and sound systems.
The Cosmic Cinemas business model, with its
focus on adults, stands apart from other movie
theaters. Cosmic’s beverage menu caters to a more
sophisticated palate, and a parent or guardian must
accompany children under 17 years old. Additionally,
no babies, talking, or cell phones are permitted
in the theaters.
Cosmic Cinemas’ CEO Terrell Braly explained
the concept this way: “We want to give the mature
movie lover the experience of watching a movie
the way it was meant to be. We want to provide
the very best in an exceptional dinner and movie
experience without the distractions.
“The genesis of Cosmic Cinemas coming to
the Hudson Valley was the result of our curiosity
about the massive buzz Hudson is generating,”
said Braly. “It felt like the early days of Austin and
Asheville where we had opened theaters, plus with
the unmatchable benefit of proximity to New York
City. The opportunity to become a part of the buzz
was presented by Kevin Parisi, president of Trinity
Real Estate Group, and here we are.”
The grand opening is slated for Friday, May
18, 2018.
ARTS ALLIANCE MEDIA APPOINTS NEW CEO
>> Arts Alliance Media (AAM) has announced the appointment
of Patrick Foley as its new CEO, as a result of the planned departure
of John Aalbers.
Following the sale of AAM to Luxin-Rio late last year, Aalbers
decided to hand over the reins in order to pursue a number of
other interests and opportunities.
Jiang Dong, chairman of Luxin-Rio, said, “Under John’s leadership
and vision, Arts Alliance Media has become the preeminent
software provider to the cinema industry. We are looking
forward to the significant opportunities Arts Alliance Media has
within the Luxin-Rio group under Pat’s steadfast leadership.”
Foley has been with Arts Alliance Media for over 12 years.
He joined as chief financial officer and two years ago took up the
position of chief operating officer. He was instrumental in the
development of AAM’s VPF solution and helped drive the recent
investment efforts that led to AAM being acquired by Luxin-Rio.
Foley commented, “I am delighted to be given the opportunity
to stand at the helm of a company I have dedicated so much
of my time to developing. Digital cinema is currently undergoing
a major transformation with VPF coming to an end, unique
innovations changing the cinema-going experience, and new
technologies driving increased reliability and efficiency. I look
forward to leading AAM forward and helping our customers
across the world in these exciting times.”
Foley formally undertook CEO responsibilities in March
2018 and is replaced as chief operating officer by Rachel Dixon,
formerly the program director at Arts Alliance Media.
16 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

EXHIBITION BRIEFS
CARRIE DIETRICH JOINS WEBEDIA AS VP,
EXHIBITOR RELATIONS
>> Webedia Movies Pro, a provider of digital
solutions and marketing services for the
global cinema industry, has announced the
addition of Carrie Dietrich as the company’s
new vice president of exhibitor relations.
Dietrich joins Webedia after serving a
four-year term as the national sales director
at Jack Roe USA. Previously, Dietrich formed
part of the sales team for Ready Theatre Systems
from 2007 to 2014. She will be based in
Knoxville, Tennessee, and tasked with providing
sales and support to Webedia’s exhibition
clients. Dietrich will represent the company
at key conventions and trade shows across the
United States.
“We have known Carrie for a very long
time; she has always struck us with her professionalism
and commitment to the exhibition
community,” said Webedia Movies Pro
CEO Julien Marcel. “We are very excited to
have her as part of our team at CinemaCon
2018.”
Webedia employs more than 150 professionals
in offices in Los Angeles, Connecticut,
Glasgow (Scotland), and Paris (France). The
company specializes in providing digital
solutions and data services to the exhibition
industry, including show time syndication,
digital marketing and ticketing, business
intelligence, and B2B publishing. Webedia
Movies Pro acquired Boxoffice Media in 2014
and is the current publisher of this magazine.
HARKINS ANNOUNCES $150M
ENHANCEMENT INITIATIVE
>> Harkins Theatres has announced plans
to invest over $150 million into their
existing theaters nationwide as part of a
continual enhancement effort. Construction
has already begun and all theaters will
remain open throughout the process.
“For 85 years Harkins has been committed
to delivering the ultimate moviegoing
experience,” said Mike Bowers,
president and CEO of Harkins Theatres.
“We have the most loyal guests in the
industry, and we will never take this for
granted. We recognize that we are entertaining
our friends, families, and communities
in our theaters. Reinvestment
in our theaters with these new amenities
is an effort to show our gratitude to our
loyal guests and ensure that we always
deliver on our promise.”
“We never want to succeed by
default,” said Dan Harkins, owner of
Harkins Theatres. “We will be relentless
in each situation, to ensure that we have
the superior theater with the superior
amenities. If the competition has silver,
we will have gold.”
The newly renovated Scottsdale 101
has been unveiled and construction is
nearly complete at the Chandler Fashion
20 and Arrowhead 18 theaters. Construction
is also under way at a number of other
Phoenix theaters. Individual theater details
will become available as construction
begins on each location. New amenities
include: Harkins Ultimate Lounger seats;
reserved seating; CINÉ1 auditoriums;
Dolby Atmos object-based 3-D sound and
state-of-the-art laser projection systems;
in-lobby bars/lounges; and fully updated
and upgraded lobby finishes and decor.
18 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

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EXHIBITION BRIEFS
STAR CINEMA GRILL TO OPEN NEW LOCATION
>> Star Cinema Grill has signed a long-term lease in CityPlace at Springwoods
Village in Houston, Texas, for a 1,400-seat, 10-screen theater.
Star Cinema Grill is a Houston-based dine-in-theater concept that offers
its guests first-run film releases, an extensive menu, and a full-service bar
with a wide selection of beer, wine, and spirits. This location will have offerings
including laser-projection technology, heated and cooled luxury recliner
seating, large-format movie screens, Dolby Atmos sound, and an upscale,
modern decor. The theater is slated to open in the second quarter of 2019.
CityPlace will be Star Cinema Grill’s 10th location, which includes District
Theatres and Hollywood Palms Cinema in Naperville, Illinois.
“We are thrilled to be a part of this exciting new development,” said John
Walsh, vice president of operations, Star Cinema Grill. “This first-class center is
a great fit for our brand, and we look forward to being able to bring our unique
experience and premium amenities to more guests in the greater Houston area.”
“We are delighted to have Star Cinema coming to CityPlace,” said Robert
Fields, president and CEO of development company Patrinely Group. “It’s exactly
the type of experience we are looking for and is a critical part of creating an 18-
hour location. We are actively marketing the balance of the retail and are receiving
tremendous interest. We hope to be making other announcements soon.”
CityPlace is a 60-acre fully integrated, mixed-use development that will provide
the Houston community with a new destination of choice that integrates
working, shopping, and living, and will include, when fully developed, 4 million
square feet of Class A office space with 400,000 square feet of integrated
retail space, including shops, restaurants, and entertainment options, as well as
the full-service Marriott CityPlace hotel and luxury multifamily projects.
“With ExxonMobil, Southwestern Energy, and CHI St. Luke’s Health
Medical Campus in place, and ABS HQs and HP Inc. campus under way, we
will have more than 15,000 highly skilled, well-paid employees and residents
within Springwoods Village, all of whom need and want access to quality retail
amenities,” said Warren Wilson, executive vice president of CDC Houston.
“The addition of Star Cinema Grill is another step in creating a new urban
center in north Houston: a truly walkable, sustainable mixed-use destination.”
Springwoods Village is a 2,000-acre, mixed-use community situated along the
west side of Interstate 45 between Springwoods Village Parkway and the Grand
Parkway. Designed for sustainability, when completed the nature-inspired residential
and commercial community will provide diverse housing options, civic
facilities, outdoor recreation, and the 60-acre CityPlace.
GAUMONT PATHÉ EXEC TO RECEIVE UNIC
AWARD
>> Jean-Pierre Decrette, until recently director
of development at Cinémas Gaumont Pathé, has
been named as the 2018 recipient of the UNIC
Achievement Award, given each year in recognition
of outstanding dedication and service to
European cinema exhibition. The award will
be presented as part of the CineEurope awards
ceremony on Thursday, June 14, at the Centre de
Convencions Internacional de Barcelona (CCIB)
in Barcelona, Spain.
After being named CEO of the Pathé Palace in
1995, Decrette became director of development for
Les Cinemas Gaumont Pathé, the largest cinema
operator in France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland,
in addition to its operations in Belgium.
In that role, Decrette was integral in establishing
the company as one of the most widely recognized
names in European cinema exhibition, with
over 1,000 screens across more than 100 theaters.
Les Cinémas Gaumont Pathé’s position at the
forefront of cinematic innovation is a testament to
its continuous efforts to improve the cinema-going
experience for audiences, in no small part thanks
to Decrette’s dedication, knowledge of the sector,
and passion for the big-screen experience.
A respected leader within the French cinema
industry, Decrette is also deputy president of
La Fédération Nationale des Cinémas Français
(FNCF), senior vice president of the Union Internationale
des Cinémas / International Union of
Cinemas (UNIC), and on the board of directors
of UNICINE. Furthermore, he served on the
board of the Cannes Film Festival between 2014
and 2018 and was president of the French cinema
industry professionals’ association BLIC in 2013
and 2016.
Welcoming the announcement of the award,
Phil Clapp, president of UNIC, said: “This
UNIC award represents long-overdue recognition
of the immense contribution that Jean-Pierre
Decrette has made not just to Les Cinémas
Gaumont Pathé and the French cinema industry,
but also to the cause of European film and cinema
over a long and hugely successful career.
I would in particular like to place on record
my appreciation—and I am sure that of all
UNIC colleagues—for the support that Jean-
Pierre has given our organization over the last
decade and more.”
22 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

EXHIBITION BRIEFS
SAMSUNG DEBUTS 3-D CINEMA LED SCREEN THEATER IN
SWITZERLAND
>> Samsung Electronics has recently introduced the world’s
first 3-D Cinema LED screen at Arena Cinemas’ Sihlcity theater
in Switzerland.
Designed and installed with the help of Imaculix AG, the
3-D-ready variation of Samsung’s Cinema LED screen maintains
consistent brightness for immaculate delivery of subtitle text,
images, and minor visual details for viewers wearing 3-D glasses.
Unlike standard 3-D cinemas, the Samsung Cinema LED screen
provides consistent picture quality across an entire theater,
ensuring a uniform, immersive viewing experience for viewers in
every seat.
“Samsung is thrilled to be able to debut the world’s first 3-D
Cinema LED screen in Switzerland,” said Seog-gi Kim, executive
vice president of visual display business at Samsung Electronics.
“We hope that more moviegoers can experience the Cinema
LED screen firsthand as we look to partner with more theaters
around the world.”
As the industry’s first Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI)–certified
high dynamic range theater display, the Samsung Cinema
LED screen invites Swiss consumers into a next-generation viewing
experience. Stretching nearly 10.3 meters (33.8 ft.) wide and
5.4 meters (17.7 ft.) in height, and featuring nearly 9 million
pixels, Samsung’s Cinema LED screen delivers exceptional visual
quality, technical performance, and reliability.
The Samsung Cinema LED display amplifies on-screen
content through HDR picture quality. All visuals shine through
ultra-sharp 4K resolution (4,096 × 2,160) and peak brightness
levels nearly 10 times greater (146fL) than the common cinema
standard (14fL). The resulting high contrast showcases bright
colors, pristine whites, and deep blacks, making it perfect for
both 2-D and 3-D movies. It is paired with state-of-the-art
audio technologies from HARMAN International’s JBL Professional
brand.
“Zurich is one of Europe’s burgeoning hubs for the film
industry and an optimal location to introduce a pioneering technology
like the Cinema LED screen to the region,” said Eduard
Stöckli, owner of Arena Cinemas. “The display’s streamlined
design also allows our Sihlcity theater to remove its projector
closet, making room for additional seats and allowing us to
deliver a more complete, comfortable, and innovative setting for
our guests.”
First introduced in July 2017, Samsung’s Cinema LED screen
has been successfully installed in theaters in Seoul and Busan,
Korea, and Shanghai, China. The Arena Cinemas partnership
marks the first implementation of Samsung’s Cinema LED display
in Europe and is the world’s first 3-D Cinema LED screen.
26 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

DCDC REPORTS RECORD GROWTH
>> Digital Cinema Distribution
Coalition (DCDC) is reporting double-digit
growth in 2017. The North
American theatrical content distribution
company, founded by AMC Theatres,
Cinemark Theatres, Regal Entertainment
Group (now owned by Cineworld plc),
Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros.
Entertainment, has seen its customer base
expand to more than 250 independent,
small- and medium-size exhibitors and 50
content providers, including all the top
theater circuits and major studios.
DCDC has delivered over 1,000 features
(including 163 versions) and more
than 150 events and special content to
theaters, totaling over 1 million deliveries
between its launch in 2013 through
2017. Of particular interest is the increase
DCDC has experienced in events: 750
percent since its first year of operation.
DCDC has also delivered 735,000 trailers
over this same period.
Transponder usage has accordingly almost
doubled as a result of the increased
volume of content.
Randy Blotky, CEO of DCDC, said,
“These numbers reflect the fulfillment
of our initial pledge to not only protect
the integrity of the content, but to also
create a pioneering business model, one
designed to accrue economic benefits
equally to all, be realistic to achieve and
compelling to both our exhibitor and
content-provider customers.”
DCDC now has nearly 2,900 locations
and over 31,800 screens under
contract after seeing the number of
theaters in its network leap by double
digits in each of the past three years,
up from nearly 1,300 sites at launch in
October 2013.
To accommodate the growth and prepare
for further advancements in content
delivery technology, DCDC has added
staff and expanded to new Century City
quarters this past year.
VISION III IMAGING ANNOUNCES
ALLIANCE WITH SCREENVISION
>> Vision III Imaging Inc. has entered
into a sales promotion agreement with
cinema advertising company Screenvision
Media. Together they will make the v3
glasses-free 3-D imaging technologies
available nationwide.
Vision III is a Reston, Virginia–based
company that has developed parallax
visualization technologies that enhance
the three-dimensionality of commercial
and military imaging. Vision III has
pioneered the concept of “parallax over
time” to create spatially enhanced viewer
perceptions on standard displays like
theatrical screens and in-lobby monitors.
The Vision III technologies are marketed
under the v3 and Real Shot brand names
(collectively the v3 technologies).
Real Shot is a patented technology
that creates a three-dimensional
appearance. Real Shot advertising and
promos can be distributed, displayed,
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 27

EXHIBITION BRIEFS
and viewed without the use of any additional
software, special glasses/screens,
or other equipment.
Vision III has developed patented v3
optical technologies for capturing and
displaying three-dimensionally enhanced
live-action imagery. v3 creates a three-dimensional
“window” appearance with
enhanced shapes and textures. Similar to
its companion Real Shot, v3 imagery can
be distributed, displayed, and viewed as
easily as normal video.
“In the competitive landscape of
differentiating your brand, we are enthusiastic
about the prospects of providing
a frictionless and glassless experience for
consumers to engage with brands within
3-D,” said John McCauley, chief strategic
development officer, Screenvision
Media. “The v3 technologies are perfect
for differentiating brand advertising from
all the surrounding 2-D content. We’re
excited to offer advertisers this opportunity
starting within our exhibitor lobbies,
and are interested in the potential future
possibilities to utilize this technology on
the big screen.”
Screenvision Media plans to make the
v3 technologies available in-lobby to advertisers
across the company’s 2,300-plus
theater network starting in the second
quarter of 2018.
CINEMARK TO REMODEL LUFKIN, TX,
THEATER
>> Cinemark Holdings Inc. will remodel
its Cinemark Lufkin 12 theater. The renovation
and upgrade will include adding
Luxury Lounger reclining seats to all auditoriums.
Cinemark Luxury Loungers are
electric-powered, plush, oversize lounge
chairs with footrests and cup holders. The
seating conversion and enhancements to
the theater will begin this summer.
“We are excited to begin this remodel
soon so the community can experience
their favorite films in the most comfortable,
state-of-the-art environment available,”
said James Meredith, Cinemark’s
SVP of marketing and communications.
“Our Luxury Lounger installation should
be completed just in time for November’s
blockbuster films like Aquaman and Dr.
Seuss’ The Grinch.”
Features and benefits of the Cinemark
Lufkin 12 include a full-service
concessions stand; online ticketing at
cinemark.com; Tuesday Discount Day
with $5.25 ticket pricing; $5.99 tickets
for seniors every Monday; and $5.99
early bird pricing daily.
NCM APPOINTS SEGALL AND
TEPERBERG TO BOARD
>> National CineMedia Inc. has announced
that Mark Segall and Renana
Teperberg have been appointed to its
board of directors.
Mark Segall is the owner and managing
director of Kidron Corporate Advisors
LLC, a New York–based mergers and
acquisitions corporate advisory boutique
founded in 2003, and is the CEO of
Kidron Capital Advisors LLC since 2009.
Previously, he served as the co-chief executive
officer of Investec Inc. from 2001
to 2003, following his role as Investec’s
head of investment banking and general
counsel. Prior to that, he was a partner at
the law firm of Kramer, Levin, Naftalis &
Frankel LLP, specializing in cross-border
mergers and acquisitions and capital markets
activities. Segall has over two decades
of board leadership experience at both
public and private companies, giving him
the ability to offer guidance to NCM and
its operations.
Renana Teperberg has served as chief
commercial officer of Cineworld Group
plc since 2016 and senior VP commercial
from 2014 to 2015. Prior to that
time, she served as head of programming
and marketing for Cinema City International
from 2002 to 2013. On February
28, 2018, Cineworld Group plc acquired
the parent corporation of Regal.
Teperberg has extensive experience in
the cinema industry, which enables her
to share with the board suggestions
about how similarly situated companies
effectively assess and undertake business
considerations and opportunities.
Commenting on the director change,
NCM CEO Andy England said, “I
welcome our new directors designated
as a result of Cineworld’s acquisition of
Regal Entertainment Group. Mark and
Renana have tremendous board and
cinema industry experience, and I look
forward to working together with them
and benefiting from the fresh perspectives
on exhibition and cinema advertising that
they bring to the table.”
FLIX TO OPEN BREWHOUSES IN THREE
NEW MARKETS
>> Flix Entertainment LLC, the operator
of Flix Brewhouse, a combination first-run
cinema and dine-in microbrewery, has
closed an equity investment from Twin
Point Capital and existing shareholders
to fund its continued growth and development.
The Round Rock, Texas–based
company, which now has four units, will
open its next four Flix Brewhouses in
Little Elm and El Paso, Texas, Madison,
Wisconsin, and Chandler, Arizona, with
more locations in the pipeline.
Allan Reagan, chief executive officer of
Flix Entertainment said, “We are excited
to bring the unique Flix cinema brewery
experience to customers in three new
markets in 2018 and intend to accelerate
the pace of openings beginning in 2019.”
Reagan added, “We are thrilled to be
partnering with the Twin Point team,
who bring a depth of experience in entertainment,
cinema exhibition, media, and
video content distribution. We are highly
aligned in our vision of creating superior
guest experiences through first-class locations,
award-winning food and beverages,
and, most importantly, investing in the
most talented people in the business. We
are a people-first culture.”
Matthew Baizer, chief operating officer
of Flix, added, “We look forward to
expanding our footprint of entertainment
destinations to many new locations and
creating thousands of new and rewarding
jobs in those communities. I look forward
to welcoming each and every one of our
new teammates to the Flix family.”
28 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

Twin Point managing partner Jonathan
Friesel said, “Our new partners at
Flix have built an outstanding organization
and we are deeply impressed by
the quality and uniqueness of the Flix
experience, as well as the dedication that
each Flix team member brings to delivering
a world-class experience to our
guests. We look forward to working with
Allan and his team to rapidly expand
Flix into new markets.”
The company was advised by Blue
Square Capital Advisors and its legal
counsel was Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.
Twin Point Capital was represented by
Locke Lord LLP.
CINERGY ENTERTAINMENT NAMES
NEW COO
Cinergy Entertainment Group announced
today the appointment of Darek
Heath as the new chief operating officer.
Heath started at Cinergy Entertainment
as the vice president of operations,
tackling a large-scale project to revamp
Cinergy’s culture and core values with
a targeted and clear vision. He assumes
his new role as chief operating officer as
Cinergy plans to open two new locations
this year in addition to expansion projects
slated for 2019 and beyond. He brings
his extensive background in operations to
execute an effective strategy that accommodates
Cinergy’s expansion.
“Cinergy is pleased to promote Darek
Heath to this new role. He brings close
to two decades worth of experience in
the cinema dining industry. His dynamic
energy and enthusiasm will continue to
inspire those in the field and at the home
office,” said Jeff Benson, founder and
CEO of Cinergy Entertainment Group.
Heath spent 13 years at Studio Movie
Grill, where he gained field experience as
a general manager and quickly worked
to become the director of operations.
Additionally, he served as vice president
of operations and vice president of
development from 2006 to 2012 before
becoming vice president of training
and recruiting in January 2013. Before
concluding his chapter with Studio
Movie Grill in 2015, Heath successfully
developed and launched the Studio
Movie Grill University, which focused on
teaching managers at all levels leadership
and management development. He
joined Dickey’s Barbecue as vice president
of training, quickly becoming the
vice president of operations. He joined
Cinergy Entertainment Group in August
2016 as the vice president of operations.
Cinergy Entertainment is excited for his
new appointment as the chief operating
officer and looks forward to an exciting
new year.
CINEMANEXT OPENS MIDDLE EAST &
AFRICA HEADQUARTERS IN DUBAI
CinemaNext has announced the official
opening of CinemaNext Middle East
& Africa (CinemaNext MEA) in Jebel Ali
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EXHIBITION BRIEFS
Free Zone, located in Dubai, United Arab
Emirates, and the appointment of cinema
industry professional Francois Inizan as
its general manager.
“Following last year’s opening of
our new office in Dallas (Texas), we are
moving full steam ahead with our development
farther east with the launch of a
new branch in Dubai to better meet the
growing demand of services from the dynamic
Middle East and African markets,”
said Till Cussmann, SVP CinemaNext.
“This new venture with Francois Inizan at
its head comes as an added driving force
to our current activities in Africa, where
we have permanent staff based in Casablanca
(Morocco). Over 130 installations
to date have been managed across Africa
by our skilled engineers and technicians.”
“I am thrilled to be joining CinemaNext
at a time when we are growing
our footprint in these emerging economies,
and ultimately we want to become
a key partner for Middle Eastern and
African cinema exhibitors,” said Inizan.
“Through this new implantation we aim
to further strengthen our position and
contribute to the excellence of the moviegoing
experience in emerging cinema
markets like Saudi Arabia and Africa. Our
portfolio of hardware and software solutions,
as well as our cutting-edge innovations
such as EclairColor HDR, Sphera
Premium Cinema, and EclairGame, has
proven to be efficient and quality driven.
We are eager to meet industry leaders and
key decision makers at the CinemaNext
MEA booth at the fourth annual Theme
Parks & Entertainment Development Forum
Middle East in Dubai on May 7–9.”
Francois Inizan began his career in
2001 as senior business development
manager with management consulting
company Altran before joining technology
giant Oracle as European key account
manager five years later. In 2009, he took
on his first international position with
telecom company SpeedCast in Hong
Kong as regional sales manager. Inizan
joined the motion picture industry in
2013 when he began working for 3-D
technology solution provider Volfoni
3-D. Working from Hong Kong as
regional sales director for MEA, he was
promoted in early 2017 to global head of
sales, relocating to Dubai.
CinemaNext is the largest cinema-exhibition
services company, with
29 offices located in 26 countries. It
provides comprehensive solutions, from
projection equipment, audio systems,
central systems, cinema outfitting and
seating, content management, 3-D projection
systems and glasses, TMS, digital
signage, and screens to services such as
consulting, design and project management,
equipment sales and financing,
installation, maintenance, support
(NOC), online monitoring, spare and
consumables, service agreements, and
supply chain and logistics.
THE SPACE CINEMA PROMOTES
GRANDINETTI
>> Vue International has announced
that Francesco Grandinetti, CFO at The
Space Cinema in Italy, has been promoted
to the new role of CFO and deputy
managing director.
For several years Grandinetti has been
a member of the senior team at The Space
Cinema, which operates 36 state-of-theart
cinemas with 362 screens in Italy.
The company says the promotion is in
recognition of the immense value that
Grandinetti has brought to the team and
the business over many years.
Toby Bradon, managing director, The
Space Cinema, said, “Francesco’s dedication
and hard work at The Space Cinema
and Vue International over the years is
widely recognized across the business
and the industry. He has always been a
fantastic support and a valuable member
of the team that has consistently kept the
business focused and moving forward.
“On behalf of everyone at The Space
Cinema and Vue, I would like to wish
Francesco congratulations for some
well-deserved recognition and best wishes
in this new leadership role.”
Grandinetti, actively involved in the
development of Warner Village Cinemas
in Italy, has over 20 years of experience in
the cinema industry, with proven skill in
business development, corporate finance,
legal, and real estate.
Grandinetti said, “Firstly, I would
like to thank Vue International and
The Space Cinema colleagues for their
continued support over all these years.
I have really enjoyed, and continue to
love, working in this fantastic business.
We are committed to delivering growth
in our cinema business with a solid plan
and investment, ensuring that The Space
Cinema is the first choice in cinema
entertainment in Italy.”
SAUDI ARABIA APPROVES FIRST LAW
FOR CINEMA
>> The Saudi Ministry of Culture and
Information has finalized the terms of licensing
to restore cinema in Saudi Arabia.
The move, part of the Vision 2030
initiative, opens up a domestic market
of over 32 million people. It is anticipated
that by 2030 the kingdom will have
opened more than 350 cinemas, with
over 2,500 screens.
The cinema licensing regulations cover
three types of licenses: cinema venue
development, exhibitor, and cinema
venue operating. Licensing has already
commenced.
In preparation, the ministry studied
and evaluated best practice regarding
cinema regulation in a number of international
markets and held extensive discussions
with relevant Saudi authorities.
“Vision 2030 aims to provide shared
experiences for Saudi families, which
will drive our cultural economy and
see an increase in families’ spending on
cultural and recreational activities from
2.9 percent to 6 percent by 2030,” said
Awwad Alawwad, minister of culture
and information.
“The restoration of cinema will be an
important lever to reach this goal, stimulating
economic growth and diversification,
creating more jobs, and enriching
the entertainment options here in Saudi
32 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

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EXHIBITION BRIEFS
Arabia, the largest such market in the
region,” Alawwad said.
In February, Vue International, a
cinema operator spanning 10 countries,
agreed on an MoU with Abdulmohsin
Al Hokair Holding Group to explore the
construction and operation of multiplex
cinemas in Saudi Arabia.
Last November, AMC Entertainment
signed an MoU with the Saudi Public
Investment Fund to explore commercial
opportunities, hoping to be able to build
and open a brand-new cinema theater by
the end of this year.
In December, the ministry announced
that commercial cinemas would be
allowed to operate in the kingdom as of
early 2018, for the first time in more than
35 years. The measure came as part of
the Vision 2030 under the leadership of
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
AMC CEO Adam Aron has called the
December announcement a “historic moment
for the theatrical exhibition industry”
and said that it was “a tremendous
opportunity to connect AMC’s movie
products with the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia’s more than 30 million citizens,
many of whom we know are movie fans
based on their regular visits to cinemas in
neighboring countries.”
IMAX ANNOUNCES DEAL WITH INDIA’S
PVR CINEMAS
>> IMAX Corporation and PVR Ltd.,
the largest exhibition chain in India, announced
an agreement for five new IMAX
theaters in India. The new IMAX theaters
will be located in major metropolitan
markets in a combination of new and
existing flagship PVR Multiplex cinemas.
The exhibitor currently operates a
total of seven IMAX theaters across India
that include sites that are among India’s
top-performing IMAX theaters of 2017.
Since the parties’ last theater deal in April
2017, PVR Cinemas has tripled its IMAX
commitment from five to a total of 15
theaters, strengthening the exhibitor’s position
as IMAX’s largest partner in India.
Today’s agreement brings IMAX’s theater
footprint in India to 31, with 14 currently
open and 17 contracted to open.
“Our agreement is a direct result
of the success of our IMAX box office
which, since 2016, has increased by 50
percent as the demand for IMAX among
moviegoers in India continues to build,”
said Ajay Bijli, chairman and managing
director, PVR Limited. “We are delighted
to strengthen our longstanding successful
partnership with IMAX, which we
view as a competitive advantage to help
solidify our leading position in India’s
exhibition market.”
“We are very encouraged by our
recent success and growth in India—
where our IMAX theaters are performing
extremely well at the box office and
where we have doubled our network
in the last two years. This momentum
would not be possible without the
support of PVR, a tremendous IMAX
advocate and world-class exhibitor,”
said Richard L. Gelfond, CEO, IMAX.
“India is the fourth-largest market by
box office and one we view as a longterm
growth opportunity. We also
continue to remaster more and more
Indian movies and had record-breaking
success with Padmaavat earlier this year.
We believe these factors, combined with
expanding our partnership with India’s
top exhibitor PVR, will help set the
stage for continued expansion in this
important emerging market.”
In January, IMAX released Viacom18
Motion Pictures’ film Padmaavat, which
marked the fourth local-language IMAX
Indian film release and the first to be
presented in the IMAX 3-D format.
Padmaavat is now the company’s highest-grossing
local Indian release and third
highest-grossing IMAX film overall in
the country. The company expects to
announce more Indian IMAX movies, as
well as more local-language Indian IMAX
releases, for this year.
AMC BOARD ELECTS WANDA’S ZENG
>> The board of directors of AMC Entertainment
Holdings Inc. has unanimously
elected Zeng Maojun (John Zeng) as
the non-executive chairman of the AMC
Entertainment board of directors.
Zeng is president of Wanda Film
Group and is Wanda’s most senior executive
in charge of all of Wanda’s film-related
activity, including Wanda Cinemas,
Wanda Films, and the Qingdao Movie
Metropolis. His appointment as AMC’s
chairman reflects Wanda’s continuing
commitment to AMC. Zeng has served
on the AMC board of directors since
February 2016. He replaces as board
chairman Lincoln Zhang, who has taken
on a new senior position within the
Wanda Group.
On his new role as non-executive chairman
of the AMC board of directors, Zeng
commented, “I appreciate the leadership of
Adam Aron as CEO and all the hard work
by the entire AMC management team to
put AMC in a position to succeed. I look
forward to working with them, and with
my fellow board members, to make AMC
stronger and stronger.”
Adam Aron, CEO and president of
AMC Entertainment added, “Wanda
has been a terrific major shareholder of
AMC, and we are fortunate that Wanda’s
most senior executive in charge of its
diverse film businesses has agreed to serve
as AMC chairman. John Zeng is both
experienced and knowledgeable about our
industry and our company, and undoubtedly
will be a superb chairman of AMC’s
board of directors.”
Aron continued, “We deeply appreciate
the service of Lincoln Zhang, who has
led the AMC board since its inception
and has been instrumental in AMC’s
growth as it has advanced from the second-largest
exhibitor in the U.S. to now
the largest movie theater company in the
world. We thank Lincoln for his years of
successful service, and wish him the best
as he takes on new responsibilities within
the Wanda Group.”
Zeng holds an undergraduate degree
and a master’s degree in business administration
from Renmin University
of China. n
36 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

EXECUTIVE SUITE
WELCOME TO
CINEMACON 2018
WHERE IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS ARE HAPPENING
by John Fithian, President, NATO
>> During this eighth edition of CinemaCon, the motion picture industry celebrates
many exciting new developments and takes some important steps. Welcome to a
busy, educational, fun week of programming, business, and networking. Here are some
of the highlights we expect to see:
JOHN FITHIAN
CinemaCon Keeps Registration Fees Stable for
Members of NATO, ICTA, and NAC
Let’s start with a pocketbook issue. Cinema-
Con continues to offer tremendous value to its
attendees by providing four days of important
programming at very competitive registration rates.
For 2018 we decided not to raise those rates by one
penny from last year for those attendees who are
members of NATO, ICTA, or NAC.
NATO and CinemaCon Adopt New Anti-
Harassment Policy
On the heels of important and long-overdue
public disclosures and discussions across the industry
and the country, and encouraged by courageous
voices in the #MeToo movement, NATO and CinemaCon
adopted an enhanced Code of Conduct
for our convention attendees. Please see the sidebar
for the complete text. And please be aware that this
policy will be strictly enforced.
A Record 11 Distributors to Make Product
Presentations
Showcasing the upcoming film slate has
always constituted a primary goal at Cinema-
Con, and 2018 raises the bar even higher. A
record-setting 11 distribution companies will
bring product and special guests to Vegas this
year. CinemaCon and NATO are pleased to welcome
our newest player, Entertainment Studios,
and its founder and CEO, Byron Allen. And of
course our attendees will be thrilled to see exciting
material from Sony, Disney, Warner Bros.,
STX, Universal, Focus Features, Paramount,
Fox, Amazon, and Lionsgate.
Charles Rivkin Addresses his First CinemaCon as
MPAA Chairman
Charles “Charlie” Rivkin is off to an impressive
start as the new chairman and CEO of the
Motion Picture Association of America. Charlie
brings tremendous experience, both in diplomacy
and in the entertainment industry, to the
position. He made a great first impression in an
address to NATO’s Fall Summit in September,
and now will take the stage at CinemaCon for
the first time. All of us at NATO are grateful for
Charlie’s partnership and leadership.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Makes Its First
Public Address Regarding the Newly Opened
Cinema Market
Last year NATO was honored to accept an
invitation from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
to assemble a team of trainers to meet with the
government in Riyadh for an intensive series of
educational programming. Subsequent to those
meetings, the kingdom announced that it would
allow cinema exhibition for the first time in a
generation. Now the honor continues as the kingdom’s
president of the General Commission on
Audiovisual Media—the lead government agency
in oversight of the new industry—will address
CinemaCon’s International Day and discuss how
movies will be regulated, distributed, and exhibited
within the kingdom.
The Recently Launched Global Cinema Federation
Offers the First Public Description of its Work
Two trade associations and 12 leading exhibition
companies hailing from every corner of
40 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

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EXECUTIVE SUITE
— CODE OF CONDUCT —
CinemaCon is the largest and most important gathering of the
motion picture theater industry, with attendees from cinema
companies, studios, vendors, and more from across the globe.
All participants, attendees, speakers, sponsors, trade floor
exhibitors, staff, and volunteers at CinemaCon are required to
agree with the following code of conduct. We expect cooperation
from all participants to help ensure a safe and non-hostile
environment for everybody.
The National Association of Theatre Owners is committed
to allowing attendees to experience CinemaCon free of
harassment, discrimination, sexism, and threatening or
disrespectful behavior. CinemaCon attendees violating this
policy may have their credentials or access revoked without a
refund at the discretion of the conference organizers.
Please note we will also be setting up a 24-hour hotline during
convention dates, allowing attendees at any time to report the
behavior if they are being harassed or witness someone else
being harassed.
We value your attendance and appreciate your adherence to
this policy.
the world announced the formation of a Global
Cinema Federation (GCF) last June in Barcelona.
Now at CinemaCon 2018 the GCF’s chairman,
Alejandro Ramírez Magaña, will join UNIC leader
Phil Clapp in the first public description of the
work of the federation. Our goals are ambitious
as we work with exhibitors around the world on
such crucial issues as theatrical exclusivity, movie
theft, technology, international trade and investment,
music licensing, and access for patrons with
disabilities.
Alejandro Ramírez Magaña Becomes the
First Non-American to Win the NATO Marquee
Award
Speaking of our friend Alejandro, Cinema-
Con and NATO are very pleased that 2018 will
mark the first year when a cinema leader outside
the United States receives our most significant
award. From its headquarters in Mexico,
Cinépolis has expanded across Latin America
to India, to Spain, and now operates theaters in
the U.S. as well. With a strong team of fellow
executives, Alejandro guides a truly global company.
Through his leadership of the GCF and in
many other roles, Alejandro has demonstrated
his passion for this great industry.
Consolidation Brings Renewed Strength to
the Industry, as NATO Thanks Some Outgoing
Leaders
Both in movie distribution and exhibition,
consolidation within the industry has
accelerated recently. On the exhibition side,
companies like AMC, Cinépolis, CJ-CGV,
and others have grown across international
boundaries. The latest development comes
as Cineworld (itself the result of a previous
merger between CinemaCity and Cineworld)
has acquired Regal to become the secondlargest
exhibitor in the world after AMC.
NATO has worked for many years with
Cineworld’s leadership in Israel and Europe,
and now welcomes them to the American side
of the pond.
At the same time, though, NATO and
CinemaCon raise a big toast of thanks for the
tremendous leadership given to the industry by
the outgoing team at Regal. Amy Miles offered
important strategic guidance in her many
positions at NATO, including her last role as
chairwoman. Rob Del Moro served ably as a
CinemaCon Board of Directors member and in
other capacities. Randy Smith has been the most significant
volunteer in the modern history of NATO,
guiding our efforts in government relations, law,
and security, to name but a few. Greg Dunn, David
Ownby, and many other Regal executives have been
instrumental partners of NATO and CinemaCon.
Thank you, friends, for all you have done.
It looks to be a busy and significant week in Vegas.
We look forward to seeing you at the show, on
the trade floor, in meetings, and in the hallways! n
42 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

THE CONTRINO FILES
DIVERSITY MATTERS
AT THE BOX OFFICE
by Phil Contrino, Director of Media and Research, NATO
PHIL CONTRINO
MINDY KALING
A WRINKLE IN TIME
SAOIRSE RONAN
& GRETA GERWIG
LADY BIRD
TIAN JING
PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING
DANIEL KALUUYA
& ALLISON WILLIAMS
GET OUT
>> For years now, the exhibition community has
been calling for diversity in content. Diversity in
this context not only relates to casting and the stories
that are being told, but also to the release calendar.
An assortment of content spread throughout
the year will lead to a strong box office. We seem to
have turned a corner on this.
Director Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther represents
a historic moment for the African American
community. The outpouring on social media for
the film was staggering from the time the first trailer
hit to the start of public screenings. Would Black
Panther have had the same cultural impact if it had
been released straight to streaming? Of course not.
Pictures on Twitter of people in a crowded theater
lobby with big smiles on their faces help create
moviegoing fervor.
Black Panther is the first February release to earn
$1 billion globally. The notion that audiences will
only show up in droves during the summer and
around the holidays is now officially dead. Content
dictates when people will turn out, not the date.
During the weekend of March 9–11, films
directed by African Americans—Black Panther
and Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time—occupied
the top two spots at the box office. That’s what
progress looks like. The first quarter of 2018 also
provided other examples of diversity. Tomb Raider
delivered an action film with a female lead—still
a rarity, but likely to become less so in the years
to come. Love, Simon gave gay teens a love story
they could relate to. Pacific Rim Uprising put John
Boyega front and center.
The Oscars helped on the diversity front in a big
way this year. Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del
Toro further cemented his status as an elite helmer
with a Best Director win, joining fellow Mexico
natives and Oscar winners Alejandro González
Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón. The success of these
three visionaries—along with robust box office from
Coco and other titles aimed at Latino audiences—
will hopefully inspire a new generation to tell stories
on the big screen. For our industry to survive and
prosper, young moviegoers need to feel that they
FOREST WHITAKER IN BLACK PANTHER
are represented. Ask any number of film directors
working today what made them want to direct and
you’ll almost certainly hear how they were wowed by
a theatrical experience at a young age.
Best Director nominations for Jordan Peele and
Greta Gerwig boosted their power. Peele is one of
the best advocates for the theatrical experience we
have. While Get Out was filling auditoriums, Peele
famously tweeted: “Btw, ‘Get Out’ isn’t a Redbox,
Vod, itunes movie. If you don’t see it with the
theater energy, you’ll miss the full intended experience.”
After winning the Oscar for Best Original
Screenplay, Peele thanked the people who bought
tickets to his film. Gerwig is also a huge advocate
for theatrical. In a recent New York Times interview
she said, “Going to the movies always starts with
one person saying to another, ‘Let’s go out.’ And
that means that you are willingly taking yourself
out of your comfort zone and allowing yourself
the possibility of transformation. I like that, and
even if it is something that is swimming against the
current, I think I’m just going to keep at it. I’m a
good swimmer.”
We don’t think Greta is swimming against the
current. She’s swimming right along with it. n
44 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

NATO NEWS
NATO VOLUNTEER LEADERS
ARE KEY TO CINEMACON’S SUCCESS
by Kathy Conroy, Vice President & COO, NATO
KATHY CONROY
>> Welcome to CinemaCon 2018, the largest and
most significant gathering of movie theater owners
and operators in the world! Leaders in exhibition
and distribution and industry partners have
gathered in Las Vegas to celebrate the moviegoing
experience. CinemaCon is the official convention
of the National Association of Theatre Owners
(NATO), and its success is the direct result of
the active participation and generous support we
receive from NATO volunteers.
I’d like to applaud a few people who have
made extraordinary contributions to the planning
and execution of the convention. This eighth annual
CinemaCon would not be possible without
the leadership of NATO Conventions Committee
chairman Steve Zuehlke, Cinemark USA,
Inc.; and committee members Bob Bagby, B&B
Theatres; Byron Berkley, Foothills Entertainment
Co.; John McDonald, AMC Entertainment, Inc.;
Miguel Rivera, Cinépolis; and Racheal Wilson,
Harkins Theatres. The Conventions Committee
works closely with NATO’s professional convention
staff—Mitch Neuhauser, Matt Pollock,
Cynthia Schuler, and Matt Shapiro. A debt of
gratitude, too, goes to NATO’s officers—acting
chairman Ellis Jacob, Cineplex Entertainment LP;
treasurer Joe Masher, Bow Tie Cinemas; and secretary
Jeff Logan, Logan Luxury Theatres Corp.—
and to the Executive Board members who have all
been enthusiastic in their support of the convention.
Working together, NATO volunteer leaders
and staff have created an eighth annual Cinema-
Con convention that is sure to “wow” you.
With strong support from our studio partners—11
(!) distributors are making presentations
this year—and sponsors, the Conventions Committee
put together a CinemaCon program that is
diverse, informative, and entertaining. It includes
the largest cinema trade show in the world,
featuring the latest cinema technologies and
concessions offerings. NATO is grateful to Mike
Archer and the International Cinema Technology
Association (ICTA) and to Andrew Cretors
and the National Association of Concessionaires
(NAC) for their leadership and support in filling
a world-class trade show floor.
This week’s schedule is packed with product
presentations, sponsored events, trade show
displays, and educational programming. I’d like
to recognize the NATO members who are participating
as presenters in the general and educational
sessions this year—Jeong Seo, CJ CGV; Alejandro
Ramírez Magaña, Cinépolis; Adam Aron, AMC
Entertainment; Ahmed Ismail, Majid Al Futtaim
Ventures; Barbara Gromacki, Marcus Theatres;
Katie Cate, Regal Entertainment Group; Miguel
Angel Prieto, Cinépolis; Robert Slade, AMC
Theatres; Laura Correia, National Amusements;
Mark Zoradi, Cinemark; John Curry, Regal Entertainment
Group; and Larry Etter, Malco Theatres.
We are grateful to these members, as well as to
presenters from our studio and vendor partners, for
sharing their knowledge and expertise.
CinemaCon is a great place to recognize outstanding
NATO member leaders as they are surrounded
by their industry colleagues and friends.
This year, Robert Carrady, president, Caribbean
Cinemas, will receive the Career Achievement in
Exhibition Award; and Alejandro Ramírez Magaña,
Cinépolis, will receive NATO’s Marquee Award.
I hope you’ll be on hand to see these exceptional
industry leaders receive their recognition.
Be sure to stay for the Big Screen Achievement
Awards on Thursday evening as we’ll honor the
best talent in the movie industry today and for
the After-Party, generously sponsored by The
Coca-Cola Company. I encourage you to participate
to the fullest in all the education and fun that
CinemaCon 2018 has to offer. Enjoy the show! n
46 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

CHARITY SPOTLIGHT
To add events in an upcoming issue, please send announcements to numbers@boxoffice.com
PAST EVENTS
VARIETY OF DETROIT
SHINE FASHION SHOW
This event, held on March 11 at The Somerset
Collection in Troy, Michigan, supported Variety
4-H Horseback Riding Program and camp
programs through FAR Therapeutic Parks &
Recreation.
Henry, age 6, with mentor Kimberly Smith
VARIETY – THE CHILDREN’S
CHARITY OF SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Fun Academy Motion Pictures, the studio
behind the animated family film Sgt. Stubby: An
American Hero, and Variety – the Children’s Charity
of Southern California co-hosted the world
premiere of the animated family feature in Los
Angeles on Tuesday, March 27 at Regal Live in
downtown Los Angeles.
On March 28, the day following the world
premiere, Fun Academy and Variety – the
Children’s Charity co-hosted screenings in 14
cities across the U.S. and Canada—a first in the
charity’s 90-year history—to further benefit
Variety programs that provide life-saving,
life-changing, and life-enriching equipment
and services to children who have a disability
or are disadvantaged:
Cathedral City, California – Variety Tent #66:
D’Place Entertainment Mary Pickford Theatre 14
Redwood City, California – Variety Tent #32:
Cinemark Redwood Downtown 20
Deltona, Florida – Variety Tent #70:
Epic Theatres of West Volusia
Wheaton, Illinois – Variety Tent #26:
Studio Movie Grill
Gurnee, Illinois – Variety Tent #26:
Marcus Gurnee Cinema
Grand Rapids & Lansing, Michigan – Variety Tent #27:
Celebration! Cinema Grand Rapids North / Celebration!
Cinema Lansing
Chesterfield, Mississippi – Variety Tent #4:
Marcus Theatres Chesterfield Galaxy 14 Cine
Las Vegas, Nevada – Variety Tent #39:
Brendan Palms 14
Williamsville, New York – Variety Tent #7:
Regal Transit Center Stadium 18
Brooklyn, New York – Variety Tent #35:
National Amusements Linden Blvd. Multiplex
Harker Heights, Texas – Variety Tent #17:
Cinemark at Market Heights
Alberta, British Columbia – Variety Tent #61:
Westhills Cinemas
Winnipeg, Manitoba – Variety Tent #58:
Scotiabank Theatre Winnipeg
Vancouver, British Columbia – Variety Tent #47:
Scotiabank Cineplex Theatre
“We are delighted to partner with Variety
– the Children’s Charity, to host the world
premiere screening and multicity tour of
Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero,” said Richard
Lanni, director of Sgt. Stubby and founder of
Fun Academy. “We are excited to host 500
children and their families from organizations
supported by Variety SoCal, including
the Variety Boys and Girls Club of Boyle
Heights, at our world premiere to enjoy this
dog’s eye view of American history that kids
will love, parents and educators will appreciate,
and all ages can enjoy together.”
UPCOMING EVENTS
VARIETY OF THE UNITED
STATES AT CINEMACON
April 25
Caesars Palace: Ballrooms—
Emperors Level
Variety of the United States will
present a specially adaptive
bicycle to 6-year-old Las Vegas
resident Ellyn and her family
during Wednesday’s breakfast at
CinemaCon.
WILL ROGERS MOTION
PICTURE PIONEERS
FOUNDATION: PIONEER
OF THE YEAR DINNER
April 25, 7: 15 p.m.
Caesars Palace: Octavius
Ballroom—Promenade Level
The Will Rogers Motion Picture
Pioneers Foundation proudly
bestows its 2018 Pioneer of the
Year Award on three-time Oscar
nominee Tom Cruise.
VARIETY OF DETROIT’S
HEARTS & STARS
May 5
The Townsend Hotel
on the web: bit.ly/2GxXi2d
Felicia and Edwin Shaw will be recognized
for their 25 years of dedication
to the children of Variety.
VARIETY OF THE
NATIONAL
CAPITAL REGION
May 22
Mount Vernon Country Club
leigh@varietydc.org
Variety of the National Capital
Region will be hosting its annual
golf tournament in Alexandria,
Virginia, to raise funds for children
with mobility issues in the DC,
Maryland, and Virginia area. n
48 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

INDIE FOCUS
b r o u g h t t o y o u b y
CATWOMAN COSPLAY AT
BATMAN RETURNS SCREENING
PHOTO BY CODY CHAVEZ
THE FRIDA CINEMA
SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA
Contributor: Logan Crow, Founder / Executive Director
HISTORY
After running the revival cinema
blog and midnight cinema series
“Mondo Celluloid,” I formed a nonprofit
in 2009 called the Long Beach
Cinematheque. At the time we acted
as a “four-wall” organization: we had
no home of our own and would rent the
“four walls” of another venue to put on a
film screening or cultural event. On the
horizon was always the vision to eventually
operate a place the film-loving community
could call home. Between 2009 and
2013, I programmed well over 100 films
in parking lots, cemeteries, and local indie
cinemas. Added to this, I launched a
community event called the Long Beach
Zombie Walk, which became immensely
popular and put a huge spotlight on our
organization. In 2013 my work caught the
attention of a landlord who was trying to
figure out what to do with his quaint cinema
property centrally located in downtown
Santa Ana, and so one day I got a literal
dream-come-true email from someone
I’d never met, asking me if I’d be interested
in operating a cinema. It all came at a
time when our existing organization was
feeling the burn of celebrating five years of
success, but without a place to pour all of
our ideas and passion into for a permanent
community-based mission-driven cinema.
The rest is history. All of the pieces fell into
place, and The Frida Cinema opened its
doors on February 21, 2014. It is truly a
surreal history, “the kind of thing that only
happens in the movies.” I thank my lucky
stars every day that so many things aligned
themselves to make this place possible.
TOP TITLES
We’ve quickly discovered
that genre cinema—particularly
horror and anime—perform
very well for us. An established
community of cinephiles has
quickly amassed, effectively
building up our standing as the place to
call home for genre cinema in Orange
County. Our two biggest films in 2017
were Your Name, an extraordinary Japanese
animated drama, and Fox’s 4K restoration
of Dario Argento’s 1977 classic,
Suspiria. Similarly, our two biggest films
in 2016 happened to be a revival run of
the 1988 anime classic Akira, and the
2016 Korean zombie film Train to Busan.
We held on to that one for four weeks,
and it never seemed to slow down! 2017
also marked the tremendous success of
Dolores, a documentary about impactful
civil rights leader Dolores Huerta. That
opening night meant a lot to us. It was
50 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

PHOTO BY ANDY CONNER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
LOGAN CROW
a truly wonderful event where members
of our local city council joined to help us
in welcoming Ms. Huerta to The Frida
Cinema in person.
It’s almost unfair to count The Rocky
Horror Picture Show when we talk about
our biggest films historically, because it
will always certainly come out on top.
We present it every second Friday of the
month with a live “shadow cast” stage
show, and it sells out pretty much every
time. Our new monthly screenings of
Tommy Wiseau’s The Room also have a
track record of sell-outs—and we have
bags and bags of spoons to prove it! In the
summer of 2016 we ran 22 Studio Ghibli
films over a two-week period, which
brought in a consistently strong crowd
and was tremendously instrumental in
introducing us to new audiences. Our
“The Directors” series, where we present
a series of films over a month by the same
director, always is stellar. Our Stanley
Kubrick and Wes Anderson months were
great successes, but we still haven’t been
able to top David Lynch Month.
COMMUNITY
Our mission as a nonprofit organization
is to enrich, connect, and educate
communities through the art of cinema.
It lives in our programming and is
evidenced both inside and outside our
theater. We constantly work to ensure
that, week after week, our films are reflecting
the various interests and passions
of our community. In any given month
we may play Spanish-language films,
Korean films, LGBT-themed films, family
films, Cambodian films, films by local
students, short films, faith-based films,
political / social justice documentaries,
and straight-up slasher films. It all ties
into the ever-evolving question, “How do
we program for the community we have,
the community we want to cultivate,
and the community that needs us?” We
want to curate a theatrical experience
that reflects various cultural and social
interests. We place a great emphasis on
partnering with local educational resources
and other nonprofit organizations to
make programming more impactful. Our
goals are to utilize film as a catalyst for
conversation, and, most importantly, to
serve as a safe haven for all people, and be
a place where ideas can be shared and all
walks of life are welcomed. To that end,
our audience means everything to us. We
challenge ourselves to inspire, and to act
as a resource, all while exciting those who
may just want to watch a Xenomorph
terrorize an unprepared crew.
CONCESSIONS
We are actually pretty limited in this
regard. Popcorn, nachos, candy, and soft
drinks for us: the essentials! That being
said, we very rarely get asked to expand
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 51

INDIE FOCUS
Even when we haven’t advertised an event
specifically for cosplay, we’ve had a few
Frank the Bunnys, a few Droogs, a few Richie
“The Baumer” Tenenbaums, a few Totoros,
you name it, come in and out of
The Frida.
PHOTO BY KEEFER BLAKESLEE
the menu. Beer also does exceedingly well here.
We don’t have an annual license, but we are able to
pull a permit as needed for special screenings and
fund-raisers. When we do serve beer, we try our
best to partner with local breweries and businesses.
Seeing how excited our guests are to enjoy a cold
one while enjoying a meaningful film is the best.
SOCIAL MEDIA
I definitely saw The Frida Cinema’s first year as
“The Art House that Social Media Built.” From
the day we settled on a name—a good year before
we opened—I started the social media pages. We
hit the ground running. I spent most of my life
@thefridacinema
immersed in art house cinemas, never knowing
just how much the experience of this hobby would
pay off. I had a general idea of the challenges being
faced by these institutions—and that was before
the added obstacles of digital conversion and the
rise of VOD options. I knew cultivating a community
of believers would be instrumental to the
success of The Frida Cinema. We work hard every
single day to continue to build that base of supporters
and to ensure that what we are doing meets
their expectations. The community helped build
us up and is still our greatest champion. Today we
have over 45,000 active followers across our social
media platforms. (continued on page 54)
52 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

INDIE FOCUS
GISELLE CROW AND LOGAN
CROW IN BLUE VELVET PHOTO
BOOTH
FRIDA CINEMA’S 4TH BIRTHDAY
PARTY LOBBY SETUP
PHOTO BY DAVID AMEZCUA
EVENT CINEMA
Event cinema programming is what we’re all
about. And if it isn’t packaged that way inherently,
we try to build the event ourselves. I knew I wanted
to present Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Musical
– Le Mouvement Final the moment I heard about it.
As mentioned, we have a dedicated anime crowd,
but, moreover, we’ve become quite the home for
cosplay. Even when we haven’t advertised an event
specifically for cosplay, we’ve had a few Frank the
Bunnys, a few Droogs, a few Richie “The Baumer”
Tenenbaums, a few Totoros, you name it, come
in and out of The Frida. So we jumped on the
opportunity to present Le Mouvement Final. We
announced a cosplay costume contest and suddenly
the cinema was overrun with giant bowties and
long, flowing blond hair. A couple of individuals
actually caught every single screening. Perhaps the
most meaningful part of the experience was how
often we were thanked for presenting it. Those moments
make us all so very proud of the work we do
and help to remind us that The Frida Cinema is so
much more than simply a place that shows movies.
CINEMA ADVERTISING
At the end of the day, a nonprofit organization—whether
it be a cinema or a museum or a
concert hall—could
not survive on ticket
sales alone. I asked
one of my mentors
once, the marketing
director for a local
esteemed music hall,
“Would it be safe to
say that even if you
sold out every single
event this year, without
sponsor support
you’d be closed in a
year?” And he replied,
“We’d be closed in a
month.” Tickets and
concessions go a long
way in keeping us
open of course, but
our survival relies
heavily on the direct
support received from
donors and partners
like Spotlight Cinema
Networks. We’re not playing sure-thing Hollywood
hits—we are taking risks, often bringing
our audience films they’ve never heard of. We believe
in the films, and while we feel our growing
number of regulars trusts our programming, we
often present very special but otherwise obscure
films that we anticipate may not do very well.
Spotlight Cinema Networks brings an infrastructure
that is literally essential to our survival. Preshow
and on-screen advertising has allowed us to
be successful at a time when so many other art
house cinemas are closing their doors. We decided
to move forward with Spotlight because they are
there, year after year, at Art House Convergence,
along with me and my fellow theater owners
and ambassadors, sponsoring this crucial annual
conference and communicating their support
and belief in our work. When I first met with
their organization, one of the things I remember
was a commitment to ensure that the partners
they work with, and the advertising content they
provide us, complemented the art house cinema
experience. In the almost three years that we’ve
been working together, this has always been the
consistent truth. We feel so fortunate to have
Spotlight Cinema Networks in our family of
partners. Thank you! n
54 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

INVESTOR RELATIONS
CINEMA ACROSS THE STREET
INDUSTRY FINANCIAL NEWS / Q4 RESULTS
by Rob Rinderman
ROB RINDERMAN
AMC
Due in large part to its recent acquisitions,
AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC) achieved
record revenues from box office admissions and
food and beverage (F&B) sales in Q4 2017. Its
total top line jumped 53 percent to $1.4 billion,
versus the same three-month period in 2016, with
over $438 million of total revenues attributable to
its international businesses. Admissions receipts
rose over 52 percent, and F&B increased north
of 47 percent during Q4. Total Q4 adjusted
EBITDA rose nearly 59 percent to approximately
$288 million. CEO Adam Aron stated, “As we
look forward to 2018 and beyond, we are pleased
and greatly encouraged by the progress we made
during and since the fourth quarter of 2017, both
operationally and in dealing with several specific
industry challenges.”
CINEMARK
Cinemark (NYSE: CNK) reported total
revenues for the three months ended December
31, 2017, of $750 million, up from $701 million
in Q4 2016. Admissions revenues increased 4.5
percent and concessions revenues grew by 10
percent. Net income was $95 million, compared
to $77 million in the year-earlier period. Diluted
Q4 EPS increased to $0.82, versus $0.66 in Q4
2016. Adjusted EBITDA increased 11.5 percent
to approximately $188 million. The Cinemark
board of directors also announced a 10 percent
increase in its annual dividend to $1.28 per share.
“We are thrilled to report our third consecutive
year of record results in worldwide revenues,
net income, adjusted EBITDA, and earnings
per share,” stated CEO Mark Zoradi. “We were
able to deliver these all-time highs in a box office
environment that declined slightly year over year
due to the successful execution of our strategic
initiatives and the underlying strength of Cinemark’s
operating fundamentals.”
IMAX
IMAX Corporation (NYSE: IMAX) reported a
13 percent increase in global Q4 2017 box office
revenue to $278 million. The company’s fourth
quarter 2017 revenue receipts were approximately
$126 million. Its net income attributable
to common shareholders was $4.8 million, or
$0.08 per diluted share. The bottom line results
were impacted by a one-time tax charge of $9.3
million ($0.14 per diluted share) associated with
U.S. tax reform and a $2.5 million ($0.04 per
diluted share) charge related to IMAX’s cost-reduction
exercise, previously announced in June
2017. During the quarter, the company installed
70 theaters, 69 of which were for new locations.
Its total theater network was 1,370 systems as of
December 31, 2017, including 1,272 in commercial
multiplexes. CEO Richard Gelfond said,
“As we look to 2018, our primary focus is on expanding
the earnings power of our core business.
We believe the combination of the initiatives we
implemented last year, coupled with a growing
international presence and reduced spend on
non-core businesses and R&D, should help
facilitate operating leverage in the future. Our
overarching efforts this year are aimed at growing
the network, controlling costs, and generating
more box office across our theaters.”
MARCUS
Another exhibitor posting record Q4 results
was Marcus Corp. (NYSE: MCS). Total revenues
for the final three months of fiscal 2017 reached
a record $158 million, a 14 percent increase
over 2016 fiscal Q4 levels. Net earnings rose 294
percent to 1.21 per diluted share. The company’s
cinema division increased top line 19 percent for
the quarter, outperforming national box office
revenues by 5.2 percentage points. The company
also boosted its annual dividend 20 percent to
$0.60 per share. “As expected, the holiday film
slate proved to be very strong for Marcus Theatres,”
said CEO Gregory Marcus. “Rebounding
from a weak summer movie season, the fourth
quarter of fiscal 2017 was the division’s best
fourth quarter ever, helping to drive record results
for the full year. This was on top of our previous
record performance in fiscal 2016.”
56 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

NCM
National CineMedia (Nasdaq: NCMI) reported a 1.3 yearover-year
decline in total fiscal Q4 revenue to $141 million.
Adjusted OIBDA decreased 4.4 percent to approximately $83
million for the period. Net loss was $5.4 million, or $0.07
per diluted share. The company announced a reduction of
its annual dividend from $0.88 to $0.68 per diluted share.
“While there is no question that 2017 was a challenging year
for NCM, it was really a tale of two halves, with a tough first
half of the year followed by a far better second half,” said CEO
Andy England. “Much progress was made this year in many
key areas to better position us to deliver on our long-term
strategy, including the expansion of our national network,
the strengthening of our leadership team, and, of course,
the launch of our new Noovie pre-show and Noovie digital
ecosystem. Our expanded focus on digital continued to be a
bright spot throughout 2017, and I’m especially excited about
our new integrated marketing capabilities that better connect
brands with movie audiences.”
READING
Reading International (Nasdaq: RDI) reported a 4 percent
increase in consolidated Q4 revenues to approximately
$72 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $11 million, versus $8.4
million. Its reported basic EPS was $0.32 per share, significantly
above $0.01 in the year-ago period. “We made important
progress executing our three-year business strategy during the
year, and we are pleased to deliver strong fourth-quarter and
record 2017 results,” said CEO Ellen Cotter. “During the
year, we strategically upgraded select cinemas, constructed a
new state-of-the-art cinema in Australia, redeveloped existing
income-producing properties, and added approximately 15,875
square feet of non-cinema net rentable area to our existing
ETCs. We accomplished these objectives utilizing the proceeds
from the sale of non-core assets while strengthening our balance
sheet to reduce debt.” n
Rob Rinderman is an avid follower and fan of the cinema and exhibition
businesses. He has assisted many public and privately held companies
with communications and business-development consulting services
for over two decades and written as a freelance journalist covering
these industries since 2015.
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 57

SOCIAL MEDIA
SUMMER BUZZ
A PREVIEW OF THE SUMMER’S HOTTEST
TITLES ON SOCIAL MEDIA
by Alex Edghill
>> The summer season is just around the corner and, as always, is
rife with potential successes and disappointments for every major
studio. Let’s take a closer look at the social media indicators on
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to try to ascertain the season’s
biggest winners.
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
RELEASE 4/27/18
TWEETS 1,834,836
NEW INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS 470,105
NEW FACEBOOK LIKES 108,804
TWITTER RANK 1
FACEBOOK RANK 2
INSTAGRAM RANK 1
AVERAGE RANK 1.33 JOSH BROLIN PLAYS THANOS IN
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
METHODOLOGY
Our methodology here will be to
look at three social media data points
over the period of February 18–March
20 for all films opening between April
27 and August 31: the total number
of tweets, the like increases for official
Facebook pages, and the follower
increases for official Instagram accounts.
Over the past 12 to 18 months the surging
popularity of Instagram, especially
among users ages 12 to 25, has made
the platform mandatory for most distributors;
official Instagram accounts for
releases are now the norm. In past years
content pushed to these three major social
media services were very similar, but
as with most sophisticated marketing
campaigns, those who embrace the differences
among them and have different
targeted content perform the best and
reap the greatest rewards.
One point to note here is that, in
general, films opening sooner rather
than later have much larger marketing
spend—and therefore stronger social
media returns as their release nears. Due
to this fact, our results show a clear bias
toward films opening in the first half of
summer, and most July and August releases
have not yet started their marketing
campaigns in earnest.
CREAM OF THE CROP
There is little surprise that Avengers:
Infinity War comes out on top among
all other summer films. Its total tweets
during our period of interest (1,834,836)
and new Instagram followers (470,105)
were strikingly more than all other
summer wide releases combined. Its new
Facebook likes (108,814) was second
of all films, trailing just Overboard’s
161,497. There are many reasons for
its dominance, including the engaging
content across these different channels,
the overall popularity of the Marvel Cinematic
Universe (MCU), which is coming
to a crescendo with 18 films leading up
to Infinity War, as well as the fact that it
comes on the heels of Black Panther, the
highest-grossing superhero movie of all
time in North America. It would be a big
surprise if all these factors do not push
Avengers: Infinity War into the season’s top
earner spot.
The largely untapped box office potential
of female-driven films continues
to represent a big opportunity for major
studios. Case in point: Ocean’s 8, with its
female-led ensemble, occupies the second
spot among all summer films in terms of
social media tracking during our period
of interest. The film’s ranking reveals a
consistent finish on all three platforms—
sixth on both Twitter and Instagram and
58 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

SOCIAL MEDIA TOTALS BY AVERAGE RANK FEBRUARY 18 TO MARCH 20 2018
FILM SOCIAL MEDIA RANK
Release Movie Tweets New Instagram Followers New Facebook Likes Twitter Facebook Instagram Average
4/27/18 Avengers: Infinity War 1,834,836 470,105 108,804 1 2 1 1.33
6/8/18 Ocean's 8 43,979 13,667 1,453 6 9 6 7
5/18/18 Deadpool 2 151,349 121,127 -6,123 7 18 2 9
5/11/18 Life of the Party 45,013 8,987 10,830 11 6 10 9
6/29/18 Uncle Drew 22,884 13,195 1,297 9 12 7 9.33
6/8/18 Won’t You Be My Neighbor? 232,556 1,483 21,458 4 4 22 10
5/25/18 Solo: A Star Wars Story 317,544 81,079 -24,244 5 22 3 10
6/22/18 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom 66,121 23,792 -10,179 8 20 4 10.67
5/4/18 Overboard 1,678 9,840 161,497 22 1 9 10.67
7/20/18 Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! 656,765 2,380 1,352 2 11 21 11.33
ninth on Facebook. While it didn’t shine
the brightest on social media, its even
performance saw it eke out a slim lead
ahead of other big-name films. Ocean’s 8
seems poised to be one of the surprise hits
of the summer.
Fan favorite Deadpool 2 pulled down
the third spot among all films, thanks
largely to its very strong showing on
Instagram with 121,127 new followers,
good enough for second place among
all summer openers. The first film in the
franchise was a pioneer for social media
in general with its creative and humorous
campaign and the way it interacted with
its fan base. Its total Instagram followers
stands at over 2 million, which is one of
the largest for any film franchise overall,
and second only to Solo: A Star Wars
Story, which is using the official Star
Wars account with just under 9 million
followers. The sequel appears set to walk
in the footsteps of its predecessor, a film
that proved there was an audience for
R-rated superhero movies and big money
potential in a February release.
Life of the Party was the fourth film
in our matrix, with a consistent showing
across all platforms. Results peaked with
a sixth-place finish on Facebook with
almost 11,000 new likes. Another key
insight from our findings: female-led
films accounted for 50 percent of the top
four films in our social media anticipation
index. Melissa McCarthy is no stranger
to summer success, as she is one of the
season’s most bankable stars. McCarthy
has had a starring role in an $80 million–plus
summer comedy in six of the
last seven years. By the looks of things,
she has a good chance of continuing the
streak this year.
Uncle Drew, the Pepsi short film
project turned feature film from NBA
superstar Kyrie Irving, rounded out the
top five with an inspired showing on
Instagram and Twitter. This is a true dark
horse for the summer, which might not
be on the radar of many non-basketball
fans. Prospects are high, however, thanks
to the inclusion of some of the NBA’s
biggest superstars from past and present.
The hugely popular five-episode short
film series behind it also gives this project
a push, prompting us to think Irving
& Co. could turn some heads come the
film’s June release.
NOTABLE MENTIONS
Solo: A Star Wars Story would have
easily been in position No. 2 overall if
not for its soft Facebook numbers. Given
that the franchise Facebook page has
almost 20 million likes in total, it’s safe
to say that the skimpy increase in likes is
not as significant as it would be for a film
starting out with 100,000 likes. In other
words, this shouldn’t be seen as a red flag;
there is very little chance Solo won’t turn
out to be a major hit.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom fell
into the same boat as Solo, with weak
Facebook numbers dragging down its
overall position. It also opens more than
three months from when this column is
being written, so its campaign is still in
its infancy. The title’s overall box office
tracking promises it will be one of the
year’s top earners.
Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!
rounded out the top 10, with its
strongest showing on Twitter with a
second-place finish. Little surprise that
its Instagram numbers were on the low
end since its target audience should skew
older. The film’s inclusion in our ranking
also means that three of the top 10 films
have female leads, a notable departure
from previous years.
Awareness and buzz-generation has
evolved in recent years, and different
social media platforms have seen varying
degrees of adoption by users. While
established platforms such as Twitter and
Facebook remain important, younger audiences
are increasingly using Instagram
and others such as Snapchat and Tumblr.
A multipronged social media strategy is
therefore more important than ever, as
user demographics evolve across different
platforms. The exhibitors and distributors
who embrace the differences of each platform
have a clear road map for reaching
different audience segments through their
prerelease marketing campaigns. n
60 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

MOBILE TICKETING
FANDANGO
IN 2018
THE DIGITAL TICKETING GIANT TAKES ON
NEW CHALLENGES (AND CHALLENGERS)
IN A RAPIDLY EVOLVING MARKETPLACE
by Chris Eggertsen
Digital ticketing is one of today’s hottest topics in the exhibition industry.
From startups to disruptors, the space has gone through notable changes
and innovations in recent years. Fandango, founded in 2000 as a partnership
by several theater chains—including Regal Entertainment Group,
United Artists, and Hoyts—has emerged as a veteran presence in the market.
The company has grown significantly in the last half decade; included
among its most notable acquisitions are the Latin American ticketing
companies Ingresso and Cinepapaya (rebranded as Fandango Latin America);
the leading movie trailers and YouTube content channel Movieclips;
streaming video platform M-GO (rebranded as FandangoNOW); movie
discovery platform Flixster; and review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Its
December acquisition of MovieTickets.com signaled the consolidation of
the two major players from the early days of online ticketing in the United
States.
>> Today, Fandango’s mission is to do much
more than just sell tickets. In a theatrical marketplace
that’s seeing more and more competition
from at-home streaming services such as
Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, they’ve made
the “event-ization” of going to the movies a
core emphasis, launching such adjacent endeavors
as Fandango FanShop, which sells curated
merchandise to movie fans as a way of “augmenting”
their experience. To help boost ticket
sales and drive attention to the entire movie
lifecycle, they’ve also added new features to
FandangoNOW, an à la carte streaming service
that offers both old and new titles for purchase
and rental.
To get an idea of what lies ahead for the company
in the increasingly dynamic sphere of online
ticket selling, Boxoffice spoke with Fandango
president Paul Yanover about upcoming initiatives,
including their increasing focus on voice-activated
ticket buying, integrations with messaging
platforms like Apple iMessage and Facebook
Messenger, and further incursions into international
territories. Additionally, Yanover addressed the
subject of whether Fandango is making plans for
a subscription-based service and how they’re planning
to handle campaign-driven review bombing
on Rotten Tomatoes.
PAUL YANOVER
Fandango has established itself as an
entertainment portal focused on films, much the
same way that ESPN became a portal for fans of
sports culture. Is that an apt comparison?
I think it’s a pretty good analogue to how we
think about Fandango. In many ways, we look
at the movie experience as a really broad fan
experience, above and beyond the core [experience]
of going to the movies. And in the same
way, [in sports] there’s a lot of ambient interest
and fandom and information and entertainment
around the event. People care about what movies
are coming in the future, how they’re being cast,
how they’re developing creatively, all the way to
the first teaser trailer.
So we’ve got this platform of brands and
products and services, from Rotten Tomatoes and
Movieclips all the way through the ticketing world
62 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

MOBILE TICKETING
of Fandango and Flixster and MovieTickets.com
and into the home entertainment world with FandangoNOW.
And all of this is to try to accomplish
a kind of 360-degree experience and platform that’s
designed to super-serve film fans.
We all know Fandango’s role in the domestic
theatrical ticket-selling marketplace, but what
role do you play in
international markets?
We participate internationally
in two ways.
In Latin America and
pretty broadly, we are
really focused on the core
ticketing experience that
we’re known for here in
the United States.
In other parts of
the world, we actually
serve a lot of people
through two brands:
through Rotten Tomatoes—roughly
speaking,
about half the Rotten
Tomatoes audience that
arrives at our platform is
from outside the United
States—and Movieclips.
A predominant amount
of the Movieclips experience
is delivered through
YouTube, and YouTube
itself has a large international
audience.
How has the integration
of MovieTickets.com
being going?
MovieTickets has a
well-known brand, and a
brand that we intend to
maintain and continue. And so what we’re really
doing is ensuring that the team and the brand and
the business has the support it needs to continue
to thrive and grow, while being thoughtful about
where there are actual synergistic opportunities—
where are we better as a unified front?—because it
creates a better user experience, it creates a better
trade experience with partners, and it creates
efficiency. And we do that really carefully in this
case, because we want to make sure we maintain
MovieTickets.com as a brand. So it’s going well in
terms of taking the momentum that MovieTickets
was seeing in 2017, and ensuring that we both
protect and enhance that in 2018.
Obviously the experience of moviegoing
has changed a lot with the rise of Netflix and
streaming services and all the other options
people have to watch films at home. What is your
data telling you about your moviegoing clients in
this new landscape?
A couple of things. On the one hand, I think
there are several examples and instances where
moviegoing behavior hasn’t changed very much at
all from the way we think of moviegoing behavior
conventionally. So when I look at a movie like
Black Panther, I see an event film: huge early interest,
very healthy advance ticket buying, tremendous
word-of-mouth, long legs in several weeks
past opening weekend. And it sort of screams that
movie-theater-going is alive and well.
On the other hand, what we see is a real interest
among moviegoers to embrace an ecosystem
around movies. An interesting example is Ready
Player One. We put together a digital movie playlist
on FandangoNOW of all the1980s classics that inspired
Steven Spielberg during the making of Ready
Player One to help prepare you for the theatrical
experience So definitely what our data is telling us
is that people want to lean into the ecosystem of
movies, the totality of a movie experience beyond
the à la carte going to an individual movie or
watching an individual movie.
You guys are so influential and have such a big
chunk of the exhibition marketplace. To your last
point, what do you see as your role in getting
people out not only to see these blockbuster
event movies, but getting them to see the
midsize or low-budget films?
Well, first of all, we care deeply about that
because we’re invested in the whole box office,
52 weeks a year. And there are not 52 weeks a
year of giant blockbusters. So we care because
we’re invested all year long, as nearly 60 percent
of our ticketing business is for films after their
opening weekend.
If you look at the films that were Oscar nominated
for Best Picture this year, many of them were
smaller movies. Rotten Tomatoes, in conjunction
64 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

MOBILE TICKETING
with the rest of the Fandango ecosystem, did a
lot of heavy lifting to get people to care about all
these other movies, whether it’s Darkest Hour, or
whether it’s Get Out or Lady Bird, or whether it’s
Three Billboards or Shape of Water. These are all
pretty interesting, relatively midsized and in some
cases small-sized movies. Fandango as a business
at large got up every day and said, “We want these
movies to be important,
we want people to care
about them, we want
people to see them on
the big screen.”
There’s been a lot
of controversy
recently about review
bombing, where users,
impassioned in their
dislike of a movie,
drive down the Rotten
Tomatoes Audience
Score, even though
they’re a relatively
small segment of the
audience. Can you talk
about what steps, if any,
you’re taking to address
that problem?
Rotten Tomatoes is
first and foremost an
open platform. So we
don’t want to invoke our
own judgment on someone
putting a five-star
rating on a movie and
trying to second-guess
why they’re doing it. It’s
an open platform for user
reviews, and people have
the ability to come in
and voice their opinion.
It is true that at times reviews will naturally pull
out people who are polarized, both in love with
products and not in love with products. What we
focus on is making sure that there is not an act
of organized manipulation. So obviously we’re
very attentive to people trying to compromise our
systems. But there’s a difference between compromising
a system and people with passion. And we
don’t want to censor.
I think some of the criticism has been around
targeted manipulations by groups from the
alt-right, or people who are targeting a film
because of the makeup of its cast or its focus on
women. What, if anything, are you doing about
groups that organize on platforms on Facebook
and make films the target of these kinds of
campaigns?
Well, there are two things. One is our focus on
ensuring that we have no true targeted manipulation
and to make sure there’s no automated means
to try to affect the score. The other is a complete
intolerance on our part of any form of hate speech
or discrimination when it comes to people who
do want to add a written review. Now remember,
a lot of reviews contain no words. They are people
simply indicating between zero and five stars, out
of a five-star rating.
So we take it very seriously, we pay attention
to it, and we look at the numbers, the scale of the
volume of incoming reviews. We have a data-security
and network-security team that pays a lot
of attention to how things are incoming to ensure
there isn’t manipulation, meaning we understand
if something’s coming from the same IP address
multiple times. So we have put in a lot of effort to
prevent what could be manipulation. But as I said,
we’re not censoring.
Let’s talk about Fandango FanShop. How does
merchandising work as part of Fandango’s
strategy, and what results you can share about
that initiative?
We originally looked at this as merchandise
as a way to dimensionalize the fan experience.
And you can tell by looking at the FanShop
experience itself today, we’re certainly not looking
to create an independent giant retail outlet.
This is really about a curated merchandise
strategy to augment and accent the rest of the
movie-consumption experience with a real focus
on ticketing.
We think merchandise is another expression
of fandom. But it’s not just about posters; we also
have a full complement of merchandise to help
incentivize ticketing, as FanShop merchandise is
often offered as a gift with ticket purchase In the
case of Black Panther, it was not just a poster, but
it was also a whole curated mix of merchandise,
much of which sold out. Our goal is to be curators,
not big-box retailers. (continued on page 68)
66 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

MOBILE TICKETING
You also have FandangoNOW, which is your
streaming supplement. What can we expect
from that in the coming years, and how has
it integrated home entertainment into the
Fandango brand?
I think the integration has been really effective,
and particularly it’s effective for the consumer,
because consumers are interested in the total movie
experience. There’s a
great example with Marvel
movies, where we are
using FandangoNOW to
cultivate love and interest
in the brand and fan
interest in catching up
with the previous films
in the franchise before
seeing Avengers: Infinity
War. In the Ready Player
One case, it’s really about
nostalgia, and if you
really want to get the
maximum amount of
1980s pop culture, we’re
there to help you get the
full experience to help
you prepare for or relive
the moviegoing event.
What else do you have
coming up?
We have long-standing
relationships and
partnerships with
Google, Apple, Amazon,
Microsoft, Facebook, and
other tech companies.
We’ve really collaborated
with those companies
around their platforms.
When we think about
social, we believe that
the most effective way to create a social experience
for consumers is to leverage the platforms where
the consumers are, where the consumers actually
conduct their social behavior.
We believe the most effective thing we can do to
serve consumers is to work with preexisting social
networks. You find your friends on Facebook, or
you find your friends through group text messaging,
on Facebook Messenger, on Apple iMessage,
and that’s where we’ve leaned in. So we’ve integrated
movie discovery and movie purchasing in
environments like Apple iMessage or on Facebook
Messenger. And we did that purposely.
The examples I just gave you around messaging
are further examples of us getting beyond the
horizon line of where mobile’s going. We’re looking
at where the world’s going with voice and AI. So
if you look at a platform like Alexa from Amazon,
Fandango exists as a core skill in Alexa. Meaning
if you buy an Echo and you turn it on, you can
immediately find show times and you can even buy
a ticket by connecting your Fandango account to
your Amazon account. This is super early, so I’m
not suggesting that there are large-scale numbers
of people buying their tickets through voice. But I
am suggesting that we are big believers that voice
and AI are the next wave of user interface, and that
more of us will be talking to our mobile devices
rather than just clicking on the screen.
The subscription-based concept is gaining
traction in the United States, with services
offering consumers an allotment of cinema visits
for a low monthly fee. Is Fandango interested in
entering that space?
We’re open-minded in exploring new platforms
and new business models all the time. We’re most
focused on the most productive, habit-forming,
consumer-first business models and platform technologies
that make sense. They have to make sense
for exhibition, for the studios, and for Fandango as
a company. They have to make sense for everyone.
We are here to serve the consumer, but obviously
they cannot make sense for the consumer alone.
So there’s nothing to announce in the subscription
space, but it’s certainly something we’re watching
very carefully. n
68 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

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CARA NEWS
CELEBRATING 50 YEARS
OF MOVIE RATINGS
JOAN GRAVES
SVP AND CHAIR OF THE
CLASSIFICATION AND RATING
ADMINISTRATION
by Joan Graves, SVP & Chairman, CARA
>> Since 1988, my job has been watching movies.
I have seen more than 12,000 films of every genre,
style, and type as part of the Classification and
Rating Administration (CARA).
CARA was established nearly 50 years ago by
former MPAA CEO Jack Valenti. The voluntary
system replaced the Motion Picture Production
Code, or the Hays Code as it was called, which
outlined what was morally acceptable and unacceptable
for films produced between 1930 and
1968. CARA provided an alternative to government
censorship—a practice that had persisted
at the state level. Jack’s remarkable vision created
a system to inform parents, while also protecting
filmmakers and the creative process from government
intervention.
Since its inception on November 1, 1968,
CARA has provided American parents with advance
information about the level of content in movies to
help them determine what’s appropriate for their
children, factoring in their own family values and
the individual sensitivities of their children. As we
celebrate our 50th anniversary, it is clear that CARA
has withstood the test of time and remains a valuable
tool for parents across the country.
I have witnessed the evolution of the movie
rating system firsthand. In 1988, I joined the
CARA board as a part-time rater, and in 2000 I
took on the role of chairman. In that time, I have
seen shifts in parental concerns and perspectives
on everything from violence and language to drug
use and sexuality. I’m proud to note that CARA
has continuously adapted, rating movies to reflect
those societal shifts.
Part of the reason our system works so well is
because CARA’s board is composed of parents.
We hire parents of different backgrounds, from
different parts of the country. They have no prior
affiliation with the film and television industry—the
primary qualification is the perspective
of parenthood. Usually the 10 to 13 parents on
the board have children between the ages of five
and 17 when they are hired. Once their kids reach
adulthood, they rotate off the board.
We keep the identities of our raters anonymous
to shield them from any sort of outside
influence. However, we do make public the
identities of our senior raters, including myself,
to increase transparency in the process and allow
communication with filmmakers and moviegoers.
Our website, filmratings.com, includes access to
our policies and procedures, a database of all films
rated since 1968, and a Contact Us link for any
questions or feedback.
On a typical day, we watch two to three movies—always
in their entirety. We rate everything
in context on a case-by-case basis. You may have
heard that we try to schedule violence in the
morning and sex in the afternoon. There is some
truth to that—and popcorn is always available!
ARTICLE ABOUT THE CREATION OF THE MPAA’S VOLUNTARY FILM
RATING PROGRAM IN THE NOV. 11, 1968, ISSUE OF BOXOFFICE
70 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

We, of course, also watch animated films,
family comedies, documentaries, and
everything in between.
The process and our job are focused on
asking the question any parent would ask:
What would I want to know about this
film before I decide to let my child see it?
That question is why our system has
evolved so well over time. We are celebrating
five decades this year, because
our purpose is to reflect the standards
of American parents, not set them. Not
one of our ratings indicates whether a
film is good or bad; each merely indicates
the level of content. Most of the
so-called “rating controversies” over the
years can be traced to a misunderstanding
of this key fact.
We are constantly working to evaluate
and improve our system. We regularly
ask parents, through surveys and focus
groups, about their perceptions of movie
elements like violence, language, drug
use, and sexuality. And then we mirror
our ratings to reflect contemporary concerns
and better assist parents in making
the right family viewing choices.
Over the years, we have also made
distinct enhancements to the system.
The most notable change was the
addition of the PG-13 rating in 1984,
created to alert parents of more intense
film content. Unique rating descriptors
for movies rated PG or higher were
added in 1990. And in 2007, we decided
to consider tobacco imagery as a factor
in assigning ratings and their accompanying
descriptors.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not
credit the success of CARA to the strong
relationship with the National Association
of Theatre Owners (NATO), which
goes back to the very beginning. When
Jack created the ratings, NATO agreed to
support them. This endorsement allowed
the rating system to be taken seriously by
all stakeholders, audiences and distributors
alike. Over the years, we have worked
closely with NATO members to help
them give rating information as well as
to encourage feedback about the ratings
themselves. I look forward to the ongoing
success of this important partnership.
In the last 50 years, American audiences
have adjusted their views on almost
everything. Our values and opinions have
evolved as the movies we watch address
tough issues and encourage discussion
of challenging themes. I am proud that
CARA has played a role in that discourse—and
that by helping American
parents make the right viewing choices
for their families, we are also protecting
the rights of filmmakers to express themselves
freely.
Even after watching thousands of
movies, I cannot predict, unfortunately,
what we may see on-screen in the years
ahead. But I can confidently say the
ratings system will continue to adapt
and stay true to our role of keeping
parents informed. n
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 71

EVENT CINEMA
AN EVENT WORTH CELEBRATING
DISTRIBUTORS AND EXHIBITORS CONVENED IN LONDON
FOR THE EVENT CINEMA ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
by Sam Andrews
>> Characteristically upbeat, engaged,
and entrepreneurial, event cinema executives
attending this year’s Event Cinema
Association conference in London in
February were also aware of the challenges
facing the sector.
Rubey Entertainment
founder John
Rubey, who previously
headed Fathom
Entertainment in the
U.S., referenced an
IHS forecast that the
event cinema business
would hit $1
billion worldwide by
2019. “I think we are
in an amazing time
when many in [the
business] saw the
dollars and pounds
and local currency
grow but also the
head count grow,” he
said. “It’s an exciting
time to be in event
cinema, and we are certainly at the forefront
of big change, which is consistent
with what the consumer is looking for, in
particular enhanced experience and better
value for their time and better engagement
with the content and the people
sitting in the seats next to them.”
According to comScore, the event
cinema sector saw 6 percent year-onyear
growth in 2017, with only Andre
Summer, Andre Rieu’s latest concert title,
making the top 20 all-time list. It grossed
£1.52 million, less than half the take of
such hits as the National Theatre’s Hamlet
and War Horse.
Speaking on a panel, Trafalgar Releasing
distribution director Alice De Rosa
said that while there was an argument
to say that the UK market was becoming
saturated, “really rapid growth” was
still being achieved internationally with
releases such as David Gilmore Live at
Pompeii and Rammstein: Paris.
“I think the industry should take heart
that it didn’t have very many titles in that
top 20, yet we did great,” she said. “What
we are seeing is an increase in volume,
maybe a slightly concerning increase in
volume in some respects, but some of
that wealth being spread across a variety
of titles. I take quite a lot of heart that we
didn’t go backwards, not having a War
Horse, a Winter’s Tale, or a Miss Saigon,
any of those blockbuster breaking-£2
million type of releases.”
James Dobbin, who heads event
cinema at National Amusements, which
spans both the UK and the U.S., as well
as Brazil and Argentina, added that it was
the first year that National Amusements
saw every single territory up year-on-year
for event cinema.
“And that was because of a lot of our
own initiatives. The U.S. was significantly
up; Argentina we had a huge year
and we haven’t done a lot there because
of the complications with admin. It was
a very successful year across the board;
internationally it felt
like we were taking
more steps forward,”
he said.
FRESH CONTENT
After a year in
which just one title
broke into the alltime
top 20, however,
there were concerns
that the category
needs fresh content to
rekindle the double-digit
growth of
recent years.
Odeon UK event
cinema chief Karen
Liu said that while
the sector “is still going
from strength to strength, it just needs
more ‘bigger’ titles to come through.”
While 2016 had Sherlock, Miss
Saigon, and Supersonic, Liu said more
“big-ticket events” were needed on the
schedule and singled out family-friendly
musicals such as The Lion King and concert
acts such as Adele that could help
drive the sector.
Dobbin agreed but conceded that it is
hard to secure distribution for such titles,
noting that “in an ideal world, we would
have Wicked on the cinema screen.”
Vue Entertainment alternative content
manager Johnny Carr said his chain
grew its event cinema box office revenue
by nearly 25 percent thanks in part to a
number of exclusives. “That was achieved
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EVENT CINEMA
by going out and securing new streams
of content, recognizing the opportunity
to go beyond the slate of content that
is handed to us. Also recognizing the
opportunity to go out and sell ‘cinema’
to external businesses: television, sports,
pre-school,” he said.
SPORT
Although Liu was cautious about the
potential for sport in cinemas, particularly
those events such as the soccer
World Cup and rugby Six Nations that
are on free-to-air
television, Carr was
more positive about
pay TV events such
as boxing.
Vue saw major
success with the
Floyd Mayweather
and Conor McGregor
fight in 2017, he
said: “For the right
sports, there is absolutely
a place on the
big screen for sports.
Obviously, there is
the extreme example
of Mayweather-Mc-
Gregor, which was
pure cinema. Also it
benefited from the
fact that it was at 4 a.m., when quite a
number of the bars were closed. . . . We
firmly believe that there’s a place on the
big screen for boxing.”
ANIME AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Dobbin also suggested that it was
important for exhibitors to look for the
opportunities for foreign-language films
for certain communities and pointed
to Showcase’s Lithuanian film nights in
the UK and success with the substantial
Brazilian community in Boston in the
U.S. He added, “It’s looking at individual
audiences. At National Amusements,
we’re also a distributor in the UK where
we released 22 films last year. We specialize
in a number of different things,
but anime is a big, big part of what we
do and is something that’s really coming
through around the world as a huge area
of growth.”
Caleb Johnstone-Cowan, group
targeted programming manager at Odeon
Cinemas Group, acts as the focal point
for events and specialist programming
across 13 territories, including event
cinema and anime.
In the past year, Odeon has run 12
anime titles, he said: “We have an event
model on those, and we have them in
anywhere between 17 to 50 cinemas depending
on the scale of the release. We’ll
play them either in Japanese with subtitles
for the more hardcore anime fans or
we’ll look at dubbed versions, depending
on whether it’s more family friendly.
“We’ve had some great success. Your
Name is the one that’s been just phenomenal.
What really helped on that was
how it was held back playing on home
video in Japan for a very long time, so
we were actually able to do encore presentations.
The proudest thing is that we
had sold out the BFI Imax on that film
the year after it came out, which was
huge for us.”
Employing an event model allows
an exhibitor to target communities
that would not necessarily sustain the
screening of an anime film for seven days
a week or for 21 shows, he said. “Having
that event model means we can go
to much smaller communities, student
towns, and provincial towns, as well as
where you expect it to work—in London,
Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and
so on.
“What that gives us is this a real opportunity
to give our audience something
completely different because we know
that they want to see it on a big screen
and, a lot of the time
quite frankly, it is an
YOUR NAME
opportunity for them
to see it legitimately.”
CLASSICS
Classic film is
also an area that has
proved successful,
according to Dobbin,
who said that
National Amusement’s
partnership
with Turner Classic
Movies in the U.S.
has extended to
approximately 1,000
cinemas and does
“really, really well.”
National Amusements
also launched “Flashback” in the
UK a few years ago, he said: “It has been
incredibly successful for us. We treat it
like event cinema; we program stuff six
months in advance for two shows. We try
to get experiences around each of those
classic films. It’s something that’s working
really, really well for us and it helps to
drive the event cinema growth that we
have seen within Showcase.”
De Rosa agreed that classic films can
be “massively successful” and revealed
that Trafalgar Releasing is planning a
40th anniversary release for Monty Python’s
Life of Brian this year.
She warned, however, that, “There
needs to be a legitimate reason to bring
a film back in the cinema, and there
74 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

EVENT CINEMA
needs to be a campaign to support it.”
She added, “For us, the anniversary isn’t
enough, and we’re working with the Python
team to shape an event that really
is going to drive those audiences and
make something really special. I think
we have seen examples of anniversary
releases not necessarily being supported
in the same way both by the content and
the campaign that comes with it and not
necessarily achieving the success we hope
to see.”
Carr agreed, pointing to Vue’s
screenings of the
likes of Robocop,
PAW PATROL
Heat, and Close Encounters
of the Third
Kind. “We had a
lot of fun there, but
what we saw was, if
you don’t have the
weight at a social
media level—if the
world isn’t shouting
about something—
then it falters. I also
think the ones that
work best for us are
the ones that other
exhibitors have
come forward for;
it has just expanded
the reach.”
GAMES
Dobbin said that National Amusements
is hoping to expand its partnership
with Super League in the U.S. to the UK
this year. The partnership brings kids into
cinemas to play games such as “Minecraft”
and “League of Legends” on their laptops.
“Super League actually just got
investment from Nickelodeon, which is
also part of our family of companies, so
we’re very glad to bring them into the
UK and then internationally very, very
soon. We’re incubating it at the moment
within our cinemas, and hopefully it
will become a distribution model going
forward, so I think that will be very
exciting,” he said.
PRE-SCHOOL
Carr also spoke about Vue’s efforts to
encourage the next generation of film-goers
through screenings of Paw Patrol in its
cinemas.
“It’s screened in the early part of
the working day and we’re strategically
pushing it at lower prices, which means it
is less stress financially for the family if it’s
‘game over’ after 20 minutes,” he said.
At a 60-minute running time, the
Paw Patrol feature can be programmed
to fit around other films, he said, adding
that Vue makes sure it markets the title
alongside major films such as Paddington
to ensure it has relevance to the
customer base.
This point about targeting the right
audience was underlined by Graham
Spurling, director of Irish cinema chain
Movies@, which started showing event
cinema in 2009 with the Met Opera in
three cinemas. Event cinema now shows
in 30 cinemas across Ireland.
Spurling is chary of generalizations
about the event cinema marketplace: “The
one thing I would say is that we don’t
have an ‘event cinema audience.’ We have
many ‘event cinema audiences,’ and the
crossover from opera to ballet to theater is
not as great as people might think.”
Movies@ now sends out about
125,000 highly targeted mail shots every
month between its four cinemas. The
results can be highly effective, according
to Spurling, who said that his company
accounted for more than 30 percent of
the box office take on Miss Saigon from
approximately 8 percent of the screens
that played it.
“We have a huge success rate with a
massive database of people that we have
built over the years,” he said.
Movies@ uses the Showtime Analytics
tools, Spurling
explained: “It
has enabled us to
drill down hugely
into our audience
demographics, and
shortly there will be
a new product on
that platform called
Engage, which will
enable us to directly
target people in a
much quicker, simpler
way.”
He stressed that
it was still important
to program based
on what you believe
will work but that it’s
also important to use
data to back up those instincts.
“I’m in this business because I love being
in an entertainment business. Yes, it’s
got to be financially driven and so on and
so forth, but if I, as a cinema owner, lose
sight of the fact that I am in an entertainment
business, I lose sight of why I got
involved in this in the first place, 42 years
ago,” he said.
“The programming is what I live
and breathe. It’s knowing your audience,
it’s knowing what’s in your heart,
feeling you know what’s going to work
in certain cinemas and certain screen
sizes, certain demographics within those
areas. It is an art form. It’s going to be
driven by passion in the first place but
the data helps.” n
76 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

EVENT CINEMA
ECA AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE WINNERS
H GOLD AWARD 500,000 ADMISSIONS
Fathom Events (USA)
Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You!
POKÉMON THE MOVIE: I CHOOSE YOU!
H SILVER AWARDS 250,000 ADMISSIONS
Piece of Magic Entertainment (Netherlands)
Andre Rieu Maastricht Concert 2017
Trafalgar Releasing (UK)
Dave Gilmour Live in Pompeii
ANDRE RIEU MAASTRICHT CONCERT 2017
DISNEY’S NEWSIES: THE BROADWAY MUSICAL
RAMMSTEIN: PARIS
H BRONZE AWARDS 100,000 ADMISSIONS
Exhibition on Screen (UK)
Painting the Modern Garden from Monet to Matisse
I, Claude Monet
Fathom Events (USA)
Disney’s Newsies: The Broadway Musical
Is Genesis History?
In Our Hands: The Battle for Jerusalem
Jeepers Creepers 3
Samaritan’s Purse Presents Facing Darkness
The Princess Bride 30th Anniversary (1987) Presented by TCM
Steve McQueen: American Icon
Singin’ in the Rain 65th Anniversary (1952) Presented by TCM
Genesis Paradise Lost
Mully
Nexo Digital (Italy)
Loving Vincent
Pathé Live (France)
Bolshoi Ballet, The Sleeping Beauty
Bolshoi Ballet, Swan Lake
Royal Opera House (UK)
Madame Butterfly
Othello
The Nutcracker
Trafalgar Releasing (UK)
Rammstein: Paris
78 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

EVENT CINEMA
GLOBAL IMPACT
THE EVENT CINEMA MARKET IS SEEING STRONG GROWTH AROUND THE WORLD, ACCORDING TO SPEAKERS AT
THE EVENT CINEMA ASSOCIATION’S ANNUAL CONFERENCE IN LONDON
by Christopher Barrett
THE GREAT BIG BOO! IS A
FAMILY-FRIENDLY HALLOWEEN
EXPERIENCE THAT COMBINES
ON-SCREEN ENTERTAINMENT
WITH IN-THEATER INTERACTIVE
ENTERTAINMENT.
U.S. and Canada
U.S. event cinema is booming despite a lackluster
overall theatrical box office performance in the
territory, according to Rubey Entertainment CEO
John Rubey.
Speaking at the Event Cinema Association conference
at the Vue West End in London’s Leicester
Square, the former CEO of Fathom Events said the
company screened 26 events in 2017 with gross
box office receipts of more than $1 million, nearly
double its receipts the previous year.
“At a time when domestic box office was holding
steady and attendance was declining, the event
cinema box office was up a very large degree,”
Rubey said.
Among the genres he said were performing
strongest in the U.S. last year were opera and the
arts, Turner Classic Movies, BBC events, anime,
music, and family content.
Rubey advised delegates how to maximize the
potential of an event cinema campaign. He said it
was vital to start with a targeted theater footprint
and ensure there is enough
lead time to add screens as sales
dictate: “In my experience what is
going to grow success and lead to a
larger box office is opting in early,
otherwise you are not going to have
enough time to promote it the way
you should.”
Rubey also emphasized the importance
of taking into account local
tastes before organizing an event:
“Be aware of local and regional
content preferences; that is particularly
true of music, comedy. Some
content may play well in California,
but in Texas and the heartland it is
not meaningful—you have to be
sensitive to that.”
Representing Cineplex, Canada’s
largest cinema chain with
more than 160 sites, vice president,
event cinema, Brad LaDouceur said event cinema
revenue in the market was up 24 percent year-onyear
in 2017, and attendance passed one million
admissions.
He said more than 150 locations program event
cinema content in Canada, including independents
and larger chains such as Landmark Cinemas. The
best-performing genres in Canada were opera,
theater, repertory-film programming, concerts, and
dance, while children’s content is growing fast.
“We know that Netflix has tons of children’s
content, but we are seeing families coming out and
enjoying the shared experiences,” said LaDouceur.
The Cineplex executive said the company had
begun to experiment with new kinds of cinema
events, including interactive shows: “We are
starting to move into a new area, where the cinema
becomes a live venue. We have had great success
with The Great Big Boo! a 50-minute live interactive
show where all the content on-screen is coupled
with characters in the auditorium who are interacting
with the audience.” (continued on page 82)
80 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

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cinequip.com

EVENT CINEMA
PATHÉ LIVE’S 2018 COMÉDIE-
FRANÇAISE PROGRAM WILL
INCLUDE THE FOP REFORMED
IN MAY.
France
Pathé Live leads the event cinema market in
France with a market share of 76 percent. Pathé
Live president Thierry Fontaine said event cinema
admissions in France reached 940,000, up 39 percent
on the previous year, with box office up 19.8
percent to £12.5 million.
“The box office was not up as much as admissions
due to the rise in pre-school programming,
of which the average price was less than the other
content,” said Fontaine.
Independent exhibitors collectively account for
more than half of the theatrical market in France,
while the market leader Pathé-Gaumont had a
22.1 percent share in 2017.
A consistently strong theatrical market,
France saw 209 million cinema admissions in
2017, up slightly on the 10-year average of 205
million. French films accounted for 37.4 percent
of admissions.
Fontaine said that the strength of interest in
local content has to be taken into account when
programming event cinema: “Sometimes alternative
content is seen as the enemy, so it can be a complicated
market and we have to be very careful.”
Opera remained the leading genre in 2017,
accounting for 26.8 percent of admissions and
41 percent of box office, while children’s content
was second with 23 percent of admissions and 17
percent of box office.
“In its first year, theater accounted for 15
percent of the market solely due to Comédie-
Française, which is impressive,” said Fontaine.
Australia
Australia has 2,041 screens at 498 cinemas.
The total gross box office revenue in 2017 was
AUD$1.2 billion, with event cinema generating
0.5 percent (AUD$5.9 million), according to com-
Score Australia. Of that, the top 10 event cinema
titles of last year generated AUD$2.9 million or 49
percent of the category’s total revenue.
Providing a perspective on the Australian event
cinema landscape, CinemaLive founder Janelle
Mason revealed some of the distribution challenges
in the territory.
CinemaLive was launched in 2008 and set
about installing satellite equipment in 100 independent
cinemas across Australia. Within three
years its headquarters were moved to London.
Mason said, “We started doing live broadcasts
and it really worked; it was all about [children’s
music group] The Wiggles, but we soon realized
we couldn’t distribute from Australia or show live
events from oversees in Australia due to the time
differences involved, as most live content originates
from the U.S. or Europe.”
A huge territory with a low population density
of three people per square kilometer, the sheer size
of Australia presents operational challenges.
She said, “The majority of event cinema is culture
based, and we have a smaller cultural audience
in Australia, spread over a vast area. The majors
don’t tend to screen cultural product, so we end
up in art house cinemas and independents, few of
which are in metropolitan areas.
“The very diverse communities mean that we
have to create highly targeted marketing campaigns.
It is difficult to make everything commercially
viable,” she said.
Other issues raised by Mason include the
absence of electronic delivery of digital cinema
packages in Australia, and that promotional material
has to be sent by couriers, which can take up to
a week to arrive.
Middle East
Reel Cinemas senior director Adon Quinn said
that limitations on event cinema in the UAE have
meant that it remains a fledgling market. Until a
recent breakthrough was made with the National
Media Council, all streamed content required
Arabic subtitles and had to be censored in advance.
“All those historical barriers have been removed,
so the big focus for us now is on building the content
and the calendar moving forward,” said Quinn.
He said, “We have been building different viewing
experiences within cinemas. We have kids’ cinemas,
we are launching a new VVIP experience, and we
have a dining experience, which will be the first
licensed cinema in the region, opening this month.” n
82 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

WORLD CINEMA
GLOBAL OUTLOOK
MPAA CHIEF CHARLES RIVKIN CHAMPIONS
THE U.S. CINEMA INDUSTRY AROUND THE WORLD
CHARLES RIVKIN
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF
AMERICA
Last September, Charles
Rivkin took the helm as
CEO of the Motion Picture
Association of America
(MPAA), returning to the
industry where his career
began nearly 30 years ago.
He brings a unique blend
of policy, diplomacy, and
business experience, following
nearly 20 years running
media and entertainment
companies and eight years
serving the United States at
the State Department and as
ambassador to France and
Monaco. Boxoffice asked
Rivkin how he hopes to
share the story of America’s
film and television industry
with the world.
What are some of your top priorities and projects
as you begin your first full year at the helm of the
MPAA?
My mission is to represent American film and
television on the global stage. Every day, I tell the
story of this iconic industry—and it’s a great story
to tell. We support millions of jobs and hundreds
of thousands of small businesses here at home.
Outside the United States, films and television
shows are some of our country’s greatest ambassadors
and exports. They serve as a cultural force for
good in the world.
My immediate priorities include promoting a
strong creative economy, encouraging the production
of new movies and television shows to drive
continued job creation, defending intellectual
property, reducing piracy, and expanding access to
markets around the world.
We began 2018 with cinemas in Saudi Arabia
playing Hollywood films for the first time in over
35 years. What does this development represent
for the film industry’s continuing efforts in global
expansion?
Stories told on-screen promote free expression
and encourage mutual understanding. They have
the power to build bridges across borders and
between cultures, in every corner of the world.
Having traveled to Saudi Arabia while serving
as assistant secretary of state for economic and
business affairs, I saw firsthand a Saudi business
community that was eager to embrace new opportunities
that come with more openness. I firmly
believe that the return of cinema is a positive step
for the development of Saudi Arabia’s local creative
economy, for audiences across the Middle East,
and for our entire industry. We are stronger when
we collaborate with storytellers and film enthusiasts
around the world.
What sort of evolution and collaboration would
you like to see between Hollywood and the
constantly growing Chinese market?
With their box office passing $8.6 billion last
year, China is a vital market for our studios. The
2012 MoU agreement has helped our industries
grow stronger together. But continued success will
require greater and fairer access for American films
and television shows. We are confident the current
MoU renegotiations will bring further engagement
and build on this solid foundation.
We are also working directly with our Chinese
counterparts to improve dialogue and understanding
between our two industries. Last year, we saw
a new high of 40 U.S. films shown in China. Our
industries collaborated on an historic 10 co-productions.
And we continue to support emerging
creators and filmmakers, championing exchange
programs and workshops.
Black Panther has been an enormous box office
success. What are you doing to advance diverse
creators and inclusive storytelling?
Films like Black Panther, Coco, Wonder Woman,
and A Wrinkle in Time demonstrate that global au-
84 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

WORLD CINEMA
BLACK PANTHER IS NOW
THE HIGHEST-GROSSING FILM
IN THE MARVEL CINEMATIC
UNIVERSE WITH WORLDWIDE
GROSSES IN EXCESS OF
$1 BILLION.
diences crave stories
and characters that reflect
the diversity of all
communities. Inclusive
stories are not only important
to tell, they are
good business as well.
I recently had the
opportunity to attend
community screenings
of both Black Panther
and A Wrinkle in Time.
I sat with cast, crew,
and local vendors who
made these films come
to life. The energy in
those theaters and the
passion of the creators
is what this industry is
all about.
The MPAA and our
member studios are
committed to building
an inclusive talent
pipeline and increasing
diversity across our
industry. Through our
inclusion and outreach
program, we work
with and support more
than 20 national civil
rights organizations
and multicultural groups on these issues.
In age of rapid digital transformation, do you
think audiences still go to the movies?
Absolutely. The movie theater experience is
unparalleled. Thanks to films including Black
Panther, the U.S. box office is up nearly 13 percent
in 2018. Even with all the competition from
other screens, we are seeing audiences continue
to show up in theaters. Part of that is because
theaters are making the effort to improve the
experience. But it’s also because there is no match
for the excitement of seeing a great movie in a
room full of strangers.
The MPAA will continue working closely with
our partners across the industry to develop more
ways for people to see the movies and television
shows they love—in the theater, at home, and on
their devices.
Piracy is an ongoing issue and concern. What is
the best way to approach such a problem?
Piracy undermines the entire creative economy.
It endangers millions of jobs and makes it harder
to recoup the significant investments that go into
the production of new movies and TV shows.
To protect creators and creativity, we cooperate
with governments and law enforcement agencies
to disrupt the criminal operations behind largescale
piracy websites. We support the growth of
legally available creative content across hundreds of
platforms and services. And we partner in voluntary
initiatives with responsible parties across the
internet ecosystem.
Through initiatives like the Alliance for Creativity
and Entertainment (ACE), we are also working
with other content creators to reduce online
piracy. Using the content-protection expertise and
resources of the MPAA, ACE brings together 30
leading content creators committed to reducing
online piracy and protecting the legal marketplace
for creative content.
This unprecedented collaboration in the
fight against piracy has already delivered results,
including a court ruling in February that stopped
the extensive piracy activity of Tickbox—a distributor
of piracy devices and apps.
What do you consider to be the biggest
challenges facing the film industry in the coming
years?
The film and television industry is changing
rapidly, thanks to new technology, innovations
in storytelling, and many other factors. Creative
companies are charting new strategies to develop
the best content and deliver it how and when
audiences want it.
Looking ahead, we must ensure creators can
take advantage of these opportunities. Global
piracy remains a significant threat, especially in
the form of preloaded devices and infringing
apps. We must continue to defend intellectual
property and protect the rights of creators to
produce their works. We need open markets so
even more audiences can enjoy the great content
being produced.
Importantly, these changes are an opportunity
for the MPAA—and the entire industry—to have
a forward-thinking dialogue that explores what the
future looks like. Our mission could not be more
important in this dynamic environment. n
86 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

COVER STORY
IMAGE COURTESY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL
PRODUCER JON LANDAU AND DIRECTOR ROBERT RODRIGUEZ BRING THE ICONIC MANGA CHARACTER TO LIFE
by Daniel Loria
In 2005, James Cameron was at a crossroads. The visionary
filmmaker, whose megahit Titanic was 10 years behind him,
had two high-profile projects ready to go into production:
Avatar, a screenplay he had originally completed in 1995, and
Alita: Battle Angel, an adaptation of a popular Japanese manga
that had been in the works since 1999. As history would have
it, Cameron wound up tackling Avatar first—a film that would
usher in a new age of digital cinema and break box office
records worldwide. But fans of the Japanese series worried that
Avatar’s runaway success in 2009 had come at the cost of their
beloved comic book. That’s when Robert Rodriguez stepped up
to the plate. The Austin, Texas–based director converted nearly
600 pages of Cameron’s original script and notes for Alita into
a production-ready project. Under Rodriguez’s guidance, Alita
drew upon the creative teams at Lightstorm Entertainment,
Troublemaker Studios, 20th Century Fox, and Weta Digital to
deliver the sci-fi spectacle fans have been waiting to see for
nearly 20 years.
88 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

Set a number of centuries into the future,
the film tells the story of Alita (Rosa Salazar), a
cyborg who awakens in Iron City with no memory
of who she is or the world she’s in. Ido (Christoph
Waltz), a compassionate cyber-doctor, takes her
in, careful to shield her from her own past and
the dangers of her new surroundings. Alita’s
budding friendship with a street-smart new
friend, Hugo (Keean Johnson), begins to unlock
memories just as deadly forces arrive to threaten
her new life. On the run, Alita discovers hidden
fighting abilities as she battles to save her new
friends and family. Boxoffice asked Alita: Battle
Angel producer Jon Landau and director Robert
Rodriguez about the long road in bringing the
film to cinema audiences worldwide.
JON LANDAU
PRODUCER
When did Battle Angel Alita, the original Japanese
manga that Alita: Battle Angel is based on, come
onto your radar?
We were not aware of it until another filmmaker
brought it to our attention in 1999. When
we first looked at it, we saw a female protagonist’s
journey of self-discovery, coming into her own to
become a heroic character. Jim [Cameron], who
has three daughters, has always done movies with
very strong female protagonists. This really spoke
to us about the themes that everybody at some
point in their lives—and particularly young women—question.
That’s Alita’s journey. Alita comes
into the world with no memory of who she is and
refers to herself at some point as an insignificant
girl. But through her journey of discovery, she
learns that even an “insignificant” girl has the
opportunity to change the world. That’s one of
those universal themes that goes across international
boundaries, cultural divides, and can speak
to everyone.
Getting any movie made is a minor miracle. What
was the catalyst behind getting Alita: Battle Angel
to theaters?
When we first acquired the rights we spent a
good five years developing the cinematic story of
the property. Jim was riding on it. And in 2005
he faced a dilemma, because we realized it was
now the right time to do Avatar. Jim had written
Avatar in 1995, but the
technology was not there
to make it at the time.
So we put it on the back
burner, and in 2005 we
felt we were in a position
to become the impetus
to push the technology
to make Avatar. It all
happened at the same
time that we had a script
ready to do Alita, and it
became a back-and-forth
struggle to decide which
movie to make first.
History would have it
that we made Avatar, and
it put Jim in the Avatar
universe for the foreseeable
future—at least in
IMAGE COURTESY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
terms of directing.
We put Alita on the back burner but never put
it away. Over the years, we held conversations with
a number of different potential filmmakers to jump
on the property and nurture this child with us. It
wasn’t until Jim had a social lunch with Robert
Rodriguez that things changed. After Jim shared
that he’d be involved with Avatar for the foreseeable
future, Robert asked, “What happens to a movie
like Alita: Battle Angel?” Jim turns to him and says,
“I have a script for it, but it’s too long. If you can
crack it, you can do it.” Robert went away for four
months, on his own, after telling him, “I’m not going
to rewrite you, Jim”—because you don’t rewrite
James Cameron—“I’m going to edit you.” Robert
took a script that was way too long and came back
with one that was a manageable length. When Jim
and I read it, we didn’t miss anything. That told us
that Robert really understood—thematically, emotionally,
and story-wise—what was important in the
original script. We went to Fox with the shortened
draft and proposed Robert to come in on the movie
with us. It became a real partnership of two companies
after that: taking what Robert had at Troublemaker
Studios and combining it with our resources
at Lightstorm. We would involve people from our
art department who worked on Avatar to work with
Robert’s team at Troublemaker. Our editor working
on the Avatar sequels came in to work on Alita.
It became a real collaboration as we marched into
production.
(continued on next page)
JON LANDAU
AT THE MOVIES
One of the things that sticks
out for me was going to see
Apocalypse Now in 70 millimeter
with surround sound
and forgetting I was anyplace
else but in that movie.
AT THE
CONCESSIONS
STAND
I get two, you can’t just do
one! I’ve got to have my
Raisinets and my popcorn!
It goes back to my childhood,
going to the movies with
my family. We saw at least
two or three movies a month
growing up. I would get
those two things as a boy,
and that has stayed with
me my entire life, because
the memory of the whole
experience is so great.
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 89

COVER STORY
That collaboration also meant taking a James Cameron project
and infusing it with Robert Rodriguez’s distinct filmmaking
style. How did Rodriguez’s involvement begin to influence the
project once the script was ready to shoot?
Where to make the movie. As you’re aware, oftentimes today
it will be suggested to take a production somewhere because of
incentives; Budapest, Montreal—these are all very viable alternatives,
don’t get me wrong. Except we had Robert Rodriguez,
whose experience has all been in Austin, Texas. In conversations
Robert would tell me, “Look, Jon, if you’re going to hire a chef,
don’t take him out of his own
kitchen.” So we explored what
Austin had, and it turns out they
have an incredible talent pool
there. People who are not just
proficient technicians and artists,
but are also very passionate about
what they do. We looked at what
Robert had as a parking lot in
his studio facility and we turned
it into a backlot. We built an
80,000-square-foot city block in
his parking lot. That became the
foundation for Iron City, where
Alita: Battle Angel takes place.
That’s a big part of the fun in
making a movie like this—
building an entirely new world.
Can you tell us more about the
film’s setting? How did you decide on its look and feel?
It seldom happens in a Japanese-originated comic series that
it’s set in the Western world. But that’s what [Battle Angel Alita
author Yukito] Kishiro did, so we had the luxury of setting the
movie’s Iron City in a locale outside of Asia. You don’t always
have that latitude based on the underlying IP material. I always
say, Jim doesn’t do science fiction—he does science fact, and
there are certain story elements where it made sense to have Iron
City located on or near the equator. Iron City is a city that time
has built upon. Our movie takes place 600 years in the future.
There were great wars 300 years before our movie opens. The
great wars wiped out technology and set it back to our time.
The idea was to take something that provided a great visual
foundation today and that later generations would later build on
top of. We looked at places like Havana and Panama City—architectures
that provided the first several floors of our buildings
that later generations built on top of instead of knocking down
and rebuilding. We used a lot of that Central and South American
influence in our architecture and color palette to create our
world. It would be very easy, on a postwar project, to create a
totally dystopian world that people don’t want to spend time in.
I’m not going to
rewrite you, Jim—
because you don’t rewrite
James Cameron—I’m going
to edit you.
We didn’t want to do that. Yes, these people live without some of
the things we’re so accustomed to, but they still have lives. Alita
looks at this world with wide-eyed wonder because she has no
memory of it. She sees a melting pot of a society, cultures from
all over the world who migrated to Iron City after the wars.
Casting is central to making a movie like this work. How did the
ensemble of Alita: Battle Angel come together?
The key to the casting was Rosa Salazar, who plays Alita.
It’s her story, her journey that we go on. We needed to find an
actress who could give us the
strength of character that Alita
comes to embody with the sense
of compassion and feeling of
love that make us human. Alita
as a character is a cyborg, but
people oftentimes get confused:
a cyborg is not a robot. A
cyborg is a modified human; a
person with a pacemaker, with
a prosthetic leg, is effectively
a cyborg. The character who
finds her and brings her home
is Ido, played by Christoph
Waltz. It is his second chance at
fatherhood when he brings her
home. Christoph read the script
and loved it, but had to find
the way to play this character
because it’s not the normal type
of role he’s played before: a compassionate father figure. The
script spoke to actors like Mahershala Ali, who plays the villain
who runs Iron City with an iron fist; to Jennifer Connelly,
who plays Ido’s estranged wife; Ed Skrein, who plays Zapan,
another villain in our world; and to Jackie Earle Haley, who is
five-foot-something and got to play a giant, eight-foot-plus-tall
villain. We also found an incredibly dynamic young man in a
role that proved much tougher to cast than Alita, because when
Rosa came in she just knocked everybody’s socks off. Hugo is a
street-smart kid earning a living on the streets of Iron City who
ultimately becomes Alita’s love interest. Finding that role was
very difficult until we saw Keean Johnson. His chemistry with
Rosa made it clear this was his role.
You’ve been associated with a number of science fiction films
throughout your career. What is it about the genre that has
connected with you so much?
That connection actually started out in movies before I
discovered any of the literature. As a kid, I loved going to the
movies with my family. People go to movies to escape the world
they are in, and science fiction offers you a great opportunity for
90 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

IMAGE COURTESY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
that escape. As a filmmaker, it also allows you to
bring up issues that can become a metaphor for the
world in which we live without being heavy-handed.
It gives you the liberty to present something
that is evocative and provocative through the
stories you tell.
ROBERT RODRIGUEZ
DIRECTOR
Were you familiar with the source material before
taking on the film?
I had seen an article back in the early 2000s
about it being a project Jim [Cameron] was
developing. It had a frame of the manga alongside
the story. I purposely steered away from reading
anything else about it so I could enjoy Jim’s movie
with fresh eyes. Then a few years ago, when Jim
and I were talking about making the film together,
I saw his art reel and his script and his extensive
notes on the project, and that was my introduction
to it, seeing and reading Jim’s vision for the film
story. It was later that I then went back and read
the mangas. Jim is one of our greatest storytellers,
so it was cool seeing what he responded to in the
manga and how he made it work in a cinematic
story, and what he added to it. I love the manga
too and [Battle Angel Alita author Yukito] Kishiro’s
world-building.
With Alita you entered a project that had
already been polished and developed for some
time. What was your involvement like in the
preproduction stage of the film?
[Cameron] got sidetracked with Avatar, so he
never had a chance to go back and finish writing
it, and that’s where I came in. My involvement
began with taking Jim’s original script, which was
too lengthy to make into a single film, and editing
it down to a manageable length, filling in gaps
with story and ideas I pulled from his 600 pages
DIRECTOR ROBERT RODRIGUEZ
(RIGHT) ON THE AUSTIN SET OF
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 91

COVER STORY
of notes that he also gave me to work
with. I then did previsualization work
with some of Jim’s Avatar artists, and did
storyboard animatics for a few sequences
in order to make a presentation of the
project to Fox. To me, Jim had written
such a great script, I didn’t feel he
needed rewriting, just editing down and
some patch work. It was a great script.
Your own experience in adapting graphic
novels includes a very faithful take on
Frank Miller’s Sin City—how did you
approach this subject with Alita: Battle
Angel? Were there any lessons from that
previous experience that informed the
way you tackled this movie?
Sin City was a very stylistic graphic
novel, and the look went hand in hand
with that story. For me, it was essential
that the movie look as bold and striking
and original as Frank’s artwork.
Alita was a different experience, in that
I wanted to make a Jim Cameron movie.
And that just doesn’t happen, because Jim
doesn’t write a script that he isn’t going to
direct himself. It just ended up working
out that he wasn’t going to have time to
make the movie himself. So my approach
was to make the film that Jim had envisioned
when he read the graphic novel.
I loved his point of view on the material
and what he did with it. So whereas with
Sin City I set out to make a Frank Miller
film, here, I set out to make a Jim Cameron
film, by way of Kishiro. Jim’s approach
to the story made it essential to focus on
the characters and have that work first
and foremost.
The trailer is striking. Can you tell us
more about the film’s visual style? What
references did you use to craft that look?
In the original manga the story
took place near Kansas City, but in
Jim’s version it was South America, for
scientific reasons, since that’s where a
space elevator would work best, close
to the equator. I loved that, because it
meant we could have a futuristic world
that was set in the colorful world of, say,
a Panama City or an Old Havana–type
look, with the futuristic buildings built
on top of the bones of the old world.
It would immediately make our film
look distinct. What I also loved in Jim’s
artwork from the 2005 version of the
film he was working on was his approach
to Alita, keeping her faithful to the
look of the manga, down to the anime
eyes. Since she’s a cyborg, she and her
whole squad could have that look, but
because his vision was to always push the
envelope of visual effects, she would be
photorealistic, which is something we’ve
never seen before.
Any time you approach an adaptation,
there’s always the question of how
to incorporate one’s own visual
and narrative style into the source
material. How does Alita: Battle Angel
relate to and distinguish itself from
your past projects?
It relates a bit because of the Latin
country setting, even though that was
an idea of Jim’s a decade before I came
aboard. It was also conceived to be a
melting pot, where people from all over
the globe have settled. So the diversity
mission I’ve had in my career just plays
out organically in Jim’s story. As far as
the film’s narrative and style, that’s tough
because I’ve been so inspired by Jim’s
movies since I first got interested in film;
a lot of my style of filmmaking has been
inspired by Jim. So to be able to make a
full-on movie in the style of Jim Cameron
was very fun to do, and because of
that angle it will feel different in a lot of
ways from my past work, but in other
ways similar because of Jim’s influence
on my filmmaking.
Do you consider this to be the most
ambitious project so far in your
career—at least in terms of the sheer
scope of the production?
It is by far the most ambitious and
largest-scope picture of my career. My
“big” movies up to this point were all
magic tricks. More akin to what Jim did
on The Terminator and Aliens, taking
modest budgets and being as inventive
as possible and having big ideas over
budget and resources. Whereas this is a
big Jim Cameron–style film, with that
level of scope and visual effects. Weta
Digital does all our effects; that’s just
how Jim rolls. So it was a great way to
leap into this style of big moviemaking,
and Jim is such a generous and helpful
producer, he’d answer any question at
any time of the day or night. He was
also very empowering, saying, “You’ve
done all this before, it’s not a matter of
process, merely scale.”
A film of this scale provides a great
opportunity to cross something off
your filmmaking bucket list. Were there
any such scenes in Alita that allowed
you to try something you had always
wanted to do?
What I loved was the freedom to do
several big sequences entirely in CG. We
shot practical locations and sets for the
majority of the movie, very little green
screen. But for the Motorball sequences,
which go too fast to be shot practically,
doing a full-blown action sequence,
where you could put that camera
anywhere at NASCAR speeds and have
stunt and action, was really freeing, and
at the Weta level of effects work, absolutely
stunning to be a part of.
Why is Alita: Battle Angel the sort of film
that deserves to be experienced at a
cinema?
Jim makes big movies that show
you worlds and ideas you’ve never seen
before and that are made for the big
screen. Jim and I both were the earliest
proponents of digital 3-D cinema,
doing the dog-and-pony show together
around the country to distributors back
in the early 2000s to get them to install
digital 3-D projectors in their theaters.
We shot this native 3-D and with the
eye towards making a big-screen experience
first and foremost with a complete
vision of the future. n
92 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

COMMUNITY OUTREACH
OPENING HEARTS & MINDS
STUDIO MOVIE GRILL FOCUSES ON MAKING A POSITIVE IMPACT
IN ITS COMMUNITIES
by Chris Eggertsen
>> On February 26, 2017, Chance the Rapper announced via Twitter that
he’d bought out every seat for a showing of Get Out at a theater on Chicago’s
South Side, allowing anyone with some free time and an ID to see the blockbuster
horror film free of charge. The theater in question: Studio Movie Grill’s
Chatham branch, located at 210 W. 87th Street.
The gesture of goodwill was just the beginning of Chance’s relationship with
the theater chain, which through its Community Outreach Program strives to
do good in the communities it serves by partnering with local charities and
fund-raising programs. In Chance’s case, the performing artist simply wanted
to expose his community to a film he felt was important for them to see, and
he has since repeated the gesture with subsequent releases, including last
year’s Marshall starring Chadwick Boseman.
Started in 1993 by CEO Brian Schultz, the
Dallas-based Studio Movie Grill (SMG), a pioneer
of the in-theater dining experience, has made “conscious
capitalism” a core component of its business.
Unlike many exhibitors, the company focuses on
opening new locations in disadvantaged communities
that struggle with issues like illiteracy, poverty,
and violence, in an effort to improve the lives of
the people there.
They accomplish this in a couple of different
ways. First, by opening locations in lower-income
areas, they attract more businesses and investment
to neighborhoods suffering from urban blight.
Second, they focus on bettering the lives of the
customers they serve through charitable initiatives.
As Lynn McQuaker, the company’s senior director
of PR and outreach, puts it, this strategy isn’t just
good for the communities—it’s good for SMG’s
bottom line.
“I have become more and more convinced that
outreach into our local communities is the most
productive form of marketing and PR that we can
undertake,” McQuaker tells Boxoffice. “Leaving
a positive wake can be a great differentiator. If we
94 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

work with local nonprofits and groups in which
not only our neighbors but also our teams are
personally invested and we offer them our support,
we become an important and sometimes integral
part of our communities. We show them we are
listening and aware of what matters to them, that
we care about what they care about, and they
become our very best evangelists while supporting
our businesses.”
SMG’s outreach initiatives cover a broad range
of issues that hinge on the specific needs of the
communities they serve. Occasionally these needs
are more immediate than others. After massive
flooding killed seven people and caused over $5
billion in property damage in Houston in the
spring of 2016, the company kick-started the
“Help a Fellow Texan Out” fund-raising initiative,
which donated 10 percent of all proceeds
from SMG’s two Houston locations to benefit the
American Red Cross’s disaster relief efforts. The
initiative was repeated statewide the following
year, after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma wreaked
widespread devastation.
While natural disasters and other unexpected
events like Harvey occasionally spur SMG to
action, the majority of their efforts are focused on
a handful of key issues that it holds near and dear,
says McQuaker. “We try to stay within our pillars:
special needs children and families, women’s issues,
and education and literacy,” she notes. One of
their longest-running initiatives, the Special Needs
Screening Program, was actually inspired by an
SMG employee. “We learned one of our GMs,
raising two children with special needs, had never
seen a movie with his family,” McQuaker says. In-
BIKES GO HAND IN HAND WITH
BEING A KID, BUT FOR MANY
CHILDREN, THE PROSPECT
OF HAVING THEIR OWN BIKE
IS ONLY A DREAM. VARIETY:
THE CHILDREN’S CHARITY
OF GEORGIA WORKS WITH A
DESIGNATED SCHOOL DISTRICT
AND COMMUNITIES TO PROVIDE
THE NAMES OF QUALIFIED
CHILDREN BETWEEN FIVE AND
12 YEARS OF AGE FOR THEIR
ANNUAL BIKES FOR KIDS EVENT.
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 95

COMMUNITY OUTREACH
TOP: CHILDREN’S ANNUAL RED
BALLOON RIDE AND RUN IS A
FAMILY-FRIENDLY FUN RUN,
WALK, AND CYCLING EVENT
HELD AT CHILDREN’S MEDICAL
CENTER IN PLANO, TEXAS.
BOTTOM: MARSHALL CO-STAR
JOSH GAD APPEARS WITH
CHANCE THE RAPPER AT A
SCREENING OF THE THURGOOD
MARSHALL BIOPIC.
spired by this confession, the 15-year-old program
offers “sensory friendly” showings to special needs
children (who are admitted free of charge) and
their families, giving them the freedom to “move
around, talk, or even dance in the aisles” without
fear of disturbing other theatergoers.
The company’s philanthropic mission extends
to its workers. For his part, Schultz has endeavored
to provide every SMG team member a living wage
of at least $15 an hour—even as he admits the
company hasn’t quite attained that lofty standard
across the board. “Our hourly average wage is actually
much higher than $15 per hour,” says Schultz,
before qualifying, “however, not all team members
start out making this wage.”
Nonetheless, SMG’s altruism remains rare
among American movie theater chains, and
the mission seems to have worked not only in
touching lives but in growing the company. Since
opening its first two theaters, SMG has expanded
to 30 locations nationwide, with another set to
open in Bakersfield, California, this month. As
their official website states: “Being a good neighbor
is just good business.”
Looking ahead to the rest of 2018, a number
of returning and new initiatives are in the works,
from perennial enterprises such as the Prom Dress
Drive (which last year collected and distributed
over 1,500 prom dresses to disadvantaged high
school students) to first-time initiatives like an
“across concept” food drive that’s being planned for
Hunger Awareness Month in September. In June,
the company is putting on its annual “Opening
Hearts and Minds” awards gala, which last year
honored 12 women change-makers by flying them
96 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

COMMUNITY OUTREACH
TOP: SMG TEAM MEMBERS
DRESS AS MINIONS FOR A
HOSPITAL VISIT.
BOTTOM: SMG NORTHWEST
HIGHWAY HOSTED MORE THAN
200 DALLAS STUDENTS FOR
THE BIG THOUGHT SUMMER
PROGRAM.
out to its Dallas theater for an awards ceremony
and an advance red-carpet screening of Wonder
Woman. “It’s always terrific if we can work with
exhibitor relations at the studios by launching an
outreach campaign aligned with a movie,” Mc-
Quaker notes.
With celebrity supporters like Chance, Studio
Movie Grill also has star power on its side. In
addition to further partnerships with the Grammy-winning
rapper—the company recently
hosted the rapper’s Black History Month Film
Festival at their Chatham location—the company
boasts such boldface-name supporters as Lena
Waithe and Common (who brought an advance
screening of their Showtime series The Chi to
Chatham) and Dallas Mavericks player Harrison
Barnes, who bought out several screens showing
Black Panther for the Boys and Girls Club at
SMG’s Dallas location. This kind of celebrity
engagement gives added visibility to a company
that has provided a model for how to thrive as a
business while improving the lives of those who
support them.
“We believe our active involvement in the
community—in and outside of SMG’s four
walls—is a very personal responsibility,” says Ted
Low, the company’s senior director of brand and
creative. “We want to build buildings that enhance
the neighborhoods where we live, employ,
and enrich our team members in these communities,
and serve the millions of guests that come to
SMG every year. If we can deliver on these things,
we believe we are the kind of neighbor that everyone
wants.” n
98 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

INDEPENDENT EXHIBITION
INTRODUCING
THE INDEPENDENT
CINEMA ALLIANCE
THE NEWLY FORMED INDEPENDENT CINEMA ALLIANCE (ICA)
GIVES A MUCH-NEEDED VOICE TO INDEPENDENT CINEMAS
by Daniel Loria
issues because they affect us directly. It’s important
to us because this is our livelihood. We depend on
this business to support ourselves, so it couldn’t be
more important. We aren’t part of big corporations
with lots of other sources of revenue. This is it for
us. So we can relate very well to the problems and
concerns that theater owners have, because we
have them too. I think that gives us a certain level
of credibility. Once we formalize our governance
structure, we’ll see some changes in the composition
and direction of the task force.
In the face of mounting challenges for the exhibition community, a group of
exhibitors have created a not-for-profit volunteer alliance of independent cinemas
to voice the concerns and protect the interests of independent cinemas
across the North American market. Launched in early 2018, the ICA already has
the support of more than 100 companies representing over 1,000 screens. Boxoffice
spoke with Randy Hester, president and CEO of Texas-based Hometown
Cinemas, to find out more about this new alliance of independent cinemas.
Q&A WITH RANDY
HESTER, PRESIDENT
& CEO, HOMETOWN
CINEMAS
What was the inspiration behind the creation of
the Independent Cinema Alliance?
The inspiration is pretty simple: to give a voice to
the smaller companies in North America, any one
company that would represent less than 2 percent of
box office market share. When you take that threshold
and add up all the ones below it, you end up
with almost 20 percent box office as a group, which
would make us the No. 3 or 4 largest circuit in the
country. We felt like if we created a single vehicle for
many independent cinemas, we’d have a voice worth
listening to. We want to give a voice to the people
who haven’t had a voice. That’s the inspiration.
Who will be voicing some of these concerns?
Right now the ICA operates through a task
force composed of committed independents who
understand this industry. Bill Campbell is the
leader of our group; he’s got vast experience in the
industry generally, and specifically in working with
independents and the issues that most concern
them. As our membership grows, and we hear
from our members about the challenges they face,
we’ll be better equipped to talk to the studios on
their behalf. It’s a lot more efficient for studios to
speak with the ICA rather than fielding 400 phone
calls from different cinemas.
What is the background of your ICA task force?
We are all theater owners, and we know the
Can nonprofit cinemas also join the ICA?
A cinema’s taxable status is irrelevant to us.
You’re in the cinema business, you’re serving customers,
you need to get film. The issues that affect
you are the same whether you are a nonprofit or a
for-profit business.
What are some of the most pressing issues for
your community today?
Availability of film on the break is always,
always at the top of the list. Nothing affects us
more than film availability, and it’s exaggerated
when your theater only has four or six screens.
The advent of digital cinema was supposed to
make wide distributions on the break easier
because we were no longer dealing with a finite
number of expensive prints. But we’re still seeing
film-availability issues plaguing independents,
and it’s a critical dialogue for us to maintain with
the studios.
When we first discussed forming the ICA,
PVOD was a hot-button issue, but that seems
to have cooled off a bit. We still want to keep
up the dialogue on PVOD so that independents
at least have a seat at that table. More recently,
those concerns have been displaced by Movie-
Pass. We’re trying to analyze the MoviePass model
from an independent-cinema perspective to
see where that concept is going and whether it’s
a sustainable model that is good for the industry
as a whole.
We’re always looking for industry win-wins
because we love the motion picture industry. And
we love our patrons and we want as positive a bigscreen
experience as possible for them. So everything
we do is directed at ensuring the survival and
thriving of independent cinemas so that North
Americans everywhere, including all those small
towns, get to enjoy the magic of the big screen. n
100 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

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CHINESE MARKET
IMPORT APPEAL
CAN HOLLYWOOD REMAIN RELEVANT AS
CHINESE MOVIEGOING TASTES DIVERSIFY?
by Jonathan Papish
Films from smaller international markets such as India, Spain,
Japan, and Thailand are thriving in the world’s second-largest
film industry and are challenging Hollywood’s once commanding
position. Should Hollywood be worried?
INDIA’S DANGAL GROSSED $189 MILLION IN 2017
SPAIN’S CONTRATIEMPO GROSSED $25.9 MILLION IN 2017
>> On May 5, 2017, the Bollywood wrestling
drama Dangal, starring Aamir Khan, debuted
with little fanfare on Chinese screens, grossing
just $2.1 million. Premiering on the same day,
Marvel’s blockbuster superhero sequel Guardians
of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opened to seven times that
amount, bolstered by Disney’s powerful marketing
machine and a lucrative brand name. Yet from
that point forward, the two films took opposite
box office trajectories.
Immediately, overwhelmingly positive word of
mouth began to ricochet across China’s ubiquitous
WeChat social media platform that Dangal’s relevant
social themes—a tale of two women defying
traditional culture norms—and uplifting message
couldn’t be missed.
By the end of their runs, Dangal had improbably
grossed $189 million—the leggiest movie ever
in China—while Guardians of the Galaxy fizzled
out after its opening weekend and finished with
$95 million.
Dangal’s unbelievable China performance
placed it as the ninth highest-grossing film of
2017 in China and, more impressively, as the only
non-Hollywood import in Chinese box office
history to earn a spot in the top 10 of a single
calendar year.
But it isn’t just India gaining a foothold in
the world’s second-largest film market. The
trend started in 2015 when Japan’s Stand by Me
Doraemon earned $90 million after diplomatic
relations between the two historical adversaries
began to thaw. Then last year, imports from
Thailand (Bad Genius, $41 million) and Spain
(Contratiempo, $25.9 million) performed exponentially
better at China’s box office than in
their home territory. Russia, though yet unable
to produce a breakout hit, continues to send over
films in record numbers.
The Chinese market, for so long dominated
only by Hollywood blockbusters and domestic
titles, is finally paying dividends to imports from
other foreign markets.
The reasons for this seismic shift are many. On
a purely economic level, as China’s box office has
grown exponentially over the past decade, it has
created more availability of wealth and more opportunities
to spread that wealth around. China’s
exhibition boom—the country leads the world
with over 50,000 screens—means there is greater
capacity and demand for diverse programming
102 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

and content. Large-scale expansion and growth into lower-tiered
cities, where audiences may have less exposure to foreign culture,
essentially puts Hollywood and other international markets on
equal footing.
Geopolitically, China’s entry into global institutions after
joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 has helped foster
myriad strong bilateral relations. Specifically, in regard to the
film industry, it has also helped form coproduction treaties, thus
facilitating deeper cross-cultural exchanges.
For better or worse, it can be argued that Hollywood
itself is also a major cause of China’s changing tides. Since
1994, when China first opened its cinemas to revenue-shared
imports, the strict import quota enforced by the Chinese government
compelled an already risk-averse industry to export
its most commercially viable products. As a result, Chinese
moviegoers have essentially been brought up on a constant diet
of Hollywood blockbusters, and while there is still a sizable
base of Chinese fans willing to dole out cash for franchise
films, there is a certain level of Hollywood fatigue setting in
for younger Chinese moviegoers who seek out fresher or more
original narratives.
The box office totals of Paramount’s Transformers series are the
perfect metric to illustrate the changing mentality toward Hollywood
franchises in China. The first five installments released
on average every two years over the past decade as either the
highest-grossing or second highest-grossing film of the year, and
their dominance in the territory coincided with the box office
boom in the market as a whole.
Last year’s The Last Knight, however, reversed that trend,
grossing a whopping $100 million less than its predecessor
despite the continued growth of the overall market. Even more
worrying were the overwhelmingly negative reviews from moviegoers
who felt pandered to.
The Last Knight is not the only warning sign Hollywood
studios have been receiving from Chinese audiences in recent
years. Fast and the Furious notwithstanding, reliable franchises
such as Marvel’s Cinematic Universe are hitting a ceiling after
years of rising popularity, and the most successful films in
terms of audience satisfaction and legs at the box office have
been original films like Coco, Zootopia, Hacksaw Ridge, and A
Dog’s Purpose.
So is Hollywood in danger of losing its relevance in the Chinese
film market? In the short term, no. Chinese moviegoers still
revere Hollywood’s technical prowess and will seek out blockbusters
for their state-of-the-art visual effects. But if Wolf Warrior
2’s breakout performance this summer ($867 million) is any
indication, domestic films are quickly catching up. If Hollywood
can’t alter its risk-averse strategy and release a greater variety of
films, something that smaller international markets are beginning
to feel emboldened to do, audiences will continue to spend their
money elsewhere. n
JAPAN’S STAND BY ME DORAEMON GROSSED $90 MILLION IN 2015
THAILAND’S BAD GENIUS GROSSED $41 MILLION IN 2015
CHINA’S WOLF WARRIOR 2 GROSSED $867 MILLION IN 2018
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 103

IMMERSIVE CINEMA
COOL AS ICE
FRANCE’S CGR CINEMAS ROLLS OUT ICE (IMMERSIVE CINEMA EXPERIENCE)
by Julien Marcel
It all started at CinemaCon, two years ago to be exact.
Jocelyn Bouyssy, CEO of France’s CGR Cinemas, one of
the country’s leading exhibition circuits, was making
the rounds of the trade show floor and private meeting
rooms where the industry’s most prominent technology
vendors displayed their latest offerings. One such
presentation, a demo of Philips LightVibes—a unique
visual-media system delivering ambient video and
surround lighting effects to viewers’ peripheral field
of vision—held his attention. There was something
there, thought Bouyssy, who had set out to develop
a premium format with a sustainable business model
that would work for smaller auditoriums of 150 to
200 seats. It would have to offer a truly premium
experience for the moviegoer—spectacular, yes, but
also cozy enough to be welcoming in a theater’s smaller
rooms. The LightVibes solution had that potential,
Bouyssy thought, particularly when complemented
by other premium offerings in the way of sound and
image technology. By September 2016, the idea had
turned into a reality: CGR made the decision to launch
ICE (Immersive Cinema Experience), an exclusive
proprietary premium format combining the visual
impact of LightVibes, Christie laser projection, Dolby
Atmos sound, and reserved premium seating that
respects strict stadium-seating guidelines.
104 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

As often happens at CGR, the lead time
between the idea and the execution was quite
short. The first ICE auditorium was unveiled on
December 14, 2016, with the French premiere of
Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Although the film
itself had not been encoded (and therefore was
not screened) in the LightVibes format, CGR
was nevertheless able to test out the appeal of its
new premium concept by enabling the Light-
Vibes technology during the film’s pre-show. The
experience generated significant buzz on social
media: a mix of excitement from the audience by
what they saw, and frustration that the full ICE
experience with LightVibes was limited to the
pre-show. “We had a tough time,” Bouyssy says of
the initial rollout. “But it was a defining moment
for us; it confirmed there was clearly an appetite
for this new experience.”
CGR Cinemas immediately decided to add
three more ICE auditoriums in other locations. The
circuit also began to engage studios and filmmakers
to convince them to embrace their new premium
format. By summer 2017, CGR emerged with their
biggest catch for their fledgling ICE offering: Luc
Besson. Venerated by French audiences, Besson
was in the final stages of bringing
Valerian and the City of a Thousand
Planets (right) to theaters—a film
that wound up being the third
highest grossing of the year in
France. With Besson’s blessing,
CGR developed a version
of Valerian using LightVibes.
Demand for LightVibes–enabled
screenings at CGR was so
high that the circuit even added
temporary LightVibes installations
in select auditoriums.
According to Bouyssy, CGR Cinemas
managed to claim 20 percent of Valerian’s market
share—a significant increase from the 9 to 12 percent
of the French box office it usually represents.
Valerian screenings were sold out five times a day
for seven consecutive weeks in the circuit’s ICE
auditoriums, despite a €15 ticket price—almost
twice as much as the standard admission. CGR
had found its proprietary premium format.
The Valerian results accelerated discussions
with the major studios, most of whom accepted
releasing ICE versions of some of their upcoming
titles. Sony went up first with Jumanji: Welcome to
the Jungle, followed by
Fox with Maze Runner:
The Death Cure, and,
most recently, Universal’s
Pacific Rim:
Uprising and Disneynature’s
Blue. “This is a
spectacular format for
spectacular movies,”
adds Bouyssy, who
admits that not all ICE
titles have been a hit
with audiences. “Our
only disappointments
have been with some
successful French comedies
that proved not
to be suited for this
experience.”
As part of the circuit’s efforts to generate further
adoption of the ICE experience from the major
studios, CGR undertook the responsibility to
create LightVibes DCPs themselves in a dedicated
auditorium at its headquarters in La Rochelle. As
of today, CGR operates 15 ICE auditoriums
and plans to add 10 more
by the end of the year. They have
even licensed the ICE concept
to an independent French
cinema outside its circuit.
Much like CJ 4DPLEX,
the exhibition technology
and innovation arm of South
Korean exhibition giant CJ
CGV, CGR is opening its ICE
technology to other exhibitors.
ICE will have a presence at CinemaCon
2018, with CGR looking to
meet with studios, exhibitors, and installation
companies as part of a planned expansion beyond
the French circuit. As part of its partnership with
Philips, CGR can expand the ICE format in other
countries with new partners. The circuit’s ambition
for the concept doesn’t end there; Bouyssy admits
he’ll be arriving in Las Vegas with a goal in mind.
“We want to open the first ICE auditorium in the
United States in Los Angeles,” he says. “We are
ready to do our part and work as an active partner
to make that happen, and having a presence at
CinemaCon is the first step. As with any new
innovation in the cinema, seeing is believing!” n
JOCELYN BOUYSSY
CEO
CGR CINEMAS
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 105

CLASSIC CINEMAS
SOMEWHERE OVER
THE RAINBOW
THE PLAZA CINEMA IN OTTAWA, KANSAS,
IS NAMED THE OLDEST PURPOSE-BUILT
CINEMA IN OPERATION
by Daniel Loria
>> There’s more to Kansas movie history than The Wizard of Oz.
That’s the first point Rita “Peach” Madl, the current proprietor
of the Plaza Cinema, drives home in our conversation.
“We’ve been showing movies here years before Hollywood
even existed.”
Ottawa, Kansas, sits about 55 miles from
Kansas City. The town of around 12,000
residents has gone through the same ups
and downs as many other small towns
in the American heartland. A walk
down Main Street brings back
memories of days gone by, but
there’s one building in particular
that conjures a special connection
to generations of people
who’ve called Ottawa home. The
Deco-style movie theater in the
Pickrell Building on 211 S. Main
Street has been a pillar of the
community for over a century.
Known today by its current
name, the Plaza Cinema, the site
has just been named the oldest
purpose-built cinema in operation
by Guinness World Records.
“The look of the town, the
architecture of the buildings, is
all from the late 1800s or early
1900s,” says Madl. “You could
put some old Ford cars and park
them on Main Street and it would
look like you were in a movie
from another time.” The Plaza
is a central aspect of the town’s
timeless feel. Originally opened
as a commercial cinema—The
Bijou Theatre—in May 1907,
the site went through its first
rebranding in 1910 when it was
renamed The Crystal Theatre. The
106 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

programming in those early days consisted largely
of imported shorts from France’s Lumière brothers.
It wasn’t until 1935 that the movie theater began
going by The Plaza. The theater has served as a
commercial cinema throughout its entire 111-year
(and counting) existence—a bit of history that
would never have been uncovered without the
chance involvement of Peach Madl and a small
team of other key researchers.
Madl bought the Plaza in 2006, not out of a
particular desire to enter the exhibition business,
but as a way to keep the lights on in the heart
of downtown Ottawa. “We bought it in 2006,
when we found out the gentleman who owned it
was going to jail for a little while,” she says. “We
wanted to purchase it from him so that it wouldn’t
close. It started as, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve got to keep
that place open.’ We met with him before he went
to jail and negotiated to purchase the building and
the cinema.”
“Nobody was planning to make a lot of money,”
she admits. “We were just hoping to pay for
it, keep it open, and enjoy it. The marquee lights
up the whole street; we were thinking, can you
imagine if it got any darker downtown? We were
down to one restaurant. When I was researching it,
we figured if we got that marquee’s lights on, five
restaurants would open. And it ended up happening:
five restaurants are open and viable today. We
have an Italian restaurant, a Mexican restaurant,
a great pizza place, we have a deli, and we have a
wings place.”
Madl called upon Sonic Equipment and
other regional vendors to help with much-needed
renovations. She survived the digital transition by
putting up her own money for the theater’s first-ever
digital projector in 2008—a risky move at the
height of the Great Recession. The Plaza kept the
doors open thanks to Madl’s involvement; it wasn’t
until 2013 that she first realized the historical significance
of the building. That was the year when
Deborah Barker, a local historical archivist, uncovered
photographs that indicated the cinema was
operational in the early 20th century. Madl and
her crew had reason to believe the Plaza predated
the Guinness record holder at the time, Denmark’s
Korsof Biograf, which had opened on August
1908. Their source, however, was hardly viable:
a book called The Annuls of Ottawa, written by a
local amateur historian in 1961, which referenced
a certain Fred Beeler who projected moving pictures
at the Pickrell Building, the site of the town’s
first moving picture show in 1905. That reference,
however, included no citation to contemporaneous
sources. In historical terms, it was moot. Madl’s
first application to Guinness for the Plaza’s claim
was canceled.
The Plaza team went back to the drawing board
and began gathering the archival materials they
needed to stake their claim for the world record. It
was during that time that Cindy Hoedel, a reporter
for the Kansas City Star, came to town.
“Ottawa is just outside the area covered by the
Star, so I had to fight with my editors to let me
do this story,” remembers Hoedel. “Ottawa is this
quirky, sweet, charming, step-back-in-time kind of
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE
FRANKLIN COUNTY HISTORICAL
SOCIETY
OTTAWA DAILY REPUBLIC
BIJOU THEATRE AD
AUGUST 8, 1907
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 107

CLASSIC CINEMAS
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE
FRANKLIN COUNTY HISTORICAL
SOCIETY
town that is becoming very hard to find in America.
It’s got a charming Main Street with everything
you need: there’s a hardware store, a pharmacy,
three or four places to eat, a library, and a cute
museum at their train station.”
Like any good reporter, Hoedel was skeptical
about Madl’s claims to the record. “We knew
Ottawa had four newspapers in 1905 and I found
it unbelievable that none of those papers would
have written about [the opening]. So, I figured
they were wrong ... but Peach kept sticking to that
1905 date. I ended up writing my story as a profile
of Peach and her quest instead.”
The story ran, and within a year, Madl was inspired
to give Guinness another shot. She reached
out to Hoedel, by then no longer associated with
the Star, offering to hire her to help on the new
campaign. “I tried to talk her out of hiring me. I
told her I didn’t think she had it and didn’t want
to disappoint them,” says Hoedel, laughing. Madl
108 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

CLASSIC CINEMAS
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE
FRANKLIN COUNTY HISTORICAL
SOCIETY
proved to be too persuasive to turn down, however;
Hoedel joined the team and instructed Madl
as to what they would need in order to build a
foolproof case for Guinness. “We had to go back
and document every single year starting from 2018
and go as far back as we could get,” says Hoedel.
“There couldn’t be any gaps.”
Madl began her journey to document the Plaza’s
history on newspapers.com, a digital database that,
while helpful, was not exhaustive. Hoedel encouraged
Madl to continue the search at libraries and
historical societies, where she scoured microfiche
archives of local newspapers that were never digitized.
That was when the eureka moment happened—coming,
fittingly, from a surprising source.
“It was called The Ottawa Guardian, a prohibitionist
newspaper that was only around for
a year or two,” recalls Madl. “They just thought
[moving pictures] were great family fun, something
that didn’t involve alcohol, so they talked a
lot about it. We got our very first solid evidence
of being a commercial cinema from this prohibitionist
newspaper.”
“She sent me photos of the microfiche ads
with the dates on top of the newspaper pages and
I got chills. I couldn’t believe it. We had evidence
of the opening day—she was right,” says Hoedel.
The former reporter would go on to upload the
Plaza’s new application to Guinness, spending
hours making sure the 100-plus newspaper ads and
announcements were properly submitted.
At the eleventh hour, however, Peach asked
Hoedel to hold off on the submission. She believed
there was still more to the story. “Right before I
was ready to hit submit, Peach wants to go back
to the 1905 date,” says Hoedel. “I said, ‘Peach,
you don’t have it. The guy, Fred Beeler, isn’t even
among the names of people who have owned the
theater; it’s the Wagners who are on the lease.’ So
she goes back to the library and I’ll be damned if
she doesn’t send me a photocopy of an article saying
that Fred Beeler is showing movies in his men’s
club at the Pickrell Building in 1905. She was
right about that, too—even if that doesn’t directly
impact her record since he wasn’t showing them
commercially. So not only was she right all along,
so was the amateur historian! That book did us a
huge favor: it’s what made Peach think she could
have the record. We did not find those ads from
1906 and 1907 until we started to try to prove
1905. This history could have remained a secret if
not for that reference in 1961.”
Peach Madl hopes the Guinness World Record
will help bring new visitors to Ottawa. The
real reward, however, is knowing the town can
still catch a movie at the same place it’s relied on
for generations. “I’m an entrepreneur and I like
to start businesses,” she says. “The main objective
for my husband and I is to fill a need in a community.
Whenever we see a need—and it looks
like a fun opportunity—that’s when we take the
first step.” n
110 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

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Technology evolves.
webediamoviespro.com

EXHIBITOR MARKETING
RIDING THE DIGITAL
REVOLUTION
THE IMPORTANCE OF AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE
PRESENCE
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
by Malcolm MacMillan,
Chief Marketing Officer, Webedia Movies Pro
Malcolm MacMillan is
CMO of Webedia Movies
Pro, a global leader in
marketing and online
ticketing services for
cinema.
The company has been
at the heart of the
“internet revolution” in
cinema for the last 18
years. It has developed
integrated websites for
cinema for more than
25 exhibitor partners
in the U.S. and Europe.
In that time, it has seen
the huge impact a great
web presence can have
on clients’ businesses,
both in terms of customer
engagement and
revenue.
>> In 2018 we
are in the midst
of the “digital
revolution,”
one of the most
rapid and sustained
periods of
change the world
has experienced,
and its effects
can be seen in
every aspect of
modern life, politically,
socially,
culturally, and
economically.
At the heart
of this revolution is the internet, which is transforming
the way we communicate and do business,
as well as shifting control into the hands of “the
many not the few.” The internet is almost at saturation
point in terms of penetration. In northern Europe
alone, 94 percent of the population uses it. It
is where people spend a large chunk of their leisure
time, on average 5.51 hours a day, with nearly two
hours of this on social media according to Global
WebIndex 2017 H2. In addition, the rapid rise of
mobile commerce is transforming the way people
purchase online: by 2016 Q3, UK consumers were
buying more via mobile than through desktop
(Source: Criteo: Mobile Commerce Report).
The shift to the internet has also forced a major
reappraisal of the way businesses handle consumers’
online activity. Data, and how it is used, is
getting a lot of attention these days, especially with
the arrival of GDPR (General Data Protection
Regulation) in Europe.
DATA
For cinema owners, the changes GDPR will
bring should not be viewed simply as a burden but
as an opportunity to look again at the way they use
the data they gather from their online presence.
With better use of data, your web presence can
be optimized to offer the customer a much more
personalized experience. Data can also help the
website become more efficient and more customer-friendly
by targeting key audience segments
with relevant messaging.
Here, the use of membership and loyalty
schemes are particularly suited to the online channel.
The ability to give customers real-time access
to accounts, as well as information about exclusive
offers in a very personal environment, promotes
engagement and brand loyalty.
Apps offer even more scope to get close
to customers. By making use of phone
functionality, such as location services and Apple
Pay, apps can deliver an even more individual,
convenient service.
And, as more is learned about customers, there
is a greater opportunity to align an offering to
individual needs and so reap dividends.
The ability to gather and use data (responsibly)
is a key reason to establish a robust web presence.
ADVANCE TICKET SALES
With some cinemas selling up to 70 percent of
their tickets online, the web is critical in promoting
and selling the cinema experience to customers
before they arrive at the venue.
Like other competing retail/leisure sectors, some
operators have embraced the web and are reaping
the rewards. Too many, however, are still focused
on their brick-and-mortar operations and have yet
to invest sufficiently in their online presence.
In recent years, much of the major change in
the cinema industry has been focused on technical
innovation inside the cinemas, with the near-universal
adoption of digital projection, enhanced
sound experiences, and other developments such as
4D seating. (continued on page 116)
114 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

EVERYTHING CHANGES,
BUT CHANGE ITSELF.
SPEAKING IN 500 BCE, HERACLITUS COULD
NOT HAVE BEEN MORE PRESCIENT.
The enhanced in-cinema offering is driving
more and more people toward online ticketing.
For example, the introduction of reserved seating
might double the number of online ticket sales—
people like to make sure they have the right seat
before they arrive at the cinema. This becomes
even more important when people are planning an
evening out at the cinema with friends and want to
sit together. So, by failing to engage with customers
in a significant way online, some operators will
not realize the true value of all the investment they
have made in the in-theater experience.
There are clearly many factors to consider, but
an effective website, designed for customer convenience,
should expect to turn about 5 percent of
visits into a sale. Every advance ticket sale is money
in the bank and a commitment from the customer
to turn up and (possibly) purchase concessions and
other offerings. Knowing how many seats are sold
up front can also help an operator provide a better
service. Rather than have people wait in line for
their tickets, the operator can focus on up-selling
in the foyer.
SEARCH
Critical to successful advance ticket sales are
search engines, which are the primary route by
which customers find their way to a cinema website.
According to internal Webedia data, search
engines can account for as much as 80 percent of
online ticket sales. Within that, people who arrive
at a cinema website from Google, Bing, and other
search engines are approximately 10 percent more
likely to buy a ticket than if they arrive by way of
other online links. The show times links on Google
are particularly effective and can account for up to
20 percent of all ticket sales on a cinema website,
making it potentially the single-biggest contributor
to online revenue.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the key
battleground for market share online and should
be a primary focus for all cinema businesses. In
contrast, social channels account for fewer than 2
percent of online ticket sales.
ENGAGEMENT
Even though social media are not (yet) delivering
high-volume sales, investment in this key
channel is still important. The conversations that
are had with your customers via Twitter, Facebook,
etc. can elevate a brand within a wide social circle
and play a key role in customer retention, offering
customer-engagement opportunities and a powerful
customer-service tool when things go wrong.
SHOP WINDOW
While for many operators the primary commercial
reason for establishing an e-commerce
website is to sell tickets, what should not be
ignored is a website’s capacity to act as a shop
window to display other aspects of the business
such as gift card sales, corporate hire, and food
and beverage options.
Whether or not they buy a ticket online, significantly
more people will visit a cinema website
every year than will actually go to a cinema. For
cinema owners, this presents a major opportunity
to build their brand and show what makes their
cinema different.
This is becoming particularly important as cinemas
seek to differentiate their offering with premium
cinema experiences such as bars, VIP seating,
upmarket snacks, and even in-cinema dining. The
cinema is now a place to spend a whole evening—
not just a place to watch movies—and the web
allows cinema operators to get this message across
and convert the sale. n
116 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

Change with us.
webediamoviespro.com

GIANTS OF EXHIBITION
GLOBAL GIANTS OF EXHIBITION 2018
BOXOFFICE PRESENTS THE WORLD’S BIGGEST EXHIBITION CIRCUITS BY SCREEN COUNT
Capsules by Daniel Loria and Jonathan Papish
1 WANDA FILM operates 1,352 cinemas with
14,347 screens worldwide throughout its network
of exhibitors across North America (AMC Entertainment),
Europe (Odeon & UCI), Australia
(Hoyts Cinema), and China. Wanda currently
accounts for 12 percent of the global box office,
and in China alone it earned box office revenue of
¥7.19 billion ($1.137 billion) in 2017. Wanda also
led all Chinese exhibitors with the most annual
show times (7.23 million) and annual admissions
(181 million).
2 CINEWORLD jumps up in our ranking
through its acquisition of Regal Entertainment,
making the European exhibitor the second-largest
cinema operator in North America and the
world at large. The multibillion-dollar deal made
headlines in late 2017, adding the North American
market to a list that includes territories like Bulgaria,
the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Poland,
Romania, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom.
3 A pioneer in exporting the multiplex concept
to Latin America, CINEMARK has a presence
in 15 countries in the Americas. The circuit is
present in 14 of the 20 largest metropolitan areas
in South America. Domestically, the Texas-based
chain reaches across 41 states, claiming the No. 1
or No. 2 spot in 75 percent of its top 25 markets.
Cinemark has a leading presence in all its markets:
it is the No. 3 exhibitor in North America and the
largest circuit in Argentina and Brazil.
4 DADI THEATER CIRCUIT is China’s second-biggest
exhibitor in terms of total box office
revenue and earned a company-record ¥4.82 billion
($762 million) in ticket sales in 2017. Dadi also
continued to expand its market-leading screen share
with the purchase of Orange Sky Golden Harvest
Entertainment’s mainland cinema arm for $485
million in January 2017; the exhibitor now accounts
for just over 10 percent of China’s total film screens.
5 CINÉPOLIS, the largest exhibition circuit in its
native Mexico, is also a leader in the global marketplace.
From its humble roots as a family-owned
company, Cinépolis is now the fifth-largest cinema
chain in the world with more than 37,000 employees
spread across 652 locations in 14 countries. Already
established in North America, Latin America,
Europe, and India, the circuit is looking to expand
its activities in the Middle East in the coming years.
6 CHINA FILM DIGIFILM CINEMAS constructed
216 new theaters including 1,337 new screens
in 2017, taking its total number to 820 theaters
and 5,000 screens across China. Last year was a
banner year for the exhibitor, which saw ¥4.07
billion ($644 million) in box office revenue, a 39
percent increase over 2016. Additionally, China
Film Digifilm’s highest-grossing theaters in 2017
were in the cities of Beijing, Shijiazhuang (capital
of Hubei province), and Changsha (capital of
Hunan province).
7 A subsidiary of China’s largest state-owned film
enterprise, China Film Group Corporation, CHI-
NA FILM SOUTH currently operates 783 theaters
and 4,366 screens in southern China. The exhibitor
had box office revenue of ¥4.08 billion ($645
million) and constructed 245 new theaters, which
added 1,410 new screens in 2017.
8 CHINA FILM STELLAR, a subsidiary of stateowned
China Film Group Corporation and the
country’s sixth-highest-earning exhibitor at the box
office with ¥3.98 billion ($630 million), added 177
theaters and 839 screens in 2017. This year, China
Film Stellar also expanded its Xingmeihui brand,
a combination of online shopping and in-theater
counter sales offering movie-related products and
premium gifts, into third- and fourth-tier cities.
9 SHANGHAI UNITED CIRCUIT is a wholly
owned subsidiary of Shanghai Film Corporation
and has 598 theaters with nearly 3,500 screens
across China. In 2017, Shanghai United had box
office revenue of ¥4.51 billion ($713 million) with
8.1 percent market share, making it the third-highest-grossing
exhibitor in China.
118 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

10 CJ CGV is Korea’s exhibition leader with 1,085 screens across
145 locations in its home market. That number is amplified by a
robust international presence that includes activities in key markets
such as China, Turkey, and the United States. CJ CGV entered the
year with 445 locations and 3,345 screens worldwide.
11 CINEMEX made a splash in the North American market in
2017. In April, the Mexican circuit opened its first U.S. location,
a luxury cinema operating under the CMX brand in Miami. By
autumn, Cinemex had broken into the top 10 circuits in the
United States with its acquisition of Cobb Theatres.
12 BEIJING HONGLIYU CINEMAS operates 820
theaters with 2,698 screens primarily in rural Chinese
areas. Its business scope not only covers cinema investment
and construction but also operation management, film
production, and advertising.
13 A subsidiary of Hengdian Group, which operates the
world’s largest film studio in Zhejiang province, HENGDIAN
CINEMAS built an additional 94 theaters to bring its total screen
count to 2,322. Hengdian is planning an IPO on the Shanghai
exchange in the coming year.
14 JINYI CINEMAS, headquartered in the southern metropolis
of Guangzhou, had ¥2.94 billion ($465 million) in box office
revenue in 2017, an increase of only 6 percent over the previous
year. China’s overall box office grew 13.5 percent in 2017, with
much of that growth coming from lower-tier cities where Jinyi
has had trouble expanding.
15 HUAXIA UNITED CINEMAS is owned by Huaxia Film
Distribution, a leading film distributor in China. The exhibitor
operates 381 theaters with 2,178 screens and had box office
revenue of ¥1.88 billion ($300 million) in 2017. n
COMPANY GLOBAL SCREENS COUNTRY
1 Wanda Film Holding Co., Ltd. 14,347 China
2 Cineworld 9,538 U.K
3 Cinemark 5,959 U.S.
4 Dadi Theater Circuit 5,870 China
5 Cinépolis 5,334 Mexico
6 China Film Digifilm Cinemas 4,952 China
7 China Film South 4,366 China
8 China Film Stellar 3,606 China
9 Shanghai United Circuit 3,392 China
10 CJ CGV 3,346 S.Korea
11 Cinemex 2,728 Mexico
12 Beijing Hongliyu Cinemas 2,698 China
13 Hengdian Cinemas 2,322 China
14 Jinyi Cinemas 2,220 China
15 Huaxia United Cinemas 2,178 China
COMPANY GLOBAL SCREENS COUNTRY
16 Vue International Ltd. 1,902 U.K.
17 Zhejiang Time Cinemas 1,862 China
18 Omnijoi International Cinemas 1,702 China
19 Cineplex 1,676 Canada
20 Pacific Cinemas 1,618 China
21 Perfect World Cinemas 1,540 China
22 Henan Oscar Film Group 1,364 China
23 Event Cinemas 1,296 Australia
24 Poly Cinemas 1,231 China
25 Les Cinémas Gaumont Pathé 1,142 France
26 Lotte Cinema 1,038 S. Korea
27 National Amusements 942 U.S.
28 NTC Theatres 910 China
29 Marcus Theatres 895 U.S.
30 Hunan Chuxiang Cinemas 859 China
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 119

MARKET RESEARCH
BOXOFFICE PROFILE
NEW MARKETING RESEARCH TECHNIQUES FROM WEBEDIA MOVIES PRO AND VERTIGO RESEARCH
OFFER UNIQUE PRECISION AND DEEP FOCUS TO AUDIENCE MEASURING
TOMB RAIDER FRANCHISE HISTORY
LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER
NORTH AMERICA (US & CANADA)
Release Date: June 15, 2001
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Opening Wknd: $47.7M / 3,308 Screens / #1 at the Box Office
Top 15 Market Share (Box Office): 36.8%
UNITED KINGDOM
Release Date: July 6, 2001
Certificate: 15
Opening Wknd: £3.8M / 444 Screens / #1 at the Box Office
Top 15 Market Share (Box Office): 42.2%
LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER–THE CRADLE OF LIFE
NORTH AMERICA (US & CANADA)
Release Date: July 25, 2003
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Opening Wknd: $21.8M / 3,222 Screens / #4 at the Box Office
Top 15 Market Share (Box Office): 14.4%
UNITED KINGDOM
Release Date: July 6, 2003
Certificate: 12A
Opening Weekend: £1.5 / 449 Screens / #3 at the Box Office
Top 15 Market Share (Box Office): 17.3%
INTRODUCTION
The current age of digital innovation and disruption
is revolutionizing the moviegoing journey; today’s
audiences have a variety of ways to engage,
interact, and transact for each cinema visit.
Theater circuits and technology companies
are investing millions of dollars to help
bring moviegoing in line with today’s
rapidly changing market forces. But key
questions remain: How does a given
week’s programming perform across all
segments of the moviegoing public? Are
there any audiences being overlooked
or left behind? Do specific films perform
differently among audiences from different
territories? And are there any similarities
within the same audience segments across a
number of different territories? Identifying
trends and gaps arising
from these questions are
crucial in order to build
and improve our understanding
of consumers’
moviegoing practices.
“With the dramatic transformation of the moviegoing
experience currently taking place––such
as digital ticketing, premium experiences, and so
on––we thought it was time to revisit the way we
measure and analyze the moviegoer journey,” says
Julien Marcel, CEO of Webedia Movies Pro.
Developed in collaboration by Webedia Movies
Pro and market research firm Vertigo Research,
Boxoffice Profile is a brand-new market research
initiative designed to gather demographic data
about key elements of a consumer’s moviegoing
experience through a series of weekly surveys covering
a representative sample of 2,000 moviegoers
in each territory––currently serving the United
States, United Kingdom, and France.
METHODOLOGY
Between 60,000 and 80,000 people representative
of the U.S. population aged three and up
are surveyed weekly online. A minimum of 2,000
respondents who have been confirmed as having
visited a cinema in the past seven days complete a
five-minute survey via email. Respondents can’t participate
in any interview more than once a month.
U.S.
male
42.5
U.K.
% 57.5
BY GENDER
% 45.4 % 54.6
BY GENDER
%
female
AUDIENCE PROFILE
8.8 %
22.7 % 25–34 16.6 %
3–10
U.S.
35–49
U.K.
BY AGE
11–14
10.9 BY AGE
%
20.1 %
5.6 % 4.5 % 17.6 %
18.7 %
50–59
15–24
60+
2.8 %
6.0 %
16.5 % 25.6 % 23.8 %
SOURCE: BOXOFFICE PROFILE BY VERTIGO
SOURCE: BOXOFFICE PROFILE BY VERTIGO
120 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

AUDIENCE MAPPING - UNITED STATES
MAPPING OF TOP 30 MOVIES / WEEKEND OF MARCH 16–18, 2018
Movies released this week
Movies released this week—1st friends
Movies released previous weeks
SOURCE: BOXOFFICE PROFILE BY VERTIGO
AUDIENCE MAPPING - UNITED KINGDOM
MAPPING OF TOP 30 MOVIES / WEEKEND OF MARCH 16–18, 2018
Movies released this week
Movies released this week—1st friends
Movies released previous weeks
SOURCE: BOXOFFICE PROFILE BY VERTIGO
INSIGHTS
Tomb Raider attracted a majority male audience in the United States. Males
represented two-thirds of the total opening weekend audience in the U.S.
Moviegoers under the age of 25 attended Tomb Raider’s opening weekend in
larger numbers than their U.S. counterparts, representing nearly 40 percent of
the film’s UK admissions.
Based on opening weekend alone, Warner Bros. succeeded in reintroducing
the Tomb Raider IP in two of its most important markets after a 15-year feature
film hiatus and a new star. Despite not reaching the same heights as the 2001
original, Tomb Raider outperformed its 2003 predecessor, Lara Croft Tomb
Raider: The Cradle of Life, with a higher opening-weekend gross and claiming a
higher percentage of top films’ market share in each respective market.
There was little audience overlap in both markets despite
competition from other new openers. Tomb Raider’s opening-weekend
audience in the U.S. had a slight overlap with
the second weekend of The Hurricane Heist, while all other
openers occupied a different quadrant on the map.
Tomb Raider’s UK release only overlapped with the third
weekend of Game Night. Even though it shared the same quadrant
as fellow opener Peter Rabbit, Tomb Raider’s opening weekend in
the UK skewed notably older.
TOMB RAIDER 2018 AUDIENCE PROFILE
NORTH AMERICA (US & CANADA)
Release Date: March 16, 2018
MPAA Rating: PG-13
OPENING WEEKEND:
$23.6M / 3,854 Screens / #2 at the B.O.
Top 15 Market Share (Box Office): 18.8%
UNITED KINGDOM
Release Date: March 16, 2018
Certification: 12A
OPENING WEEKEND:
£3.1M / 1,050 Screens / #2 at the B.O.
Top 15 Market Share (Box Office): 18.5%
SOURCE: BOXOFFICE PROFILE BY VERTIGO
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 121

MARKET RESEARCH
TRAILER IMPACT
“Definite” interest of watching a film at
the cinema based on a trailer: March 9–11,
2018 (United States)
70.3 %
TRAILER IMPACT INSIGHTS
Audiences spoke with their wallets when it came to the Avengers: Infinity War trailer.
Seventy percent of U.S. respondents expressed “definite” interest in watching the film in
theaters. The film’s presales period in the United States began on March 16 and quickly
broke several records. Avengers: Infinity War broke Fandango’s record for presales of a
superhero film on its first day in the market. Avengers: Infinity War sold more tickets on
its first day of pre-sales on Atom Tickets than Black Panther sold on the mobile app over
its first month. The film also established advance ticket sales records at AMC Theatres in
its first 72 hours.
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
WHERE MOVIEGOERS FOUND THEIR SHOW TIMES - UNITED STATES
MARCH 16–18, 2018
66.6 %
TOTAL 15–24
INCREDIBLES 2
56.8 %
THEATER
THIRD-PARTY
SEARCH
AT THEATER OTHER DIGITAL SOMEONE ELSE NONE OF THE
WEBSITE
TICKETING
ENGINES
CHOSE
ABOVE
WEBSITES
SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY
SOURCE: BOXOFFICE PROFILE BY VERTIGO
INSIGHTS UNITED STATES
An exhibitor’s own website is the top destination for most U.S. moviegoers when it
comes to selecting a show time.
55.9 %
Seventy-six percent of U.S. moviegoers found their show time by consulting Fandango,
search engines, or an exhibitor’s website.
Moviegoers under the age of 25 prioritize search engines above all other sources when
RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET: WRECK-IT RALPH 2 it comes to looking up show times.
53.5 %
WHERE MOVIEGOERS FOUND THEIR SHOW TIMES - UNITED KINGDOM
MARCH 16–18, 2018
DEADPOOL 2
TOTAL 15–24
52.6 %
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP
THEATER
THIRD-PARTY
SEARCH
AT THEATER OTHER DIGITAL SOMEONE ELSE NONE OF THE
WEBSITE
TICKETING
ENGINES
CHOSE
ABOVE
WEBSITES
SOURCE: BOXOFFICE PROFILE BY VERTIGO
52.5 % INSIGHTS UNITED KINGDOM
Nearly half of UK audiences consult exhibitor websites as their go-to source for show times.
As is the case in the United States, UK moviegoers under the age of 25 are overrepresented
as consumers who prefer search engines to find their show times.
JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
(continued on page 124)
SOURCE: BOXOFFICE PROFILE BY VERTIGO
30.0 %
47.1 %
22.9 %
39.4 %
28.0 %
2.7 %
31.7 %
4.7 %
21.5 %
24.8 %
33.0 %
31.1 %
13.7 %
16.9 %
14.4 %
17.7 %
10.2 %
8.9 %
6.3 %
11.2 %
17.1 %
6.9 %
5.7 %
8.6 %
4.3 %
2.9 %
3.0 %
2.1 %
122 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

MARKET RESEARCH
INSIGHTS
Digital ticketing still
has room for growth in the
United States, with only 23.7
percent of respondents citing
an online purchase over the
weekend of March 16–18
compared to 34.9 percent in
the UK.
Third-party ticketing
platforms dominate the
U.S. market when it comes
to digital ticket purchases,
particularly with 15- to
24-year-old millennials.
However, exhibitor
websites are the main source
of show time discovery
for most U.S. moviegoers,
which translates into a share
of 39.3 percent in the online
ticketing market during the
period considered. n
WHERE DID YOU BUY YOUR MOVIE TICKETS?
DIGITAL TICKET
PURCHASES U.S.
EXHIBITOR WEBSITES
Total: 39.3% / 15-24 yo: 26.9%
THIRD-PARTY DIGITAL TICKETING
PLATFORMS
Total: 60.7% / 15-24 yo: 73.1%
23.7% 34.9%
IN THEATER
71.8% 3.7%
57.9%
ONLINE
OTHER
DIGITAL TICKET
PURCHASES U.K.
3.1%
EXHIBITOR WEBSITES
Total: 86.1% / 15-24 yo: 77.6%
THIRD-PARTY DIGITAL TICKETING
PLATFORMS
Total: 13.9% / 15-24 yo: 22.4%
SOURCE: BOXOFFICE PROFILE BY VERTIGO
®
S E E H O W I T W O R K S
M E D I A M A T I O N . C O M
124 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

LEVERAGING INNOVATION
b r o u g h t t o y o u b y
MEET NEW ATOM COO
ALLISON CHECCHI
Interview by Matthew Bakal, Chairman, Atom Tickets
In this column, Atom Tickets features conversations with executives and
influencers in the cinema industry about how new technologies and
innovations are changing the moviegoing experience. This month, Atom
Tickets’ new COO, Allison Checchi talks about what she’s looking forward
to most at CinemaCon 2018.
Welcome to your first CinemaCon. What are you
looking forward to at the event?
Thank you! I’m excited to be at CinemaCon
and look forward to the opportunity to spend
more face-to-face time with exhibitors. Atom is
now enabled on over 20,000 screens
across the U.S., including AMC
Theatres, Regal Cinemas,
Southern Theatres, Showcase
Cinemas, B&B Theatres,
Arclight, Bow Tie Cinemas,
Landmark Cinemas,
and more. I’m eager to
meet with our current
and future partners to
further understand how
Atom can help achieve
their objectives.
Can you tell us about your background in
engaging potential moviegoers?
When I joined Atom in July of last year, most of
my work with exhibition was focused on executing
successful launches at new Atom-enabled theaters
and testing new marketing campaigns. We were able
to work with exhibitors on marketing initiatives
that included A/B tests of promotional campaigns,
new pricing programs, and an advanced-screening
program via Amazon Prime. It’s competitive to get
the consumer’s attention, but we have great ways to
engage them. In my expanded role, I’m turning my
attention to securing new partnerships and working
on ways we can further help our exhibition partners
innovate to grow the business.
What is new with Atom Tickets going into
CinemaCon 2018?
Since launching the Atom app a little over a year
ago, we’ve seen one in three Atom users pre-order
concessions (for theaters where this is enabled). This
is encouraging, but only a select group of theaters
have enabled selling concessions this way, namely
AMC, Regal, and Landmark Cinemas. We’re at
CinemaCon to share some data and insights to
help exhibitors understand how it works and what
behaviors are associated with preorder concessions.
We believe that offering the ability to order ahead
will help exhibitors serve more people while solving
a consumer pain point, such that everyone wins.
We’re launching new promotional efforts to encourage
concessions purchases at or near the theater,
such as geo-targeted reminder notifications. And,
we’re excited to have more exhibitors enabling the
concessions preorder experience; Southern Theatres
is one partner we’re working with to roll out mobile
order concessions now.
Ordering concessions with movie tickets is one
of the things that sets Atom Tickets apart in
the market. How have consumers taken to that
feature since the app’s launch?
126 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

ATOM IS NOW ENABLED ON OVER 20,000 SCREENS ACROSS THE U.S.,
INCLUDING AMC THEATRES, REGAL CINEMAS, SOUTHERN THEATRES,
SHOWCASE CINEMAS, B&B THEATRES, ARCLIGHT,
BOW TIE CINEMAS, LANDMARK CINEMAS, AND MORE.
Movie fans are delighted by the
ability to have concessions ready at the
theater when they check in. It’s such
a simple add-on after buying a movie
ticket. It makes sense that consumers
would lean into this feature as it aligns
with the mobile order trend happening
in the food service industry today. Places
like Starbucks, Dominos, and Subway
all offer this feature. Starbucks says
mobile ordering is already 30 percent of
their total transactions. We believe this
is the direction consumers are moving
in—order ahead, scan to pick up, skip
the lines.
Digital technology is changing the
world around us. What are some of your
favorite campaigns/example of tech and
innovation revolutionizing a particular
business and helping drive growth?
At the risk of sounding cliché, I think
companies like Uber and Airbnb are great
examples of how companies used digital
technology to grow a market by tapping
into underutilized capacity with superior
consumer experiences.
Digital technology is giving every industry
the ability to rethink how to create
new and useful consumer experiences that
extend or augment their existing products
and services. A great example of that is
how CPG brands like Glad, Campbell’s,
and Tide are using Amazon Dash buttons
and Alexa skills to drive more purchases
by extending the value that the core
product delivers.
Atom is coming off a successful third
round of funding. What are some of the
areas where you are planning to allocate
that investment?
The last year has been such a transformative
time for the company, and we’re
grateful for the strategic and financial
support of our investors. The investment
we just closed is helping us with continual
innovation in our app and web experiences
and furthering our investment in
marketing. It’s a great time for Atom, its
users, and our partners.
Another interesting feature about the
Atom Tickets app is its social element,
where users can invite friends and split
the bill. Are you planning to integrate
with any other social media networks in
expanding those capabilities?
Yes, we have a great way to
enable movie fans to invite friends
during their ticket-buying process.
Moviegoers can invite friends (via
Facebook or their contact lists)
to purchase their own tickets
to join them. You can gift the
ticket or invite to pay separately,
and your guests will
be seated next to or near
you. In either case,
everyone is sent their
own ticket so that
there’s no waiting-onyour-friend-becausethey-have-the-tickets
kind of moment.
As for other social networks, we
started working with Facebook last year
to enable buying tickets through their
platform. We’re committed to making
Atom a ubiquitous option for buying a
ticket, wherever that purchase originates.
Atom is always looking for new channels
to reach movie fans and get them to go to
the movies! n
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 127

FIRST LOOK
THIS MEANS WAR
by Shawn Robbins
With the highly anticipated Avengers: Infinity War set to kick off 2018’s summer movie season, Boxoffice recently had a chance
to discuss the film and its decade-long lead-up with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. The team is responsible
for penning a number of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, beginning with 2009’s Captain America: The First Avenger,
followed by its direct predecessors The Winter Soldier and Civil War (they are also credited on Thor: The Dark World).
128 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

Infinity War marks Markus and
McFeely’s fifth film as writers in the
MCU, and they’re also in development
on 2019’s Avengers 4. Although they’ve
worked in the sprawling Marvel universe
for nearly 10 years, they’re quick
to avoid claiming too much credit for
the success of the franchise, instead
showering praises on the franchise’s
directors and—especially—the vision
of Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin
Feige and his commitment to staying
true to the spirit of the comics and
character. Their own modesty aside,
there’s little doubt that Markus and
McFeely have left a mighty stamp on
an entire era of superhero films.
When discussing the shift from
solo films for Avenger Steve Rogers/
Captain America to the larger ensemble
movies, they agreed that one of the
major advantages of their experience
on Winter Soldier was getting to incorporate Black Widow, Nick
Fury, and Falcon in significant roles. That experience prepared
them to effectively handle multiple leading heroes in an ensemble
when it came time to write Civil War, which in turn provided
another stepping-stone toward Infinity
War, which will host more than 70
heroes and villains previously established
within the MCU. Still, the two
men took pains to reassure fans—they
know that everyone in the audience
has a favorite character, and they
promise that even in a film with such
massive scope, every character will
have “their moment.”
The duo’s richly productive collaborations
with Feige and his filmmakers
on various MCU titles have evolved
since The First Avenger, but what
remains a constant is that their ideas—
at all times in service to overarching
storylines that demand cohesion and
continuity—are always respected
and often embraced. Although they
wouldn’t provide details, the writers
confirmed having asked—and been
granted—permission to use certain
story developments that pertain
to Ant-Man and the Wasp and Captain
Marvel, the only two MCU titles that
OSCAR WINNER BRIE LARSON JOINS THE MCU IN 2019 WHEN
SHE STARS AS CAROL DANVERS IN CAPTAIN MARVEL
EVANGELINE LILLY AND PAUL RUDD EXPAND THE MCU THIS
SUMMER IN ANT-MAN AND THE WASP
are scheduled between the release of the
third and fourth Avengers centerpieces.
When it came to Infinity War, it
was crucial to nail down the tone early
on. Each character in the superhero
ensemble has his or her own complexities;
these are roles that have been
independently developed by specific
actors and filmmakers across a slew
of films that all vary in tone. The
writing duo cited the Guardians of
the Galaxy films and the recent Thor:
Ragnarok as prime examples of the
challenge in bringing characters
from two different sets of films into
the same narrative. That challenge,
however, may also present exciting new
possibilities, like the potential chemistry
between actors like Robert Downey
Jr. and Chris Pratt—a pairing that, the
writers agreed, immediately sparked a
feeling that something special would
happen as soon as the actors came together on the set.
Just as important, the writers say, was their intentional effort
to adhere to what those and other actors had already established
in the MCU—to write a part that best fit the version of X character
as played by Y actor. So while
some fans reject any and all detours in
the depiction of their favorite Avenger,
McFeely and Markus say their priority—and
Marvel’s—has been to write
the best possible story to best serve the
medium of film, which may include
modernizing certain elements and
other creative changes.
Christopher Markus and Stephen
McFeely are hard at work on the
forthcoming Avengers 4, with a possible
eye toward more Marvel films and
perhaps more original works of their
own. Yet, even after 10 years, despite
their accomplishments and the many
promising projects ahead, they admit
that nagging opening-weekend anxiety
still lingers. It needn’t. With their
deep respect and affection for the
franchise, and their impressive track
record, we’re pretty sure they can rest
easy. Legions of fans are sure to turn
out—and cheer—for this newest
Avengers film. n
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 129

IRON MAN
MAY 2, 2008
OPENING WKND__ $98,618,668
DOMESTIC______$318,412,101
WORLD_________$585,174,222
THE INCREDIBLE HULK
JUNE 13, 2008
OPENING WKND__ $55,414,050
DOMESTIC______$134,806,913
WORLD_________$263,427,551
IRON MAN 2
MAY 7, 2010
OPENING WKND_$128,122,480
DOMESTIC______$312,433,331
WORLD_________$623,933,331
THOR
MAY 6, 2011
OPENING WKND__ $65,723,338
DOMESTIC______$181,030,624
WORLD_________$449,326,618
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
AUGUST 1, 2014
OPENING WKND__ $94,320,883
DOMESTIC______$333,176,600
WORLD_________$773,328,629
AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
MAY 1, 2015
OPENING WKND_$191,271,109
DOMESTIC______$459,005,868
WORLD_______ $1,405,403,694
ANT-MAN
JULY 17, 2015
OPENING WKND__ $57,225,526
DOMESTIC______$180,202,163
WORLD_________$519,311,965
CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR
MAY 6, 2016
OPENING WKND_$179,139,142
DOMESTIC_____$408,084,3491
WORLD_______ $1,153,304,495
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
JULY 22, 2011
OPENING WKND__ $65,058,524
DOMESTIC______$176,654,505
WORLD_________$370,569,774
MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS
MAY 4, 2012
OPENING WKND_$207,438,708
DOMESTIC______$623,357,910
WORLD_______ $1,518,812,988
IRON MAN 3
MAY 3, 2013
OPENING WKND_$174,144,585
DOMESTIC______$409,013,994
WORLD_______ $1,214,811,252
THOR: THE DARK WORLD
NOVEMBER 8, 2013
OPENING WKND__ $85,737,841
DOMESTIC______$206,362,140
WORLD_________$644,571,402
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
APRIL 4, 2014
OPENING WKND__ $95,023,721
DOMESTIC______$259,766,572
WORLD_________$714,264,267
DOCTOR STRANGE
NOVEMBER 4, 2016
OPENING WKND__ $85,058,311
DOMESTIC______$232,641,920
WORLD_________$677,718,395
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2
MAY 5, 2017
OPENING WKND_$146,510,104
DOMESTIC______$389,813,101
WORLD_________$863,756,051
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
JULY 7, 2017
OPENING WKND_$117,027,503
DOMESTIC______$334,201,140
WORLD_________$880,166,924
THOR: RAGNAROK
NOVEMBER 3, 2017
OPENING WKND_$122,744,989
DOMESTIC______$315,058,289
WORLD_________$853,968,900
BLACK PANTHER
FEBRUARY 16, 2018
OPENING WKND_$202,003,951
DOMESTIC_____ $650,923,549*
WORLD______ $1,274,123,549*
* AS OF APRIL 1, 2018
130 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

CINEMACON 2018
NATO MARQUEE AWARD
ALEJANDRO RAMÍREZ MAGAÑA
CINÉPOLIS
134
WILL ROGERS MOTION PICTURE PIONEERS
FOUNDATION: PIONEER OF THE YEAR
TOM CRUISE
140
2018 NEW PRODUCTS
100 OF THE LATEST
146
EXCELLENCE IN EVENT CINEMA
THE WALT DISNEY STUDIOS
186
132 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

WELCOME TO
CINEMACON
2018
NAC BERT NATHAN MEMORIAL AWARD
BRIAN BIEHN
FUNACHO / PRETZELHAUS BAKERY
188
COMSCORE INTERNATIONAL BOX OFFICE
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
THE WALT DISNEY STUDIOS
190
CINEMACON PASSEPARTOUT AWARD
KURT RIEDER
20TH CENTURY FOX INTERNATIONAL
192
CAREER ACHIEVEMENT IN EXHIBITION
ROBERT CARRADY
CARIBBEAN CINEMAS
194
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 133

CINEMACON 2018
— NATO MARQUEE AWARD —
ALEJANDRO RAMÍREZ MAGAÑA
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
CINÉPOLIS
Interview by Daniel Loria
>> Like many exhibitors, Cinépolis CEO Alejandro Ramírez Magaña
was born into the industry. Both his grandfather and father worked
to advance the family company in their native Mexico starting in the
1950s. Today, under Ramírez’s leadership, Cinépolis ranks as one of
the world’s biggest exhibition circuits. The Cinépolis network extends
across more than a dozen countries, with over 647 locations, 5,329
screens, and 37,000 employees on four continents. Cinépolis sold
338 million tickets in 2017, making it one of the world’s most popular
moviegoing destinations.
Ramírez holds a BA in economics from Harvard University, an MSc
in development economics from the University of Oxford, and an MBA
from Harvard Business School.
In addition to his exhibition duties, Ramírez also serves as chairman
of the Mexican Business Council and of the Morelia International Film
Festival. He serves on the board of a number of influential institutions,
including BBVA Bancomer, the Mexican Competitiveness Institute, the
Sundance Institute, and the Harvard Board of Overseers.
Outside of exhibition, Ramírez has previously served as Mexico’s
representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) and technical secretary of the Social Cabinet in
the Executive Office of the President of Mexico. He has also held roles
at the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program in
the areas of poverty and human development. Among his numerous
honors are a 2005 appointment as a Young Global Leader by the World
Economic Forum and a 2012 appointment as chair of the B20 (the G20’s
Business Summit) by Mexican President Felipe Calderón.
Ramírez was named as the inaugural chairman of the Global
Cinema Federation (GCF), a worldwide body representing the global interests
of exhibitors in more than 90 territories, which launched in the
summer of 2017. Boxoffice spoke with Ramírez ahead of CinemaCon
to review his lifetime in exhibition, his circuit’s global ambitions, and
what the future holds for the Global Cinema Federation.
Cinépolis is, like many exhibition circuits, a
family company at its core. How did the Ramírez
family name become synonymous with theatrical
exhibition in Mexico?
My grandfather opened his first cinema in
Morelia in 1956 and started a formal company
in partnership with the Alarcón family in 1963.
They built the largest independent circuit in Mexico
and ran it for eight years. It was independent
in that it was not associated with the state-owned
enterprise, Cotsa (Compañía Operadora de Teatros
S.A. de C.V.).
In 1971, the government asked to purchase the
company—they didn’t like to have competition—
and the cinemas from the partnership between
the Ramírez and Alarcón families were sold to the
government. That’s when my father and grandfather
started over from scratch, opening their first
cinema in Mexico City, Cinema La Raza, in 1971.
The company grew steadily from there.
What are your memories of growing up in an
exhibition family?
Cinema has been a part of my life since as
far back as I can remember. My parents’ house
and grandparents’ house, which were right next
to each other, were wall-to-wall with one of our
first cinemas in Morelia. It was a two-plex at
first and eventually became a four-plex. Movies
were a part of growing up; I’d go next door to
see something four or five times each week. I
would end up seeing the same title over and over
because there weren’t that many options back
then. I spent my birthdays at that cinema with
all my friends.
Growing up and throughout your career, did
you always expect to come back to the family
business?
I went away twice and did other things in
multilateral organizations—the World Bank,
the United Nations Development Program, and
years later with the Mexican government and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But I always came back; I wasn’t sure I
would come back, but I always did, and I think it
was the right decision. I guess the cinema business
134 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

As our industry becomes increasingly global, it
is appropriate that our most significant award
goes to a truly global exhibitor. With operations across
four different continents, Cinépolis brings moviegoing
magic to millions of guests. On a personal level, with
his commitment as chairman of the Global Cinema
Federation, Alejandro has become the leader of a united
global industry. On behalf of theater owners everywhere,
congratulations on this
well-deserved honor.
John Fithian
President & CEO,
National Association of Theatre Owners
is in my blood. I am passionate about movies and
the moviegoing experience.
Is there a period that marked a transition for the
company?
The Mexican cinema industry was deregulated
in 1994, which basically entailed privatizing Cotsa,
the state-owned enterprise, and that opened the
distribution market. Before then, Cotsa had locked
up exclusive rights from Universal, Paramount,
Warner Bros., Disney, and MGM for decades. We
only worked with Columbia and Fox. That came
to an end in ’94 with the privatization of Cotsa,
and everyone was able to work with each other.
That was the same year that the North American
Free Trade Agreement came into effect, so a lot
of multinational exhibition companies started
investing in Mexico—companies like Cinemark
and United Artists (which later became General
Cinema), with others like Hoyts and CineStar
building properties in the north of the country.
And of course, that’s when Cinemex was also born.
That was the period when Cinépolis was born
as a brand. We decided to take advantage of the
liberalization of the distribution market to be able
to build large-format multiplexes. Before 1994, we
could only build up to four-plexes simply because
we didn’t have enough content to cover a multiplex
ALEJANDRO RAMÍREZ MAGAÑA
PHOTO: CINÉPOLIS
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 135

CINEMACON 2018
CINÉPOLIS LUXURY
CINEMAS, WESTLAKE
VILLAGE, CA
hire and would rotate
people without much
consideration to the
company.
115.1 MILLION
2017 ADMISSIONS
230.
338.4
MILLION WORLDWIDE
INDIA, US, SPAIN, CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICA
5,334 SCREENS
WORLDWIDE
1,120,245 SEATS
WORLDWIDE
223.3 MILLION (MEXICO)
of 8, 10, or 12 screens. The deregulation allowed
us to work with every distributor and in turn build
multiplexes.
Were there any other major factors, apart from
the deregulation in the Mexican market and the
foreign investment, which served as catalysts for
that boom in the mid-’90s?
There were two other major factors during that
era that changed the industry. First was the liberalization
of admissions price for cinemas. Up to
that point, movie theaters in Mexico were under a
price control with certain ceilings that you couldn’t
exceed. That resulted in low ticket prices, yes, but
it also meant that we couldn’t make large investments
into our circuits—it would be very hard
to recover with such low ticket prices. The other
major factor was that the monopoly of the union
came to an end. Exhibitors became able to work
with more than one union, creating competition
in the market, a critical factor for exhibitors to be
able to select and train their employees. Prior to
that, the union basically told you who you had to
How did these
changes to the
market transform the
company? Why do you
think Cinépolis was
able to succeed in a
market that suddenly
became extremely
competitive?
These changes in
1994 allowed us to
introduce our new
brand, Cinépolis,
which began to compete
with a host of international
exhibitors
and a new start-up like
Cinemex. These companies
were much larger
than us back then.
Cinemark was one of
the largest companies
in the world in this
sector—it still is today—and UA General Cinema
was the largest circuit in the world. We competed
successfully because we innovated and introduced
concepts that the other circuits hadn’t brought to
Mexico. For example, in 1997 we introduced stadium
seating—which has since become the industry
standard in the market. In 1999 we introduced
luxury cinemas under the brand Cinépolis VIP. We
were pioneers in this concept; it was independently
developed in Mexico, and I think it was simultaneously
developed elsewhere—Australia—around
the same period. Today we are the largest operators
of luxury cinemas in the world. We introduced
IMAX screens into commercial multiplexes in
2004 with The Polar Express. In 2009 we brought
4DX seating to our cinemas and reserved seating
shortly before that. Reserved seating is the norm
in Mexico today, but it wasn’t when we introduced
it around 10 years ago. We introduced Cinépolis
Jr. a few years ago, which features a family-friendly
environment that includes a play area, beanbags,
and lounge seats—the type of environment where
people feel at home. That’s been very successful
136 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

with families. We have been able to prevail despite
the competition because we have always been at
the forefront of innovation. That’s why we have
our current leadership position in Mexico. Our
strength in Mexico allowed us to start exploring
other territories in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
Today we are already present in 14 markets.
What factors led you to begin considering
expanding outside Mexico?
We began seeing signs of maturity in the
Mexican market around 10 years ago, with several
cities reaching saturation levels. We foresaw that
and decided to explore markets outside of Mexico
in order to continue our growth. We saw that our
most important market, Mexico, would not be able
to sustain our growth at the same rate indefinitely.
Central America and South America came first,
followed by the U.S., India, and Spain. Now we
are entering into the United Arab Emirates, Oman,
and Bahrain.
Out of all the markets you’ve entered, do any
stand out as particularly tricky?
India. The business environment is more
challenging; the competition is fierce with local
players—we are the only foreign exhibitor building
multiplexes in India. Something like contract
enforcement is very loose there, so you have to
learn to play within the rules of the game in that
business environment, which is not the same as it
is in the West. You may not know when you will
actually have a specific location until you take
physical possession. You can sign the contract three
or four years in advance, pay key money, and still
not get it; the locations are up for grabs until the
very last minute. Evidently, if you have a signed
contract, you have a stronger position—but we’ve
seen that, even with those conditions, someone
can still take a site from you. You can try to fight
it in court (the system is very slow), or you can try
to settle out of court. Additionally, obtaining all
the necessary permits can be extremely cumbersome.
In general, all the red tape associated with
operating a business in India is extraordinary. You
also face a lot of taxes; in the 10 years we’ve been
there we’ve seen local entertainment taxes that can
be as high as 50 percent of the box office—that’s a
CINÉPOLIS
WAS FOUNDED
IN MORELIA,
MEXICO, IN 1971
UNDER THE NAME
ORGANIZACIÓN
RAMÍREZ
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 137

CINEMACON 2018
TOTAL SCREENS (1971-2017)
‘71 ‘72 ‘73 ‘74 ‘75 ‘76 ‘77 ‘78 ‘79 ‘80 ‘81 ‘82 ‘83 ‘84 ‘85 ‘86 ‘87 ‘88 ‘89 ‘90 ‘91 ‘92 ‘93 ‘94 ‘95 ‘96 ‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 ‘08 ‘09 ‘10 ‘11 ‘12 ‘13 ‘14 ‘15 ‘16 ‘17
SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
18.5 MILLION
LIKES
9.2 MILLION
FOLLOWERS
11.1 MILLION
FOLLOWERS
2.0 MILLION
FOLLOWERS
big burden. Now they’ve been replaced by a GST
(general sales tax), which is a big improvement.
Overall, however, we’re happy with our incursion
to India. We’re doing well and growing rapidly,
with several hundred screens there already.
Why do you think you’ve been able to break
through in a market like India? Many other
exhibitors have tried their hand there and faced
similar challenges.
The fact that we’ve persevered despite all these
obstacles. It might also be because we come from
Latin America and aren’t as shocked by a lot of
the situations we encounter in India. I think an
exhibitor from a developed country would be more
surprised by what they could find there. Even
though India has a different level of complexity
than Mexico or the rest of Latin America, we
came into the market having been used to facing a
certain sense of unpredictability—doing business
in Brazil or Argentina can be challenging. That
background gave us the ability to be resilient and
endure in a market like India. Having said all that,
the administration of Prime Minister Modi has enacted
some very good reforms, and we hope they’ll
continue to do more.
As we’re approaching the one-year anniversary
of the Global Cinema Federation (GCF), can you
share some of the GCF’s immediate and longterm
objectives and initiatives? What role do you
envision the GCF will play in the coming years for
exhibitors around the world?
The Global Cinema Federation was formed to
advance the interests of the industry in a coordinated
and aligned manner. We’re working on a
number of fronts with seven key areas of work.
One is our fight against movie theft, against piracy,
a problem all over the world. Another is music
rights, trying to see they are approached across different
markets. Accessibility regulations is another.
I think there are many things we can learn from
what is happening in different environments.
Another very important key issue for us is the
protection of theatrical exclusivity. We believe
exclusivity is critical to our success and for making
the moviegoing experience special. Working with
the studios and the creative community is another
priority, along with technology and standards. It’s
important for exhibitors to have a seat at the table as
cinema technology continues to evolve. Finally, we
also look at international trade and foreign investment.
Unfortunately, there are still countries that
have high trade barriers for cinema equipment and
associated inputs—that’s something that we work
very hard to lower. In Mexico, for example, this
includes corn for popcorn and cheese for nachos.
Having low trade barriers helps us become more
efficient and provide a better moviegoing experience
for our customers at a lower cost. Regulations related
to foreign investment are also on our radar; some
countries still have barriers to foreign investment for
exhibition and we are seeing what we can do to reduce
those barriers. In a nutshell, those are the areas
where we have been working over the past year and
will continue to work on in the years to come.
138 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

What do you consider to be the biggest threats
and opportunities facing the exhibition industry
today?
I think piracy continues to be the number
one threat to the industry. The increasing
penetration of digital devices has contributed to
an expansion of illegal movie downloads. That’s
something that concerns us very much. In many
countries, such as here in Mexico, there is need
for tougher legislation against camcording and
more protections for intellectual property. The
losses the industry incurs every year because of
this issue are enormous and it affects distributors
and exhibitors around the world. Another big
concern we have centers on valuing the moviegoing
experience. Our industry has remained
relevant throughout the years despite the rise of
new technologies because cinema has a magic
that no other media can replicate. As exhibitors,
we need to work every day to ensure moviegoing
remains as valuable and relevant as ever to our
customers. Services that devalue the moviegoing
experience, such as MoviePass, are distorting our
business by offering an out-of-sync value proposition;
those services distort the true value of the
moviegoing experience.
Among the opportunities, it is important
to emphasize that we are moving toward an
experience economy. Consumers attach a big
value to experiences; it’s no longer just about
buying products and services. I think we’re
very well positioned to enrich the moviegoing
experience through that trend. Something
we pioneered nearly 20 years ago, luxury
cinemas, is just now beginning to take root in
developed markets like the United States and
Europe. Cinema technology continues to evolve
and improve, differentiating us from home
entertainment. Even if you have a nice home
theater, you’ll never be able to re-create a top-ofthe-line
moviegoing experience. Linked to that
is that we can build a very loyal customer base
with new technology, helping us develop and
deepen our relationship with customers. We are
able to analyze and assign products and services
to specific market segments. These technologies
help us understand and serve our customers
much better than in the past. n
GLOBAL PRESENCE
652 LOCATIONS
5,334 SCREENS
14 COUNTRIES
37,639 EMPLOYEES
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 139

Congratulations
to the 2018 CinemaCon
NATO Marquee
Award
Alejandro Ramírez
Magaña
CEO, Cinépolis
And to all of this year’s honorees
from the team at
Lighting Technologies
International

CINEMACON 2018
June 1986
July 1990
Apr 1996
June 2014
“THE REASON I PRODUCE IS I JUST WANT TO BE A PART OF IT. I REALLY HAVE ALWAYS LOVED
MOVIES. YOU WANT TO TAKE THAT STEP INTO FINDING OUT, ‘WHAT KIND OF MOVIES DO I WANT
TO MAKE? WHAT KIND OF MOVIES AM I INTERESTED IN?’”
“YOU KNOW, I’D BEEN OFFERED A LOT OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF ACTION MOVIES, BUT NOTHING
THAT REALLY INTERESTED ME—I THOUGHT I’D SEEN IT BEFORE. WHAT WE TRIED TO
DO WITH THIS IS MAKE IT DIFFERENT, AND THAT’S WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO IT.”
— FROM OUR 1996 INTERVIEW PRIOR TO THE RELEASE OF MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
Nov 2003
142 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

ENDLESS LOVE
TAPS
ALL THE RIGHT MOVES
LOSIN’ IT
THE OUTSIDERS
RISKY BUSINESS
LEGEND
THE COLOR OF MONEY
TOP GUN
COCKTAIL
RAIN MAN
BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY
DAYS OF THUNDER
FAR AND AWAY
A FEW GOOD MEN
THE FIRM
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE
JERRY MAGUIRE
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
EYES WIDE SHUT
MAGNOLIA
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2
VANILLA SKY
AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER
MINORITY REPORT
THE LAST SAMURAI
COLLATERAL
WAR OF THE WORLDS
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III
LIONS FOR LAMBS
TROPIC THUNDER
VALKYRIE
KNIGHT AND DAY
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL
JACK REACHER
ROCK OF AGES
OBLIVION
EDGE OF TOMORROW
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION
JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK
AMERICAN MADE
THE MUMMY
WILL ROGERS MOTION PICTURES
PIONEERS FOUNDATION: PIONEER OF
THE YEAR 2018
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
FALLOUT
JULY 27, 2018
144 APRIL 2018

CREATIVE WORKS
HOLOGATE
Hologate is a new virtual reality
attraction for the cinema industry.
Hologate brings advanced graphic
technology and immersion with
a small footprint (less than 300
square feet) that will fit just about
anywhere. This turnkey system is
easy to operate and complements
movie theaters and cinemas. This
four-player mini attraction has an
open-air layout that allows spectators
to see the players and take in
the action on the monitors above
the playing space. The graphics
on the 90fps headset make every
motion feel real: no lagging, no
buffering, and no motion sickness.
BOOTH: 132F & 932F
146 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

COMPILED BY DANIEL LORIA AND JESSE RIFKIN
INDEX
ADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES GROUP 148
ALCONS 148
AMERICAN LICORICE CO. 150
AMUSEMENT PRODUCTS 150
BARCO 150
BGW SYSTEMS & DATASAT DIGITAL 151
BRUNSWICK BOWLING PRODUCTS 151
C. CRETORS & CO. 151
CAMATIC 151
CANDY DYNAMICS 152
CHEF WORKS 152
CHESTNUT APPAREL 152
CHRISTIE 154
CINEMA JAGUAR 154
CINEMA SOLUTIONS 154
CINEMECCANICA 154
CJ 4DPLEX 156
CREATIVE WORKS 156
DIGITAL CINEMA SYSTEMS 156
DOLPHIN SEATING 158
EISENBERG SAUSAGE CO. 158
ENTERTAINMENT SUPPLY & TECHNOLOGIES 158
EOMAC 160
EPD, INC. 160
ERA ARCHITECTS 160
EXHIBITOR BENEFITS 162
FIGUERAS INTERNATIONAL SEATING 162
FILM-TECH CINEMA SYSTEMS 162
GOLD MEDAL 162
GOLDEN KRUST 164
GOVINO 164
GREAT WESTERN PRODUCTS 164
HARKNESS SCREENS 164
HIGH-PERFORMANCE STEREO 164
THE HERSHEY COMPANY 166
INORCA SEATING 166
THE ICEE COMPANY 166
INTEG 168
IRWIN SEATING COMPANY 168
JACK ROE 168
JAYMAR 168
KERNEL SEASON’S 170
KRIAN MEDIA 170
LANCER CORP. 170
LIGHT TAPE STEPGUARD 172
LUMMA 172
MOBILIARIO 172
MOVING IMAGE TECHNOLOGIES 174
NATHAN’S FAMOUS 174
NEC DISPLAY SOULTIONS 174
ODYSSEY 174
OMNITERM 176
PACKAGING CONCEPTS 176
POSITIVE CINEMA SOLUTIONS 176
PROCTOR COMPANIES 178
PROMOTION IN MOTION 178
PROSTAR INDUSTRIES 178
QSC 178
QUBE CINEMA 180
RADIOBOSS 180
RETRIEVER SOLUTIONS 180
REIS & IVY’S 180
RIOLE 180
ROBOLABS 182
ROYAL CORPORATION 182
SAMSUNG 182
SEVERTSON SCREENS 183
TASTE OF NATURE 183
TELESCOPIC SEATING SYSTEMS 184
USG STRUCTURAL SOLUTIONS 184
VISION MEDIA 185
VISTA 185
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 147

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
ADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
GROUP
PRO-LIFT PROJECTOR LIFTS AND LASER
ENCLOSURES
Adaptive Technologies Group has expanded
its line of Pro-Lift projector lifts and laser
enclosures to include a line of “quiet-ized”
self-ventilating and self-monitoring
enclosures, exclusive to laser projectors.
These sound-isolated enclosures draw in
ambient air through external ports from
the auditorium and circulate it through the
projector chamber before being ported
out, maintaining a constant safe temperature
operating range. They monitor
internal cooling fans by way of an onboard
computer as well as have the ability to link
into a remote network monitoring center.
These enclosure designs allow easy-service
access to the projectors because they can
be serviced through removable front or
side access panels. Best of all, Pro-Lift enclosures
are modular, meaning that they can
be permanently installed pods, compatible
with different height Pro-Lift wall lifts and
different height Pro-Lift scissor lifts. Rigging
points allow suspension from overhead and
can reside atop pedestals.
BOOTH: 2320A
ALCONS
CINEMARRAY CRA24WX
The Alcons Cinemarray CRA24WX is a modular three-way linesource
sound system, designed for digital cinema applications
in medium to larger premium cinema theaters. Featuring two
patented RBN401 pro-ribbon drivers, the CRA24WX provides
up to 90 percent less distortion and a 1600W peak power
handling. The patented horizontal dispersion extends the
stereo-imaging to a larger number of seats and is available in
true 90- or 120-degree versions.
CRMSC-SRHV SOUND SYSTEM
The CRMSC-SRHV reference surround is a two-way passivefiltered
full-range loudspeaker, designed to meet all
requirements of current and future immersive surround sound
formats for studios, screening rooms, and high-end residential
cinemas. The CRMSC-SRHV system consists of one RBN202
pro-ribbon driver for HF and a vented 6.5-inch mid-bass for LF
reproduction. The CRMSC-SRHV HF section has a 500W peak
power input, enabling a 1:16 dynamic range with up to 90
percent less distortion from 1 kHz to beyond 20 kHz.
BOOTH: 2001A
148 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
AMERICAN
LICORICE CO.
Red Vines candy has used
the same small-batch
process since American
Licorice Co. was founded in
1914. Made with only five
ingredients, the soft and
chewy twist is the candy
of choice that has added
flavor to the movie-theater
experience for generations.
BOOTH: 108F
AMUSEMENT PRODUCTS
FALCON 360 LAZER BATTLE
Amusement Products introduces their newest
immersive compact laser shooting vehicle designed
to be used in game rooms and lobbies that need an
attraction rather than just a new game. Strap into
your Falcon 360 Lazer Battle’s command module
and zap your opponent’s targets with the attached
laser cannon, sending them flipping and spinning
while scoring points, winning the game and saving
the galaxy. The Falcon 360 Lazer Battle is a swipecard
unattended attraction, which requires only
128 square feet for a two-player game enclosed in a
themed futuristic cage complete with wall targets.
Each Falcon pod has double safety mechanisms
to secure the rider when going upside down. No
headsets needed and available in two-, four-, and
six-player configurations.
BOOTH: 2726A
BARCO
DP4K-13BLPHC & DP4K-
18BLPHC SMART LASER HIGH
CONTRAST PROJECTORS
Barco’s new HDR-ready
Smart Laser High Contrast
projectors are designed
to deliver stunning image
quality for smaller screens.
These laser cinema
projectors are designed to
be highly efficient and costeffective,
overcoming the
typical challenges associated
with creating high-contrast
movie images for smaller
screens. These projectors
are designed to provide a
strong value proposition
for cinema operators,
combining consistent laserimage
quality, native 4K
resolution, enhanced ANSI
and native contrast, proven
DLP technology, superior
cost-efficiency, and a long
lifetime. Models include
the DP4K-13BLPHC, never
before seen in this footprint
and ideally suited for small
to midsize screens, and the
DP4K-18BLPHC, designed
for midsize screens. Both
models are available for
shipping beginning in
April 2018.
BOOTH: Milano 5–7 &
Neopolitan 1–4
150 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

BGW SYSTEMS & DATASAT DIGITAL
AP25 CINEMA AUDIO PROCESSOR
The new AP25 cinema audio processor is the next generation
of the AP20 processor from Datasat Digital Entertainment.
The AP25 has several upgrades that have been requested by
industry professionals to provide greater flexibility, additional
connectivity, and reliable performance. The engineering teams
at Datasat and ATI have qualified a new power supply that
utilizes the latest technology for quiet performance. Memory
settings have been doubled from 20 to 40 to allow for additional
EQ and routing settings for alternative content and expanded
listening environments. HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 are on one
input, and one output allows for connectivity to HDMI 2.0
sources. AES67 send capabilities are now an option that will
allow for amplifier placement behind the screen or in remote
locations via CAT 5/6 cabling. This lowers the cost of cabling and
potential for noise introduction.
BOOTH: 2803A
C. CRETORS
& CO.
MACH 5 SERIES
Keep safety at the
forefront of your
operation. Cretors’ 32-,
48-, and 60-oz. Mach 5
Series with 3-foot and
4-foot cabinets now
meet the rigorous
testing standards for
the New York City
Certificate of Approval
(COA) #5759, as well
as the UL KNLZ and
KNKG standards,
making it one of the
safest machines on
the market. Mach 5
also includes ANSUL
technology and
Ventless hood design.
BOOTH: 413F
BRUNSWICK BOWLING PRODUCTS
The leader in the bowling industry for over 125 years, Brunswick
Bowling provides products, services, and industry expertise
for the development and renovation of bowling centers and
mixed-use facilities across the entertainment industry. As
cinemas explore ways to diversify their product offerings to
attract and retain audiences, Brunswick Bowling has brought the
world’s No. 1 participatory sport to theaters across the country.
Brunswick’s team uses an education-based approach to help
facilities realize the potential bowling can bring to their business
models. The company’s turnkey offerings provide resources and
recommendations to position cinemas for success, evaluating
the marketplace to arm cinema owners with the tools they need
to set their vision. As the only full-line supplier of bowling center
equipment, supplies, and consumer bowling products, Brunswick
Bowling is the one-stop shop for proprietors exploring what
bowling can bring to their business.
BOOTH: 2012A
CAMATIC
VALENCIA SEATING
SERIES
Camatic is
bringing its latest
innovations
in premium
cinema seating
to their booth at
CinemaCon 2018.
Experience the
comfort of the
Valencia seating
series, featuring
a new articulating headrest that customers adjust to their
preferred movie-viewing position during recline. The Valencia
range is designed to provide all the industrial strength that
a commercial recliner needs for high-use cinemas, with little
maintenance required.
BOOTH: 713F
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 151

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
CANDY DYNAMICS
SOUR & CHEWY BEARS AND WORMS
Candy Dynamics, the Toxic Waste candy company,
announces the introduction of their two newest
candy products, new Sour & Chewy Bears and
Worms. Each peg bag features 5 oz. of sour treats
with five flavors including pineapple, strawberry,
lime, blue raspberry and tangerine. Each case
contains 12 peggable units, with each peg bag
carrying an SRP of $2.49. Bulk purchasing options are
also available.
BOOTH: 2820A
CHEF WORKS
Chef Works, recently named the preferred uniform
provider for the Cinema Buying Group (CBG), is a
leading provider of culinary and hospitality apparel.
As the moviegoing experience undergoes a period
of change, with more cinemas gravitating toward
dine-in experiences, cinema operators face an
increased need for durable and fashion-forward
workplace apparel. Whether you’re looking to dress
the front or back of the house, concessions, or
ticket attendants, or create a uniform program for
your entire cinema, Chef Works offers an expansive
collection that ranges from classic to modern to
edgy. The company’s distribution center is stocked
and ready to ship, even offering custom embroidery
done in-house.
BOOTH: 815F
CHESTNUT APPAREL
CH510
Chestnut Apparel, a top supplier of the theatrical exhibition industry, has added
a softer, superior wrinkle- and shrink-resistant shirt to their Showbiz Uniforms
line. The CH510 is a moisture-wicking polo with odor-fighting properties and a
stain-release finish for long-lasting, professional wear. Available now in 15 colors.
Chestnut Apparel is a proud NAC member, helping to support the entertainment
and concessions industries.
BOOTH: 237F
152 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
CHRISTIE
VIVE AUDIO S SERIES SUBWOOFER
Christie is introducing two new Christie Vive Audio S Series subwoofer models,
ideal for cinema LFE (low-frequency effects). The S118LP low-profile subwoofer
and S218LP low-profile subwoofer offer improved performance and greater
installation versatility, with a depth of just 15 1/2 inches (394 mm), enabling
installs in a wider range of environments than typical subwoofers. They utilize a
newly developed, high-performance 18-inch driver, with dual 4-inch voice coils,
integrated into a heavily braced, ported cabinet design, featuring EBS (extended
bass shelf) tuning to 23Hz, enabling excellent frequency response. The S118LP
uses a single 18-inch driver, offers a sensitivity of 97.5dB (free space @ 1 m), and
yields a max sound pressure level of 127.5dB continuous, 139.5dB SPL peak. The
S218LP uses dual 18-inch drivers, yielding a max sound pressure level of 133.5dB
continuous, 145.5dB SPL peak.
BOOTH: Milano 1–3
CINEMA JAGUAR
CINEMA JAGUAR’S SOLUTIONS FOR MOVIE THEATERS ARE BASED UPON THREE DIVISIONS:
1. Cinema JAGUAR: Development and manufacture of systems for digital cinema. Video,
audio, and 3-D automation products. Fully integrated manufacturing processes including
electronics assembly and metal enclosures. More than 1,500 automated movie theaters in
more than 15 countries.
2. Smart Cinema: Design, development, and manufacture of solutions based on IoT
(internet of things) for the optimization of operations in a cinema. Using sensors to create
intelligent devices that capture data to analyze in real time patterns and behaviors that
help generate savings and efficiency.
3. NCS JAGUAR: Design and manufacturing of cabinets and metallic enclosures.
BOOTH: 2321A
CINEMA SOLUTIONS
CAPITAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Capital Project Management is an integrated solution for managing capital expenditures across an
enterprise. This new module is integrated with the rest of the system so that project managers gain
greater visibility into capital-related requests, expenses, and budgetary controls. Using all the new
features will allow project managers to quickly and accurately track project expenses and associated
invoices. Additionally, people and associated documents, such as proposals, bids, and contracts, can
be tracked. Having this centralized view of your project details helps to ensure projects are completed
on time and within budget.
BOOTH: 114F
CINEMECCANICA
LUX 8K-12K- 18K-24K
Cinemeccanica announces the LUX 8K-12K- 18K-24K, the smart RGB laser specifically designed
for smaller and medium screens. With these latest RGB lasers, the company extends the suite of
products dedicated to illuminate Barco, Christie, and NEC projectors. Moreover, Cinemeccanica
introduces the Advanced TMS Streamer, which can manage movie and video content in realtime
streaming without losing time to copy content between screens, and a touch screen
solution—inside the auditorium—for better managing of private and hired cinemas.
BOOTH: 2515A
154 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
CJ 4DPLEX
4DX WITH SCREENX
4DX with ScreenX combines two of the company’s offerings
to create a brand-new immersive cinema experience. The new
concept utilizes the motion chair and environmental effects of 4DX
and the 270-degree multi-projection panoramic visuals of ScreenX.
Its styling design features blue LED lights on the auditorium ceiling
and sides of seats, and a higher level of multisensory immersion.
4DX VR
Three VR experiences for theater lobbies that give users the feeling
of acceleration and deceleration and can be used with any VR
head-mounted device (HMD) as well as in coordination with any
VR content including gaming and short films. 4DX VR Interactive
Racing: allows up to four players to race against the clock and each
other in a multiplayer simulator. 4DX VR Sports – Board Type: a
snowboarding simulation tailor designed for all ages. 4DX VR Disk:
allows people to explore 360 degrees of virtual reality without
having to place their feet on the floor.
BOOTH: Roman Ballroom II on the Promenade level (2nd Floor)
CREATIVE WORKS
HOLOGATE
Hologate is a new virtual reality attraction for the cinema industry.
Hologate brings advanced graphic technology and immersion with
a small footprint (less than 300 square feet) that will fit just about
anywhere. This turnkey system is easy to operate and complements
movie theaters and cinemas. This four-player mini attraction has an
open-air layout that allows spectators to see the players and take in
the action on the monitors above the playing space. The graphics
on the 90fps headset make every motion feel real: no lagging, no
buffering, and no motion sickness.
BOOTH: 132F & 932F
DIGITAL CINEMA SYSTEMS
Digital Cinema is constantly progressing: new immersive sound
options, the entry of laser projectors, and now potentially
disruptive LED technology poised to be introduced to the
market. For those exhibitors with Series 1 projectors, Digital
Cinema Systems believes there are benefits to being
able to defer expensive projector-replacement
decisions until the market offerings are more
clearly understood. The DigiCine media player
range now includes a new media player backward
compatible with Series 1 projectors. The DigiCine
solution brings the functionality of features such
as advanced integration with TMS, SMPTE DCP, and
ATMOS support to current Series 1 systems and will continue to be
enhanced with software updates. With a DCI-compliant solution,
this now extends the life of the estimated 17,000-plus Series 1
projectors in the field today.
BOOTH: 2816A
156 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
DOLPHIN SEATING
TOTAL SOLUTION RECLINER
Dolphin Seating’s new Total Solution recliner offers a full metal
frame and is fully modular so that everything on the chair can be
easily replaced, allowing optimal performance and upkeep inside
the harsh theater environment while still maintaining luxury and
comfort. With new upgraded ultra-soft leather-et and extra-plush
footrest, it is not only the strongest, most durable chair on the
market, but also the most comfortable. Theater owners can rest
easy knowing that all Dolphin Seating products carry a warranty
with a support of eight years for structural seats and five years on
leather seats.
BOOTH: 424F & 425F
EISENBERG SAUSAGE CO. /
HOME MARKET FOODS, INC.
COOKED PERFECT FIRE GRILLED CHICKEN CHUNKS
By fire grilling our Chicken Chunks, we lock in the
juices. Available in popular flavors like Bourbon BBQ
and Buffalo Ranch.
COOKED PERFECT CHICKEN BITES
Made with all-white-meat chicken breast, then
lightly breaded and glazed so no dipping sauces
are required. Available in two flavors: Honey BBQ
and Buffalo Ranch. Each case comes with clamshellstyle
serving boxes with a large cellophane window.
Both products are sharable and less messy than
traditional chicken wings.
CHICKEN ROLLERBITES
Offered in a variety of flavors, including Cheesy
Buffalo Ranch Chicken. All products are fully cooked;
just heat and serve.
BOOTH: 307F
ENTERTAINMENT SUPPLY & TECHNOLOGIES
Entertainment Supply & Technologies (ES&T) offers turnkey
design and custom solutions for all areas of the cinema space.
The firm continues to expand its food-service portfolio to best
serve both traditional and dine-in theaters, including all major
brands of equipment. For theater owners looking to expand
or update their concession areas, ES&T also offers custom
concession casework and bar design. As a provider and installer
of all digital technology, ES&T provides premium large-formatscreen
systems, digital projection and sound, and is a certified
installer for all major manufacturers, including IMAX. ES&T
specializes in aisle-lighting installation and the manufacturing
of custom wall draperies, in order to offer complete FF&E for its
cinema clients.
BOOTH: 337F
158 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
EOMAC
CUSTOM WOOD LIGHT
BOXES
These wood light box
additions are for your
dining space, entrance
ways, and hallways,
as well as inside your
auditorium. The
wood is available in a
unique and completely
customizable design.
BOOTH: 719F
EPD, INC.
OC SERVER TABLET
OC Server Tablet is an
easy-to-use handheld
device where waitstaff
can process orders, open
tabs, and monitor service
calls through full PlexCall
integration. For the first
time in the industry, staff
can use OC Server Tablet to
transfer tabs to OC devices
as your customers move
to different areas of your
establishment. Staff can
start new orders manually
or by scanning NFC tags;
reducing human error and
increasing efficiency.
BOOTH: 126F
ERA ARCHITECTS
Entertainment architecture specialists, Era Architects has one of the most accomplished
entertainment architectural design studios. With offices in Mumbai and Dubai, Era Architects
has designed more than 1,350 screens in 30 countries.
BOOTH: 2420A
160 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
EXHIBITOR BENEFITS
FLEXSPEND REWARDS
This free app is “the only private-label, cash-back,
app-based rewards program in the industry,”
according to Diamond Ticketing Systems CEO
Terry Schmidt. Launched by Exhibitor Benefits,
a Diamond affiliate, FlexSpend is a customized
app that allows guests to use their account to
make ticket and concessions purchases from
their mobile devices and receive cash back. With
the growing list of movie-streaming providers,
the app will provide new revenue streams for
exhibitors through membership income and
reduced or eliminated online convenience fees.
Management will also capture valuable purchase
activity and patron preferences. Targeted
promotions can be performed quickly with realtime
reporting. The FlexSpend app is customized
with theaters’ logos. Their website Purchase
Tickets link will also be customized. Patrons will
have a seamless purchase experience. Every new
FlexSpend client will also receive a free package
of on-site promotional and training materials.
BOOTH: 2018A
FIGUERAS
INTERNATIONAL
SEATING
Figueras International Seating has
been innovating in the design of
cinema seating since its founding
in 1929. Among its product line,
Figueras offers a wide range of seats
for all types of cinemas, prioritizing
comfort and high-strength for
intensive use. For VIP cinemas,
Figueras seats recline automatically
and are equipped with head rests,
foot rests, drink holders and a
button pad.
Figueras products can be found
in the world’s best cinemas and
screening rooms, with clients such
as ODEON, Warner Bros., New Line,
SF Bio, Shaw Cinemas, Kinepolis, UCI,
Balañà Group, Cinesa, and Palace,
among many others.
BOOTH: 2711A
FILM-TECH CINEMA SYSTEMS
Film-Tech Cinema Systems offers full-service monitored digital cinema systems. Our
system manages content, acquires and verifies decryption keys, and constructs playlists
automatically without user intervention. Each system comes with our Active NOC service.
More than just a monitoring and dispatch call center, our NOC utilizes advanced remote
access techniques to diagnose and remotely repair issues. The need for an on-site
technician is typically avoided.
BOOTH: 1019F
GOLD MEDAL
HOT DIGGITY PRO SERIES
Cinemas can grill up hot dogs in a professional
style with unbeatable performance!
This stainless-steel roller grill series provides
versatility and a modern design. Available
in three sizes: compact, standard, and large.
Features include: foot spacers that allow for
either flat or angled presentation; 10 rollers
divided into front and rear heat zones so
you can heat and serve at the same time;
flexibility for front or rear counter serving;
stainless-steel drip tray
BOOTH: 707F
162 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
GOLDEN KRUST
JAMAICAN PATTIES
These 5-ounce “Jamaican”
patties are a doughpocketed
crisp item that
comes in many different
fillings, like spicy &
mild beef, chicken, and
vegetable. They can be
oven baked, microwaved,
and/or cooked in turbo chef–like units that take 47
seconds to cook.
BOOTH: 231F
GOVINO
Exhibitors looking to create a unique and fun experience for movie
fans can consider GOVINO, the first and only shatterproof drinkware
that’s accepted by leading sommeliers. Established in Napa Valley,
GOVINO offers reusable, recyclable, and customizable drinkware
that’s made to enhance the flavor of wines, beers, and spirits. Theater
operators can now create unique film-related and cinema-branded
drinkware—from logos to fun sayings or images—to enhance the
moviegoing experience for customers, without worrying about the
liability from broken glass. Featuring shatterproof BPA- and BPS-free
polymer, GOVINO can be sanitized or hand washed and reused to
quickly and easily serve guests.
BOOTH: 2721A
GREAT WESTERN PRODUCTS
SUNGLO PREMIUM FLAVORED TOPPINGS
Popcorn is our legacy, but through the
years we have expanded our product line
to include other foods such as snow cone
syrups and floss sugar (cotton candy). Now,
we introduce our Sunglo Premium Flavored
Toppings. Seventeen different flavored
infused toppings, including flavors like
Honey Sriracha, Lemon Pepper, Barbeque,
Salted Caramel, and even Bacon. These
toppings can top popcorn, salad, baked
potatoes, or even be used to enhance the
flavor of your favorite side dish.
BOOTH: 404F
HARKNESS SCREENS
PERLUX HIWHITE
The Perlux HiWhite from Harkness is a brand-new white gain projectionscreen
family that is already considered by leading cinema exhibitors to
be the premium surface for 2D and active 3-D movies. Perlux HiWhite
reimagines Harkness’s previous Perlux products and incorporates Nanolast
technology to create the whitest-ever gain screen, providing a breathtaking
presentation that showcases movie content as the filmmaker intended. The
new surface technologies deliver ultra-wide viewing angles, a minimum
40 percent increase in half-gain angle, dramatically improved uniformity,
superior color and contrast rendition, and is laser-ready. Perlux HiWhite is
available globally in three gain levels (1.4, 1.8, and 2.2) with a maximum size
of 60 feet (18.28 m) in height, and screens can be shipped either rolled or
folded in a box for expedited delivery.
BOOTH: 2203A
HIGH-PERFORMANCE STEREO
A-55-G MIDRANGE COMPRESSION DRIVER
Founded in 1979, High Performance
Stereo is the exclusive distributor
of the HPS-4000 motion picture
sound systems. The company’s
A-55-G midrange compression
driver took 10 years and
around $100K to perfect. At
five inches across it may not
look like much, but it has
been called the Stradivarius
of new midrange
compression drivers.
BOOTH: 2801A
164 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
THE HERSHEY
COMPANY
Hershey’s is offering a variety
of snacks, from indulgent to
wholesome, in more spaces
and places for people to enjoy.
The company’s beloved and
delicious candy, sweets, mints,
and gums are joined by a
growing family of sweet and
salty combinations and betterfor-you
meat snacks, popcorn,
and chips.
BOOTH: 412F
INORCA SEATING
Inorca’s latest development creates a zero gravity seating
position, based on NASA human ergonomics studies to maximize
comfort—without sacrificing the strength and reliability of
the chairs. The product offers deluxe upholstery with a wide
selection of stitching designs, lightened numbering and lettering,
exchangeable embroidered numbers, and privacy panels among
its additional features.
BOOTH: 913F
THE ICEE COMPANY
The ICEE Company is a leader in the frozen-beverage industry with
the top frozen beverage brands. The company will be showcasing
its latest digital merchandising options for ICEE FCB equipment
at CinemaCon, as well as a wide variety of new flavors. ICEE’s new,
innovative single-barrel digital touch-screen machines will also be
on display to offer new flavor profiles like Nitro Coffee and fresh
imagined looks.
BOOTH: 109F
166 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
INTEG
JNIOR MODEL 412DMX
The JNIOR 412DMX has all the functionality of the
existing JNIOR Model 412 including four digital
inputs and 12 relay outputs, but adds a DMX 5-pin
adapter allowing the JNIOR to control one universe
(512 channels) of DMX devices. Utilizing the free
DMX software on the JNIOR, the user can create
an unlimited number of scripts via a web page.
Each script contains commands to set various DMX
channel values, including at defined time points.
The user can trigger a specific script via the JNIOR
Cinema program, remote commands, or digital
inputs. A separate web page allows you to use sliders
to control individual channels and trigger scripts.
BOOTH: 2112A
IRWIN SEATING COMPANY
ZG4 SPECTRUM RECLINER
Irwin Seating Company introduces ZG4, the latest in the Spectrum Recliner
Luxury Series. This version features a new seat module that offers a deep
cushioned ride. This seat works in conjunction with a new proprietary recliner
mechanism for a smooth “Zero Gravity Motion.” The ZG4 mechanism enables
patrons to find their optimum personalized comfort and viewing position. In
addition, ZG4 provides for improved seating density and a number of operational
advances. Spectrum ZG4 provides more recline than previous models.
BOOTH: 201F
JACK ROE
Jack Roe’s new cinema website solution
saves exhibitors the hassle of ever having
to make another web update again. With a
full content-management system and data
analytics, theater operators can see their
figures like never before. From mobile app
behavior to online customers, exhibitors can
see when moviegoers are visiting them online
and which tickets are being bought. With
the full TaPoS package, their customers can
purchase tickets directly from an exhibitor’s
own website and check their gift card
balances and loyalty awards. Jack Roe will
also be showcasing their new wireless digital
signage device that allows theater operators
to get the system up and running by simply
hanging the TV in their box office.
BOOTH: 819F
JAYMAR
Jaymar presents the latest recliner
with auto-stop feature based
on human touch, an
occupancy detection
system that allows
auto-close and other
features based on exit
occupancy status, a fully
automated system. This
technology can also allow
you to link the recliner to a
POS system and give a customized VIP menu
to place an order from a VIP app exclusive to the exhibitor. This technology allows
full control of the reclining mechanism and sets or raises any or all the chairs
up or down to a favorite position. It resolves the issue when multiple seats are
installed; by pressing one button, you can control all the seats at once either for
the cleaning crew or in case of an emergency. If a customer gets out of a recliner
without closing it, the system will then close on its own within a timed sequence
and prepare for the next client.
BOOTH: 2221A
168 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
KRIAN MEDIA
LUXURY ROCKERS
The Luxury Rockers offered by Krian are seats made
with high-quality bi-cast leather and steel structures.
Its ergonomic back and wide seat base feature an
option to be configured as a love seat and a minimal
footprint requirement. These luxury rockers are a
versatile option for exhibitors with space restrictions
and don’t compromise on the end users’ comfort.
BOOTH: 224F
KERNEL SEASON’S
Kernel Season’s Popcorn Seasoning adds value and experience to concession
stands everywhere by playing to the current consumer demand for customization
in a way that won’t increase concession queue time. Kernel Season’s entices
customers to buy their own personal bag of popcorn to season up just the way
they like it. For just a couple of cents per serving, concessions managers can see
shared large bag/bucket popcorn sales split into individual bag/bucket purchases
so everyone can create their own perfect popcorn.
BOOTH: 217F
LANCER CORP.
SENSATION 44
One of Lancer’s newest products, Sensation 44 is
a cold-carbonated ice beverage dispenser that
provides 12 drink choices, up to eight bonus
flavors, and chewable ice. Sensation 44 is built with
heavy-duty stainless steel and offers a matte black
exterior option. Other benefits include easy access
to plumbing and serviceable parts, an integrated ice
bin adapter that accepts most ice machines, and a
high-capacity drip tray that helps reduce messy spills
and clean-up time.
BOOTH: 2514A
170 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
LIGHT TAPE STEPGUARD
STEP GUARD EGRESS SYSTEM
The Light Tape Step Guard Egress System is the only solution in the
world where the manufacturer not only makes the fixture but also the
light source. We began by perfecting Light Tape, the egress light source
commonly utilized in industrial wayfinding. The logical next step was
to build on what we learned and engineer fixtures for public spaces,
auditoriums, and cinemas. Light Tape Step Guard, methodically developed
by Light Tape. A complete zero-maintenance illuminated safety egress
solution for both stairs and aisles.
BOOTH: 2124A
LUMMA
4D E-MOTION
4D E-Motion is a solid theater system equipped with motion
seats and special effects: wind, vibration, water, and scent,
effectively synchronized with the action on the screen. Lumma
offers a comprehensive service for 4D E-Motion Theatres
implementation: study of feasibility, conventional theater
adaptation, development, production, installation, support,
and maintenance worldwide. Lumma’s synchronization
department works closely with Hollywood studios,
programming the most popular titles. You can also experience
E-MOTION VR, virtual reality combined with motion seats and
special effects synchronized to 360º content.
BOOTH: 2618A
MOBILIARIO
Seating provider Mobiliario is introducing a new product
that allows movie theater owners to use the maximum
seating capacity of each auditorium. Meant to maximize
space, Mobiliario is dedicated to giving moviegoers extra
comfort in a traditional seat with the advantages and
features of a luxury recliner.
BOOTH: 801F
172 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
MOVING IMAGE TECHNOLOGIES
ALMS-20L DIMMER
This dimmer can aid the transition from 120V incandescent
lighting to solid-state LED lighting, since
it supports both types of lamps and voltages. The
ALMS-20L is a triac-based forward or “leading edge”–
type phase-control dimmer. It has push buttons for
manual commands and accepts remote commands
by digital input or LAN. Programmed with any
computer using a simple graphical user interface,
it features an LCD display for showing status and
allows simple program modifications from the front
panel without opening the cover.
IMC-2E AUTOMATION:
Featuring 12 optically isolated inputs and 16 relay
outputs, this new automation uses MiT’s new JNT
series microcontroller and added network control
along with the previous digital and serial input functionality.
The unit can now be programmed using
a simple graphical user interface that allows input
events to be linked with any combination of outputs.
Custom programs may be built by the user, edited,
saved, and copied to other IMC-2e units.
BOOTH: 2419A
NEC DISPLAY SOLUTIONS
ODYSSEY
Odyssey offers complete HI/VI
compliance solutions for servers
and processors, both legacy
and modern. New boards and
equipment added weekly.
BOOTH: 2120A
NATHAN’S
FAMOUS
PRETZEL DOG
NUGGETS
Nathan’s Famous
introduces another
new product: New
Pretzel Dog Nuggets.
This product uses
cocktail franks wrapped
in flavorful pretzel
dough. It is a product
for entertaining, quick
snacks, kids’ meals,
and many other festive
occasions. The product
comes in two bags of
100 pieces each, a
total of 200 nuggets
per case.
BOOTH: 1001F
NC3541L
Designed for auditoriums with screens (up to 105 ft. wide), NEC’s NC3541L is the
latest DCI-compliant RB Laser DLP cinema projector. Delivering 4K resolution, this
model has a high brightness output of 35,000 lumens and 3-D capabilities. This
model is easy to operate, user-friendly, and requires minimal maintenance. You
can enjoy an overall lower cost of ownership with up to 30,000 hours of lifetime,
keeping costs to a minimum.
BOOTH: MILANO 4 & 8
174 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
OMNITERM
OMNI 7650
In today’s ever-changing cinema POS
environment, theaters are demanding
more from their POS suppliers. Omniterm is
introducing the new, compact, yet powerful
1.8 Intel Celeron Quad Core processor POS
terminal, the OMNI 7650. The OMNI 7650 is
a fan-less, POS terminal with a scratch-proof
projected capacitive touch screen. Housed in a
sleek body, the kiosk has system performance
and reliability. The OMNI 7650, combined with
the Integra Ticketing Retrieval software, can
help speed the line of customers.
BOOTH: 416F
PACKAGING CONCEPTS
Packaging Concepts is expanding its ever-growing line of concession packaging.
The company is now manufacturing 85-ounce and 130-ounce paper popcorn
tubs that are offset printed, with up to 175 line screen. The tubs are available in
custom and stock design prints. As movie exhibitors continue to increase their
concession offerings, PCI is available to assist with design, graphics, and delivery
of quality concession packaging at an economical cost.
BOOTH: 924F
POSITIVE CINEMA SOLUTIONS
ENHANCED MOBILE APP
POSitive Cinema Solutions, based upon years of
extensive cooperation with clients, provides a
complete, robust, scalable solution for cinemas,
available worldwide. Its complete ERP-type solution,
built for cinema circuits, covers a wide range of
activities such as multichannel sales (POS, online,
mobile, kiosk), dine-in, scheduling, digital signage,
campaigns, TMS automation, HQ management, and
more. The company is introducing its enhanced
mobile app at CinemaCon, enabling data mining to
increase revenue and improve customer satisfaction
by giving moviegoers the power to control their
moviegoing experience. POSitive Cinema Solutions
is headquartered in Poland, with offices in the U.S.
and in Uruguay.
BOOTH: 2207A
176 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
PROCTOR COMPANIES
OKITE
Proctor Companies is the
exclusive industry supplier of
Okite, a natural quartz material
suited for use in theater
countertops and walls. This
durable, nonporous material is
stain and scratch resistant, easy
to clean, and never needs sealing
or polishing. It’s NSF and LEED
certified and stands up to hard
use. Okite is available in a wide
array of patterns and colors. Some
colors are translucent so panels
can be under-lit or backlit for
dramatic effect.
BOOTH: 113F
PROMOTION IN MOTION
ORIGINAL GUMMI FUN MIX
Original Gummi Fun Mix is a new line of unique combinations
of gummies in many varieties, shapes, flavors, and colors. The
brand’s launch includes the following varieties: Gummi Party, a
mix of Gummi favorites with up to 18 varieties of bears, worms,
sharks, cherries, swirly drops, and more. Sour Party is a mix
of sour bears, belts, filled licorice straws, drops, and cherries
with up to 16 varieties in every bag. The lineup features four
additional varieties of mixtures, including Gummi Soda Pops,
Seriously Sour, Fruit Rings, and Mixed Berries. The brand will
be available to ship in May in time for summer movie season.
Packaging includes 5-ounce peg bags and 10-ounce stand-up
bags across all varieties.
BOOTH: 725F
PROSTAR INDUSTRIES
EVOLUTION SOLID CHEMICAL PROGRAM
The Evolution Solid Chemical system is based on 100 percent
active, solid chemical, (no water). These capsules use simple
water-driven dispensers that hydrate the solid chemicals,
precisely creating “ready-to-use” solutions. Solid
chemicals are safer, more reliable, and
the preferred environmental choice
when compared to powder or liquid
solutions, but also reduces energy
consumption. The Evolution Solid
Chemical program offers a variety
of products for cleaning and
sanitization needs.
BOOTH: 120F
QSC
CMS-5000
The QSC CMS-5000
is a next-generation
cinema media server
that features onboard solidstate
storage, high-speed DCP ingest, dual HDMI 2.0 ports for
alternate content, and native support for Q-SYS, QSC’s network platform for integrated sound,
picture, and control. It is capable of JPEG 2000 DCI content playback at 2K 2D up to 60 frames
per second, and 4K 3-D up to 30 frames per second. The CMS-5000 also supports DTS:X (64
channels) and Atmos immersive sound formats. As part of the Q-SYS ecosystem, the CMS-5000
in Q-SYS designer software appears as a component, providing full system interconnection,
audio channel routing, status monitoring, and control.
BOOTH: 2303A
178 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

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TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
QUBE CINEMA
CHEERS
Cheers, offered by Qube Cinema, is a digital cinema greeting
service that lets audiences everywhere present friends, family,
colleagues, and significant others with a personalized animated
greeting on the big screen. Cheers delivers an entirely automated
workflow—starting from when a user purchases a movie ticket
to picking a template from various popular categories (birthdays,
anniversaries, declarations of love, and more), which can be
customized with an on-screen message. This selection is then
delivered to the cinema in the form of an automatically created
custom DCP with 2K/4K picture and surround sound and scheduled
as part of a show when it plays on-screen.
BOOTH: 2614A
RADIOBOSS
RADIO CALLBOX
Use this weatherproof, battery-powered callbox in combination
with your two-way radios for staff communication. Post the unit
indoors or outdoors where you’d like for others to be able to reach
staff on the radios on the channel of your choice. Keep this unit
posted by the delivery and you’ll know as soon as a delivery is
being made. This allows you to keep all doors besides the main
entrance locked, which enhances your security. When the button
on the callbox is pressed, your radios will be temporarily engaged
in two-way conversation on the chosen channel. Do you have a
small staff? Use this callbox at the box office or by concessions to
alert an employee when customers need assistance.
BOOTH: 133F
RETRIEVER SOLUTIONS
Retriever Software, a leader in theater
point-of-sale technology, is expanding
its product offerings to include network
and IT services for theater exhibitors.
Retriever can now help with “all-things
computer” in theater operations. Retriever
can maintain LAN and WAN networks,
phone and surveillance systems, and can
even support a theater’s office desktop
computer hardware. Retriever Software
continues to supply ticketing software,
digital signage, websites, mobile apps,
film-rental management, and more. In light
of this expansion of services for exhibitors,
the company has updated our name to
Retriever Solutions.
BOOTH: 830F
REIS & IVY’S
FROYO ROBOT
These fully automated robotic vending
machines are planned to operate in a
variety of high-traffic locations across
North America, serving customers seven
different flavors of frozen yogurt, a
selection of six custom toppings, all at
the point of sale and within 60 seconds.
Dannon YoCream is the primary supplier
of all frozen dessert available within
the Reis & Irvy’s Froyo Robots, including
a wide assortment of frozen yogurts,
sorbets, and gelatos.
BOOTH: 2003A
RIOLE
PROACCESS
The ProAccess is the first equipment of
its kind to help special-needs viewers
in order to facilitate an enjoyable
listening and viewing experience equal
to all other moviegoers. The system
effectively transmits a video signal with
closed caption and sign language via
infrared light transmissions. A processor
is used to capture and process the
information relayed from the server’s
audio channels. This allows for an instant
synchronization of the accessibility track,
and provides the person with a perfected
user experience. All transmissions are
completely secure and perfected with
piracy-free state of mind.
BOOTH: 2811A
180 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
ROBOLABS
ROBOPOP
These machines are based on a new patented technology,
Vortex Popcorn: popcorn kernels rapidly heated, popped, and
vortexed away from the hot zone immediately after popping.
That’s why the thermal impact is very short—it saves the taste
of the product and makes it healthier. No oil is needed to pop
popcorn with Vortex technology. It means that “air”-pop does
not contain any trans fats. Oil is used at the final stage to give the
finished product the taste and aroma.
ROBOJETFLOSS
RoboJetFloss is designed to make
enormous servings of cotton
candy, more than a meter (3 ft.)
in diameter. All that’s needed is
a little bit of practice to be able
to make tricks with the upward
current of Candy Floss. After
some practice, an operator can
make candy floss on 5 meters (16
ft.) distance from the machine
presenting an exciting show.
BOOTH: 1018F
ROYAL CORPORATION
FREE FLOW BEVERAGE DRAIN MAINTAIN
The Royal FREE FLOW Beverage Drain Maintain is a
solution to that sticky sugar-snake buildup that lines the
drains in and behind the soda machine causing clogs,
foul odors, and fruit flies. FREE FLOW is an active Bio
Enzyme that digests sugars inside drains before they
can harden. The drains inside the soda machine can be
treated nightly with the quart bottle. The floor drains
behind the machine are best treated with an automatic
dispensing pump that doses the drain on intervals from
the 5 gallon pail.
BOOTH: 213F
SAMSUNG
SAMSUNG CINEMA SCREEN
The Samsung Cinema Screen is the first DCI-compliant LED theater display.
The self-illuminating screen shows realistic and engaging visuals--projectorfree--providing
next-generation picture quality to offer movie-goers an
immersive viewing experience. The Cinema Screen can display true black
colors. This accurate representation is furthered by 18-bit processing
that maintains consistently authentic low-tone grayscale effects, as well
as an infinite contrast ratio that maintains visual integrity in darkroom
settings. This also includes peak brightness (146fL, 10xtimes brighter than
projection), accurate color presentation and distortion-free uniformity to
bring content to life. The screens are capable of 2K, 4K, 3-D, and HDR.
BOOTH: 2117A
182 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

SEVERTSON SCREENS
FOLDED SAT-4K ACOUSTICALLY TRANSPARENT
CINEMA SCREEN TO CINEMACON 2018
Now shipping, the enhanced SAT-4K offers a finer
weave and brighter white material for increased
visual performance while not impairing the SAT-
4K’s original acoustic abilities. Currently available
to nearly limitless sizes in both height and length,
the SAT-4K cinema screen meets or exceeds all
industry standards for optimum video and acoustic
performance, with reference quality reproduction of
the digital image combined with true fidelity of the
original soundtrack.
BOOTH: 2516A
TASTE OF
NATURE
DR PEPPER COTTON
CANDY
The new Dr Pepper
Cotton Candy delivers
a unique taste that is a
favorite in today‐’s beverage
marketplace. The
Dr Pepper Cotton Candy
will land in movie theaters
in March of 2018,
just in time for Spring
Break. The product will
be available in both a 1.5
oz. and a 3.1 oz. Mylar
bag. The cotton candy is
sealed in a Mylar bag for
freshness and maintains
a 9-month shelf life.
BOOTH: 522F
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 183

TRADE SHOW PREVIEW & NEW PRODUCTS
TELESCOPIC
SEATING SYSTEMS
SMART CLEAN SWEEP AND
SMART GUARDIAN
Smart Clean Sweep and
Smart Guardian are the latest
offerings in recliner seating
automation and cleaning
systems by Telescopic
Seating Systems (TSS). Smart
Cleans Sweep and Smart
Guardian offer many new
features including Collision
Detection, Preventive Maintenance,
Battery Backup,
Emergency Close, etc. Pay
for your recliners with your
cleaning cost savings from
Smart Clean Sweep! Make
your recliner seating safer
with Smart Guardian.
BOOTH: 2213A
USG STRUCTURAL
SOLUTIONS
USG STRUCTURAL PANEL
CONCRETE SUBFLOOR
USG Structural Panel Concrete
Subfloor is an efficient
alternative to poured
concrete subfloors for tiered
seating build outs in both
new construction and renovation
of auditoriums and
theaters. They are the only
noncombustible structural
panels certified by UL when
tested in accordance with
ASTM E136-16. The product
is mold-, moisture- and
termite-resistant. And due
to a complete dry application,
a single trade can both
prepare the frame work and
install the subfloor panels’
quickly. At 5 pounds per
square foot, crews can easily
transport the panels into
and within buildings, as well
fit them into elevators to further
expedite construction.
BOOTH: 230F
184 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

VISION MEDIA
85OZ POPCORN EATERS
Cinema Scene and Ping continue to bring new offerings to their Licensed Movie
Promotions, with a launch of their newest promotional product in conjunction
with Marvel Studios’ summer blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War. Moviegoers
can find a bit more excitement in their visit to the concession stand with
their newest innovation: 85oz Popcorn Eaters.
BOOTH: 617F
VISTA
CINEMA MANAGER
Cinema Manager is Vista Cinema’s first major release
toward making its cinema management suite of products
cloud-ready. Day-to-day cinema manager tasks
are shifted into a new era of “easy” via a new intuitive
user interface. Cinema Manager was designed from the
ground up, taking a user-first approach to the common
tasks that managers perform regularly, enabling them
to be completed in less time and risk of errors.
VISTA MOBILE
More than a self-service sales channel, Vista Mobile
leverages the benefits of a range of Vista modules connecting
moviegoers with cinema experiences as never
before.
F&B
Vista F&B is a food service system purpose-built for cinema.
It’s a stand-alone application, but also integrates
with Vista Box Office, Vouchers & Gift Cards, Loyalty, and
more. Whether POS, a bar, in-seat, or restaurant dining,
F&B will optimize the experience for your customers
and staff. Integration with Vista Mobile enables customers
to easily satisfy their F&B cravings anytime.
BOOTH: 625
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 185

CINEMACON 2018
— EXCELLENCE IN EVENT CINEMA AWARD —
DISNEY’S NEWSIES: THE BROADWAY MUSICAL
THE WALT DISNEY STUDIOS
INTERVIEW WITH FATHOM EVENTS’ RAY NUTT AND WALT DISNEY STUDIOS’ DAVE HOLLIS
by Jesse Rifkin
Add yet one more honor to Disney’s massive list of accolades
in recent years: CinemaCon’s Excellence in Event Cinema
Award. Boxoffice spoke with Walt Disney Studios president
of theatrical distribution Dave Hollis and Fathom Events CEO
Ray Nutt about the two companies’ partnership, how event
cinema helped the box office of Black Panther, the upcoming
superhero-movie marathon, and Disney’s Broadway musical
screenings at cinemas. Could Frozen be next?
When did Disney begin thinking about
event cinema?
Dave Hollis: I think we’ve always
viewed going to the cinema as something
special, but as consumer habits have
evolved over the past several years, we’ve
really ramped up our efforts to make going
to the theater something that stands out
from all the other choices that audiences
have when it comes to entertainment.
Ray Nutt: Fathom, as you probably
know, is owned by AMC, Cinemark, and
Regal as our founding members. Through
them, we obviously had a connection with
Disney since a long, long time ago. Even
more recently, we started to form some
partnerships with them with theatrical.
Hollis: One of the advantages that
we have with our collection of worldclass
brands—whether it’s Disney, Pixar,
Marvel, or Lucasfilm—is that audiences
know they’re going to get a truly standout
experience when they come to see one of
our movies or come to one of our events.
Which events helped Disney perfect its
event cinema concept?
Nutt: You’ve probably seen that we’ve
done Disney’s Newsies: The Broadway
Musical. That was a hugely successful title
for us that we did last year. The beauty of
that is that we did multiple performances.
We brought Broadway all over the
country, out of New York. We also now
have a title that we can bring back on a
regular basis, which we’re actually doing
later this year. I believe it’s in July, when
we’re reissuing Newsies. It’s also helped us
fill our vertical in the Broadway category
moving forward, as we have plans for a
few more of those as well.
Hollis: We are always looking for ways
to take things to the next level and provide
a one-of-a-kind experience for people. One
of those we’re most proud of is our recent
186 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

project with IMAX and
Twitter for Black Panther,
where we streamed a
Q&A with the talent
from the film into
IMAX theaters across
North America and live
on Twitter. An event
like this helps expand
and enhance people’s
experience, not only with
the movie but with the
movie theater.
Nutt: It’s funny—
we’re the 13th-largest distributor in
North America right now, according to
comScore. So when Disney released Black
Panther, it was great for the industry and
great for Disney. I called up Dave and said,
“Just when Fathom was moving up the
charts to become No. 1, you had to go and
do that!” [Laughs.]
How did Disney’s collaboration with
Fathom Events begin?
Hollis: Our relationship with Fathom
Events dates back several years when we
began working with them to put some
of our classic titles in theaters, but we
embarked on more ambitious events
beginning with Inside Out in 2015,
when we put together a special event that
featured an exclusive video tour of the
Pixar campus with the filmmakers and a
live Q&A with talent [including director
Pete Docter and star Amy Poehler]. Since
then, we’ve continued to look for ways to
work together and innovate in this space
on events that range from current releases
and library titles to content from across
the Walt Disney Company like the stage
show of Newsies or special content from
Disney Junior.
DISNEY JUNIOR AT THE MOVIES – HALLOVEEN PARTY!
Can you discuss any Disney cinema
events planned for later in 2018 or in the
pipeline?
Hollis: Opening night of a movie is
obviously a huge event already for fans,
and we continue to explore ways to
make that even more special and memorable
for audiences who make that extra
effort to be the first to see our films.
2018 is the 10-year anniversary of the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, so to celebrate
Avengers: Infinity War, for example,
in a handful of locations we’re planning
an epic marathon of 11 of the films that
have led to this point, leading right into
opening night. It’s an opportunity to see
these films on the big screen with people
who love it as much as you do, and as a
bonus you also get exclusive collectibles
and you’re going to see the newest film
before anyone else. So it’s about creating
an unforgettable experience for fans and
giving them something they can’t get
anywhere else.
Nutt: We’re also talking to Disney
Junior at the Movies. We have a relationship
with them, where we’ve done a lot
to highlight the work they do on their
cable channel on television. We’ve done
HalloVeen Party! We’ve done Mickey’s
Big Celebration—really cool events for
parents to take their kids to. We encourage
the kids and parents to dress up, to
dance, to sing.
We’re also in discussions with Disney
to do more Broadway. Not certain that’s
going to happen with the timing of it in
addition to Newsies, but there’s certainly
interest in that. So I think you’ll see more
from Fathom and Disney moving forward.
Like Frozen on Broadway, perhaps?
Nutt: We’d love to do Frozen. That is
just brand new, but we’re already looking
at some of their older
titles as well. The Lion
King, Aladdin, that kind
of thing. We’re talking
about some of those
titles. We’ll see.
What can exhibitors
do to embrace and
grow this event cinema
industry?
Nutt: That’s a good
question. I can talk all
day about that, but I’ll
give you the topline answer. We’re all
owned by the three largest exhibitors in
the country, but we distribute content to
57 other theater exhibition companies
out there. What can theater operators
do to help with the business? They do a
partnership with us. They look at us to
acquire the content and distribute it accordingly.
They look to us to help market
it, which we do in the theater and digitally
and in other ways as well. They look
at content to market. We don’t accept
any content without the content partners
having a very strong marketing plan that
goes hand in hand with ours.
In addition to that, to get to your
question, theater circuits have a significant
interest in making sure that these things
are successful. The ones that have loyalty
programs, for example, partner with us to
make sure that we go out there and reach
the people that are the demographic audience
that we have. They utilize their digital
and social as well. The theater circuits have
been just wonderful in terms of that and
backing the whole thing.
They have skin in the game, too.
They’re trying to sell tickets, they’re trying
to sell seats, in many cases during slow
times, Monday through Thursday, but
many times on weekends as well. Theater
circuits have been fantastic, in terms of
helping support the cause. n
Note: having led The Walt Disney Studios theatrical
distribution team since 2011, Hollis is departing the
company at the end of May and handing the reins to
Cathleen Taff, a 24-year Disney veteran.
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 187

CINEMACON 2018
— BERT NATHAN MEMORIAL AWARD —
BRIAN BIEHN
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
FUNACHO / PRETZELHAUS BAKERY
When did you first begin working with
The Bert Nathan Memorial Award is given to an individual each year by the National Association
of Concessionaires (NAC) to recognize leadership and significant accomplish-
exhibition through your role in concessionsment
in cinema concessions. Brian Biehn, this year’s recipient, has been a member of
I started in the concessions/theater
NAC since 2004 and has served as the chair of the Regional Vice President and Education
trade back in 1994 with Conagra. I was
committees. In 2014 Biehn began his tenure as an at-large member to the NAC board of
on the bulk popcorn side with Vogel Popcorn,
responsible for sales. Conagra went
directors. Biehn began working with exhibitors in the concessions space in 1994, selling
Vogel Popcorn and introducing the Orville Redenbacher brand to cinemas for Conagra
through a centralization, merged, and
Brands. In 2004, Biehn joined FUNacho—an endeavor that led to the introduction of the
created the Conagra snack foods company,
and Orville Redenbacher came under
PretzelHaus Bakery concept. Boxoffice spoke with Biehn about his career so far and
what the future holds for the concessions business at the cinema.
our umbrella. I was part of our team that
was able to introduce branding Orville
Redenbacher in theaters. That was an exciting project to work on, as that
was such a high-quality brand and made perfect sense to launch in the
theater channel.
What were some of your first impressions of working with exhibition?
You know, the fun thing for me about the job is that I love the
movies. It’s an industry that’s a little bit of a throwback, in that it’s a
people-driven and relationship-driven business, by and large. That’s what
makes it so fun and interesting and fulfilling. So it’s a neat business to go
into. You never don’t like going to work or talking about the movies.
How did you come into your current role?
I became friends with Mike Grause, who owns FUNacho. We struck
up a great friendship. He was in the theater business, as I was. I ended
up going to work with him at FUNacho back in 2005. Mike and I
founded PretzelHaus in 2008.
Where did the PretzelHaus concept originate?
We had a longtime theater customer approach us and say, “Hey, can
you make a better pretzel than we have today, specifically in regards to
transaction time, lower spoilage, and help free up freezer space?” We
accepted the challenge, and with the help of a gentleman who would
become a business partner (a third-generation certified master baker,
trained in Germany) we were fortunate to develop our shelf-stable pretzel.
Our product allows our customers to not have to use their valuable
freezer space for pretzels. It also benefits theaters that don’t have freezers
to now offer their moviegoers a soft pretzel. Spoilage is dramatically
reduced or even eliminated as theaters don’t have to throw out unused
prepared pretzels.
BRIAN BIEHN
What are some of the most important details exhibitors can master
to make sure their concessions area is as effective as possible when it
comes to sales?
People eat with their eyes. I mean, we use all our senses for food. One
188 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

PEOPLE EAT WITH THEIR EYES
of the keys is what we see. So we developed, in conjunction
with another customer, a pretzel display box. Most of our
customers use that. It’s a window box. Theaters charge, let’s be
honest, a premium price for products. So people want to get
a perceived high-quality product value with that. Our bakery
box is a great display piece and upsells the product. I don’t
have quantifiable data on that, but we had a customer tell us
it provides a nice percent increase. I’m paying X amount for
a pretzel, and now I’m getting this in a nice display box so it
looks bakery fresh. People want a warm comfort snack food.
Obviously, popcorn and Coke or Pepsi are the huge margin
and go-to for a long time. People added candy. Then they
added nachos and pretzels. What we were able to do is provide
a comfort snack. We weren’t reinventing the wheel. You can
get pretzels at other concession venues like stadiums, arenas,
things like that—but not all theaters were carrying them. They
didn’t have a lot of freezer space or kitchens, so they couldn’t
offer pretzels. Many of our theaters that are now buying our
product either didn’t have freezers or didn’t have enough
freezer space. They were able to bring in our products and offer
an incremental item that they weren’t able to before. It keeps
expanding. I think theaters continue to look for new items
that are tried and true. They want to grow that; they want
incremental sales without cannibalizing what they have.
Which products and innovations that you’ve been associated
with throughout your career stand out most?
I’ve already mentioned a couple: branding Orville [Redenbacher
popcorn] in many high-quality circuits and developing
and selling a shelf-stable pretzel. Our shelf-stable pretzel is fun
to sell because it’s different; it’s unique. Our customers love
it. One of our pretzel flavors is cinnamon and we also offer
an icing cup, and together they taste like a cinnamon roll. We
also just recently launched a shelf-stable chili pouch with 30
percent meat for hot dogs and nachos that has been received
very well.
As far as the theaters themselves, I think personally what
I’ve seen—which, looking back on it seemed very simple—
were the combos. Combos were already in fast food, but now
when you walk into a movie theater it’s standard that they
have combos. I’m sure if you asked the theater chains, those
are high volume and speed up transaction time too: “I’ll take a
No. 1” or “I’ll take a No. 3.”
Another thing I’ve seen that I think has been revolutionary
is where you walk up [to the counter] and now they funnel
you through the kiosk or the gondolas. People are picking candy
or pop or a snack on their way up to the concession stand. I
know that that’s been pretty big for theaters as well.
The other thing is the variety of food. I mean, chicken
fingers and hot foods outside of traditional concession foods.
That’s all new. And alcohol. Those two things are very new,
very different for the theater industry.
What do you think is necessary for concessionaires to be able
to address contemporary audience tastes? Is it a situation of
getting the staples right, or about ushering in a new kind of
product line?
I think it’s to keep it simple. When people go to a movie
theater, they go to be entertained. They go to indulge and
have a great time. I’ve seen people try to do salads and a lot of
different things. If people go, they want popcorn, they want
pretzels, they want nachos, they want a piece of pizza. Overall,
when people go to the movie theater, they’re not really
concerned about the calories. The only time I drink soft drinks
is at a movie theater. I get a snack and I don’t care about the
calories. I’m getting away, I’m getting entertained, I’m going to
a movie.
The only thing that goes against what I’m saying is gluten-free.
That is a big deal today. People want gluten-free
options, no question. I see it all the time. I get asked all the
time. I think that is here to stay, because more and more
kids, especially, have issues with gluten and food allergies. I
do think that is not really a trend; I think that is a growing
national situation.
That being said, I think that’s different than the average
contemporary consumer coming in. I think people still want
the staples of the concessions industry. People smarter than me
are doing the dine-in; it sounds like that’s going well. That’s a
piece to it. But as far as traditional concessions, I think it’s just
presenting the best product and keeping it as clear as you can
on the menu board. People eat with their eyes. They’re going
to find something with their eyes, whether it’s the menu board
or the display and merchandising of the products.
I think the more things you have, the more of a challenge it
becomes for the guests to pick what they want, which means they
take more time, which means your transaction times change.
People want a good snack when they get in there. I know it’s a
captive audience, but you want people coming back and buying
it again. So you want to offer a very good-tasting high-quality
product, and people are going to keep buying it. n
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 189

Domestic Total: $311.5 million
CINEMACON 2018
— comSCORE INTERNATIONAL BOX OFFICE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD —
2017 CALENDAR YEAR TOTALS & MILESTONES
GLOBAL: $6,457.5 MILLION
Second biggest year in company history
Third biggest year in industry history
Second consecutive year surpassing $6 billion in global box office
Claimed 5 of the top 10 global releases of 2017
Fifth consecutive year in which at least 4 releases surpassed $200M
domestically and at least 3 surpassed $700M globally
OVERSEAS: $4,046.9 MILLION
Second consecutive year surpassing $4 billion in overseas box office
Second biggest year in overseas box office in company history
Claimed 5 of the top 10 overseas releases of 2017
DOMESTIC: $2,410.6 MILLION
Third consecutive year surpassing $2 billion in domestic box office
Second biggest year in domestic box office in company history
Claimed 4 of the year’s top 5 domestic debuts, including the top 3
Claimed 4 of the top 7 domestic releases in 2017
Domestic Total: $531.9 million
S T A R W A R S :
T H E
L A S T
J E D I
GLOBAL TOTAL: $1,066.7 MILLION
O ve rse a s Total: $ 5 3 4.8 m illio n
Domestic Total: $389.8 million
GLOBAL TOTAL: $863.6 MILLION
G U A R D I A N S O F T H E G A L A X Y V O L
O vers e as Total: $ 4 7 3.8 m illi o n
. 2
T H O R :
R A G N A R O K
GLOBAL TOTAL: $848.8 MILLION
O verse a s To tal: $ 5 3 7.3 m illio n
190 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

P I R A T E S O F T H E C A R I B B E A N
B E A U T Y A N D T H E B E A S T
Domestic Total: $504 million
GLOBAL TOTAL: $1,263.7 MILLION
O verse a s Tot al: $ 7 5 9.7 m illio n
: D E A D M E N T E L L N O T A L E S
GLOBAL TOTAL: $794.8 MILLION
Domestic Total: $172.6 million
O verse as Total: $ 6 2 2.2 m illio n
C O C O
GLOBAL TOTAL: $550.1 MILLION
Domestic Total: $182.5 million
O vers ea s To tal: $ 3 6 7.6 m illio n
Domestic Total: $152.9 million
C A R S
GLOBAL TOTAL: $383.6 MILLION
O verse a s Tot al: $ 2 3 0.7 m illio n
3
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 191

CINEMACON 2018
— CINEMACON PASSEPARTOUT AWARD —
KURT RIEDER
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ASIA PACIFIC
20TH CENTURY FOX INTERNATIONAL
Kurt Rieder’s résumé has taken him around
the world. In the more than 26 years that he’s
worked in the cinema industry, Rieder has
held a variety of roles across distribution and
exhibition. Among the highlights of his career
in recent years are tenures as vice president at
Universal International Pictures (UIP) in 2003,
where he oversaw the marketing and distribution
of titles from DreamWorks, Paramount, and
Universal in Southeast Asia—adding on China,
Korea, and Japan after being named senior vice
president two years later. In 2009, Rieder was
named managing director of Artisan Gateway,
an Asia-based film consulting firm with clients
such as IMAX, the MPAA, and UIP.
Rieder then shifted gears to the exhibition
side of the business, serving as chief executive
officer of Mars Cinema Group, Turkey’s leading
exhibition circuit. In 2017, he began his current
position at 20th Century Fox International,
where he oversees the studio’s Asian regional
office in Singapore. Boxoffice spoke with
Rieder ahead of CinemaCon to look back on his
career and get his insights into the imminent
future of the cinema business.
THE CINEMACON
“PASSEPARTOUT AWARD” IS
PRESENTED ANNUALLY TO AN
INDUSTRY EXECUTIVE WHO
DEMONSTRATES DEDICATION
AND COMMITMENT TO THE
INTERNATIONAL MARKETPLACE
How did you get your start in the industry?
My first job in the industry was an internship at
Universal’s international publicity department. As
a student in a graduate film program at USC, I was
looking to convert this internship into a full-time
job as our second-year courses were shifting to
night classes. After discovering that nothing was
available at Universal, I spotted an article in Variety
on how Warner Bros. had opened an office in Indonesia.
I wrote the executive quoted in the article,
offering my services given that I spoke Indonesian
and had spent two years in that country during
college. After a meeting at WB, I was told that no
L.A.-based roles were available, but that I could be
a trainee in Burbank and Singapore, which would
lead to a home office representative position in
Jakarta, where WB’s Indonesian licensee was located.
I accepted the trainee role, which led to a career
in distribution and exhibition that ultimately led
me to Fox.
Having worked in both distribution and
exhibition, what do you think the industry can
do to sustain its place among consumers in the
marketplace?
There are so many competing forms of
entertainment today that our biggest collective
challenge is making the theatrical experience
unique and impossible to duplicate at home. The
solution is a combination of the studios making
films with compelling stories and scale that must
be seen on the big screen and exhibitors treating
moviegoing as a holistic experience versus relying
on content alone to win the day. “Build it and
they will come” is dead—we need to make cinema
engaging and experiential.
You’ve had a front-row seat to the growth of
the Asia Pacific market over the past 10 years.
What do you consider to be the biggest catalysts
to that growth? Do you believe the region will
continue to expand or is it likely to stabilize in the
coming years?
Box office growth is driven first and foremost
by rising disposable income, without which
out-of-home entertainment is an unattainable
luxury for much of Asia. Cinemas have multiplied
hand-in-hand with complementary retail
and food and beverage, which together deliver
families, dating couples, and groups of friends
the rationale for an outing. Every territory is
different—we’re seeing greenfield growth mirroring
urbanization and the modernization of
traditional agricultural societies (such as China,
India, Indonesia, and Vietnam) plateauing in
territories which have already reached high
per-capita attendance rates (Korea and Singapore),
and rebirth on the back of new infrastructure
in markets that had been assumed to have
peaked (Japan and Hong Kong).
192 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

As the industry undergoes a period of global
consolidation—both at the exhibition and
distribution level—what role do you believe
international markets will have in the near future?
International growth, in developing markets
especially, is subsidizing the static but profitable
markets of North America and Western
Europe. Consolidation may be a good thing
for both distribution and exhibition as they
become more efficient and can spend more of
their revenue on what’s important: what’s on
the screen—the films—and the “screen” itself:
well-built auditoriums, cutting-edge technology,
and comfort delivered by the best seats, apps,
and amenities.
What have been some of the projects in your
career that stand out most?
In distribution: 1995 at Warner Bros. We
decided to restructure our Malaysian business
given that the size of the market, and impending
construction of purpose-built multiplexes, pointed
to dramatic growth. Based in Singapore, I flew
to Kuala Lumpur every two weeks and brought
in a team of young executives. For the first time,
we were releasing films simultaneously across the
country on as many prints as possible and as close
to the U.S. release as possible. Against a backdrop
of legacy infrastructure, piracy, and onerous
censorship, we were lucky that our strategy was
successful. Annual box office in Malaysia has
increased sevenfold since the mid-’90s, and it’s
gratifying to have played a role in that story.
In exhibition: 1999 at Village Cinemas. I was
part of the team that opened Village Recoleta, a
mixed-use cinema complex in the heart of Buenos
Aires’s most exclusive neighborhood. The $100
million complex stretched our company’s funding
limits and was complex for both regulatory and
technical reasons (35-millimeter projectors were
mounted on mechanized elevators in a predecessor
of today’s boothless cinema format). The company’s
future rested on this flagship location, which
thankfully was a big success, propelling Village into
the top market-share position in Argentina. n
KURT RIEDER AT THE MOVIES
MOVIE MEMORY
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark had just opened and my brothers,
a friend, and I planned to catch it one evening. That afternoon,
I tripped in our dark garage and startled our Doberman who
thought I was an intruder and bit me in the abdomen. Two hours
and seven stitches later, we returned from the clinic and agreed
to keep the dog and not cancel our plans to see Indiana Jones. I’ll
never forget watching the movie and being so engrossed that it
distracted me from the throbbing pain in my side.
AT THE CONCESSIONS STAND
Popcorn (salty, never sweet) and a Coke Zero.
“I’m proud to say I’ve known Kurt Rieder
for more than 20 years. I know firsthand
how dedicated and committed he is to
the industry from both an exhibition and
distribution standpoint and how well
respected he is by his peers. CinemaCon is
delighted to single him out for his great drive
and passion when it comes to the betterment
of the motion picture theater industry.”
—Mitch Neuhauser, Managing Director, CinemaCon
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 193

CINEMACON 2018
— CAREER ACHIEVEMENT IN EXHIBITION —
ROBERT CARRADY
PRESIDENT
CARIBBEAN CINEMAS
Robert Carrady’s roots always bring him back to the island. As
president of Caribbean Cinemas, a circuit founded in Puerto Rico
by his father in 1969, Carrady oversees the largest exhibition circuit
in the region with a network of nearly 500 screens in 13 territories.
Carrady returned to the family business after completing his
education at Tufts University, coming back to a small circuit with six
screens in Puerto Rico and a newly opened six-screen location in the
Dominican Republic. With his involvement, Caribbean Cinemas has
undergone a regional expansion and become a leader in bringing
the latest cinema technology and concepts to audiences across the
Caribbean. Boxoffice caught up with Carrady ahead of CinemaCon
to discuss what sets the Caribbean region apart from any other, and
how the circuit overcame terrible obstacles following 2017’s tragic
natural disasters.
194 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

Like many folks in the industry, your family
legacy is exhibition. What are your earliest
memories of working at a theater?
I grew up in the business. Even though
Caribbean Cinemas was started in 1969 by my
dad, he was in the business since I was a kid. I
would spend a lot of time in movie theaters, and
when he went out on his own in ’69, it became
the best way for me to learn the business and go
through its growing pains. I was in charge of the
vending machines in high school. I would work
the morning shows on Sundays and be a theater
manager throughout the summers. I got the bug
at a young age and I jumped back into the business
full time after graduating college. I thought
I would go back and get an MBA, but that didn’t
happen—I just stayed working.
Of all those different roles, is there one that still
stands out as a personal favorite?
The excitement of figuring out the hit of the
week, the hit of the month. When you were operating
single- and twin-screen theaters, you really
had to study what you were going to program. If
you were in a downtown area, with six or seven
theaters around you, it was crucial to pick the
right film come Christmas or early June—because
you were essentially rejecting everything else. As
a result, I’ve always enjoyed the film-buying and
booking part of the job. Film buying is a little
easier today because you end up playing almost
everything, but back then you really needed to
have a historical knowledge of markets and what
type of films and genres would work in them.
Caribbean Cinemas is present throughout the
entire region—a diverse collection of territories
with different cultures and tastes. What makes
the Caribbean region so distinct?
When you look at it as a bloc, it has a lot of
similarities to the global market in that action-exploitation,
slapstick comedies, and mass-market-appeal
movies stand out. Another distinction is
that sophisticated films have a much more limited
market—but that market still exists. The San
Juan area of Puerto
Rico and the Santo
Domingo area of the
Dominican Republic,
they have the audience
to support those films. In those very markets
we have our Fine Arts theaters—three multiplex
cinemas—where we cater specialty product. We’ve
been doing that for over 30 years, opened the first
one in 1986. That’s exciting because the theaters
themselves have followings. For example, films
from Spain and Argentina will only work in those
cinemas as opposed to commercial cinemas, even
though these are predominantly Spanish-speaking
countries. In other countries, like Trinidad, for example,
we’ve found that Indian films do very well
because there is a sizable Indian population in the
country. It all depends on the local audience.
Which amenities and new technologies are most
popular across your circuit?
We absolutely love bringing the latest in
amenities and technology to our theaters. We
have three 4DX auditoriums, one IMAX, and
14 private-label PLFs [CXC, Caribbean Cinemas
Extreme] with Dolby Atmos sound. The
programming that goes along with those formats
is a perfect fit for our audience in the Spanish-,
English-, and French-speaking Caribbean. Over
the years we’ve always introduced new concepts—
from reserve seating today to high-back rockers in
the ’90s and cup holders in the ’80s. Those cup
holders, let me tell you, they helped us keep auditoriums
clean. Back in the ’80s we didn’t think
twice about it! By the time your Saturday 9 p.m.
show opened its doors, it was standard operating
procedure to have guests walk over the cups and
popcorn bags from earlier in the day. Whether it’s
innovating or renovating, it’s what helps keep us
fresh and focused.
You’re coming off a very difficult year, marked
by the devastation of two hurricanes. What was
that experience like from your perspective as an
exhibitor?
PLAZA DEL CARIBE
PONCE, PUERTO RICO
ROBERT CARRADY
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 195

CINEMACON 2018
FINE ARTS MIRAMAR
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
I grew up in Puerto Rico and I barely remember
hurricanes in my school days. There was Hurricane
Hugo in 1989, George in 1998—we used to get
hit, but it would only be a piece of the island that
would be affected. So if San Juan in the north was
hit hard, you still had hotels and power in Ponce
in the south. Hurricane Maria was totally devastating
in that the entire landmass was affected; there
wasn’t one square inch of the island untouched.
It came two weeks after Hurricane Irma, which
affected the islands of St. Thomas and St. Martin,
where we have theaters. With Maria, every one of
our theaters in Puerto Rico remained closed six
or seven days after the storm. It was frustrating,
and there was such a huge unknown around that
period, we didn’t know when we’d see the light
at the end of the tunnel. The hurricane came on
a Wednesday, and I remember that first weekend
was the first time in my life that I didn’t even want
to look at weekend grosses from the U.S. I didn’t
even want to know because it was too sad; it was
almost like having an arm cut off. It took about six
or seven weeks to start to turn the corner towards a
predictable recovery.
We did have some theaters with generators,
and when they started operating again the second
weekend after the storm, people came back. We
had curfew, so our last shows were at 4 p.m.
because people had to be in their homes by sundown.
When the power started to come back, it
came back near the highways and areas near our
theaters. We probably had around half of our theaters
back operating five weeks after the storm in
locations spread out across the island. We received
tremendous damage—working through those
insurance claims was and it still is a full-time job
in itself— we had to throw out all of the chairs
in some of these theaters; I think we had to buy
250 air-conditioning units within 10 weeks of the
storm. The numbers are mind-boggling.
196 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

How long did it take to get your entire circuit
back up and running?
We reopened our last closed theater in Puerto
Rico on December 28—that’s 100 days after Maria.
We opened St. Thomas on February 8, and we
hope to reopen in St. Martin sometime in April.
It seems like these natural disasters are
occurring more and more often. Is there any way
to prepare a business like this for the next one?
All our theaters outside Puerto Rico have
emergency generators because the norm in those
markets is that energy is undependable. You work
it into your initial design. A generator for a movie
theater, once you finish getting it installed, probably
runs you between $250,000 and $300,000,
plus ongoing maintenance costs, so you try
to avoid it unless there’s no other choice. Our
theaters in Trinidad,
Dominican Republic,
Antigua, St. Lucia,
and Guyana all have
backup generators.
But having them in Puerto Rico wasn’t the norm
until now—now we know we need generators for
half our theaters in the island ahead of the next
storm season. Only 4 of our 31 theaters in Puerto
Rico had generators, but we learned that those
generators allowed us to get into those theaters to
clean up and assess the damage faster and limited
longer-term damage.
Since the island was hit head-to-toe, even
getting diesel for those theaters with generators
proved to be an ordeal. It’s not an exaggeration to
think we will need our own diesel truck for next
hurricane season.
GALERIA 360 SANTO DOMINGO,
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 197

CINEMACON 2018
DOWNTOWN CENTER VIP LOBBY
SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC
What role did your cinemas play during that
lengthy reconstruction period, as the country
was in the middle of a very difficult recovery
effort?
There was great appreciation [from the public]
that we were able to get theaters back up and
running as fast as we did. Obviously, if you own
the theaters you don’t think it’s that quick. But
compared to what was going on in the island, we
were back up and running rather quickly. People
were grateful they had a place where they could
go take a break, a place with air-conditioning
and snacks, where they could see a movie and
escape for a couple of hours. In St. Croix, which
was also hit, the governor of the Virgin Islands
was tweeting away that our theaters were now
open, encouraging people to go to the movies and
take a break. We extended price specials for early
shows, more than we usually do, which customers
also appreciated.
I would like to mention and thank John Fithian
for putting us in direct contact with the kind folks
at the Will Rogers Foundation in California who
were so comprehending and understanding to
provide direct grants to over 140 of our employees
whose day-to-day living expenses mushroomed,
as their homes were severely damaged and being
without power and water for such an extended
period of time. This outreach by Will Rogers adds
to my gratitude for being a part of this industry.
What do you think the future holds for
exhibition? What are some of the biggest
challenges ahead?
The fact that theaters today are more luxurious,
more comfortable, have better picture
and sound—that’s a big advantage. In terms of
what we need, the variety of supply is important,
making sure we don’t have too much of a
homogenous offering. This year’s Oscar season
198 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

is a fantastic example of a great group of diverse
films, a wonderful mix of product. I keep my
fingers crossed that Fox Searchlight will continue
under Disney. You hate hearing that specialty
films don’t have to be seen at movie theaters,
that you can see them on a smaller screen—and
I don’t know where that’s going, if that’s part of
what you hear from younger audiences who like
to see movies on their mobile devices. Let’s face
it, there’s great home entertainment technology
out there and we really need to keep our eye on
the ball. I think that the introduction of home
video made us a better industry; we couldn’t take
it for granted that the only place you could see
a movie was in a theater. That’s what led to a
better moviegoing experience: better seats, better
sound, bigger screens. n
“From his dedication
to bringing the
latest innovations
in the theater-going
experience to
his audiences to his unparalleled passion
for the theater experience, Robert Carrady
is a perfect honoree for the CinemaCon
Career Achievement in Exhibition Award.
Carrady has brought Caribbean Cinemas, a
successful family business with a dedicated
base of employees, to a level of success like
no other, and we are thrilled to be able to
honor him at this year’s CinemaCon.”
—Mitch Neuhauser
Managing Director, CinemaCon
BARCELONETA CINEMAS
BARCELONETA, PUERTO RICO
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 199

COMING SOON IN 3D
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
MAY 4 · DISNEY
CAST Robert Downey Jr. , Chris Hemsworth
DIR Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
GENRE Act/Adv/Fan
SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY
MAY 25 · DISNEY
CAST Alden Ehrenreich, Emilia Clarke
DIR Ron Howard
GENRE Act/SciFi
INCREDIBLES 2
JUNE 15 · DISNEY
VOICE CAST Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson
DIR Brad Bird
GENRE Ani/Act/Adv
JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
JUNE 22 · UNIVERSAL
CAST Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard
DIR J.A. Bayona
GENRE Act/Adv/SciFi
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP
JULY 6 · DISNEY
CAST Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly
DIR Peyton Reed
GENRE Act/Adv/SciFi
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3: SUMMER VACATION
JULY 13 · SONY/COLUMBIA
VOICE CAST Adam Sandler, Kathryn Hahn
DIR Genndy Tartakovsky
GENRE Ani/Com/Fam
SKYSCRAPER
JULY 13 · UNIVERSAL
CAST Dwayne Johnson, Pablo Schreiber
DIR Rawson Marshall Thurber
GENRE Act/Cri/Dra
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT
JULY 27 · PARAMOUNT
CAST Tom Cruise, Michelle Monaghan
DIR Christopher McQuarrie
GENRE Adv/Act/Thr
THE MEG
AUGUST 10 · WARNER BROS.
CAST Ruby Rose, Jason Statham
DIR Jon Turteltaub
GENRE Act/Hor/SciFi

ALSO UPCOMING IN 3D
ALPHA
September 14, 2018 – Sony/Columbia
MOWGLI
October 19, 2018 – Warner Bros.
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE
FOUR REALMS
November 2, 2018 – Disney
DR. SEUSS’ THE GRINCH
November 9, 2018 – Universal
RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET:
WRECK-IT RALPH 2
November 21, 2018 – Universal
SPIDER-MAN:
INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE
December 14, 2018 – Sony
MORTAL ENGINES
December 14, 2018 – Universal
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL
December 21, 2018 – Fox
AQUAMAN
December 21, 2018 – Warner Bros.
BUMBLEBEE
December 21, 2018 – Paramount
THE LEGO MOVIE SEQUEL
February 8, 2019 – Warner Bros.
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3
March 1, 2019 – Fox/Dreamworks
Animation
CAPTAIN MARVEL
March 8, 2019 – Disney
DUMBO
March 29, 2019 – Disney
UNTITLED AVENGERS
May 3, 2019 – Disney
TOY STORY 4
June 21, 2019 – Disney
TRANSFORMERS 7
June 28, 2019 – Paramount
THE LION KING
July 19, 2019 – Disney
REALD.COM

EVENT CINEMA CALENDAR
THE CAT RETURNS PORCO ROSSO PRINCESS MONONOKE
CINELIFE ENTERTAINMENT SpotlightCinemaNetworks.com
SCREAM FOR ME SARAJEVO Thurs 5/10/18 Rock Doc
OKLAHOMA! Wed 6/6/18 Musical Theatre
TO A MORE PERFECT UNION Thu 6/7/18 Inspirational /LGBTQ
ATTRACTION Wed 6/13/18 Sci-Fi
YANNI 25 LIVE Tues 6/19/18 Concert Film
KISS ME, KATE! Wed 6/27/18 Musical Theatre
RICHARD RODGERS GALA Wed 7/11/18 Musical Theatre (Gala)
KING LEAR Wed 7/25/18 Shakespeare Play
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Wed 8/8/18 Shakespeare Play
ELAINE STRITCH AT LIBERTY Wed 8/22/18 One Person Show
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY (TCHAIKOVSKY) Wed 9/5/18 Ballet
THE NUTCRACKER (TCHAIKOVSKY) Wed 12/12/18 Ballet
FATHOM EVENTS fathomevents.com 855-473-4612
THE CAT RETURNS Sun 4/22/18, Mon 4/23/18 and Wed 4/25/18 Anime
FRAGMENTS OF TRUTH Tues 4/24/18 Inspirational
COBRA KAI: PREMIERE FEAT. THE KARATE KID Weds 4/25/18 Classic Film
THE MET: LIVE IN HD - CENDRILLON Sat 4/28/18 Opera
LABYRINTH Sun 4/29/18, Tues 5/1/18 and Wed, 5/2/18 Classic Film
LIKE ARROWS Tues 5/1/18 and Thurs 5/3/18 Inspirational
THE MET: LIVE IN HD - CENDRILLON Wed 5/2/18 Opera
CANELO VS. GOLOVKIN 2 Sat 5/5/18 Sports
DIGIMON ADVENTURE TRI.: COEXISTENCE Thurs 5/10/18 Anime
TCM BIG SCREEN CLASSICS: SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) Sun 5/13/18 and Wed 5/16/18 Classic Film
NT LIVE: MACBETH Thurs 5/17/18 Theatre
PORCO ROSSO Sun 5/20/18, Mon 5/21/18 and Wed 5/23/18 Anime
GODSPEED - THE RACE ACROSS AMERICA Tues 5/22/18 Inspirational
BEST F(R)IENDS: VOLUME TWO Fri 6/1/18 and Mon 6/4/18 Comedy
TCM BIG SCREEN CLASSICS: THE PRODUCERS 50TH ANNIVERSARY (1968) Sun 6/3/18 and Wed 6/6/18 Classic Film
BOLSHOI BALLET: COPPÉLIA Sun 6/10/18 Ballet
RIFFTRAX LIVE: SPACE MUTINY Thurs 6/14/18 and Tues 6/19/18 Comedy
POM POKO Sun 6/17/18, Mon 6/18/18 and Wed 6/20/18 Anime
TCM BIG SCREEN CLASSICS: BIG 30TH ANNIVERSARY (1988) Sun 7/15/18 and Wed 7/18/18 Classic Film
PRINCESS MONONOKE Sun 7/22/18, Mon 7/23/18 and Wed 7/25/18 Anime
TCM BIG SCREEN CLASSICS: THE BIG LEBOWSKI 20TH ANNIVERSARY (1998) Sun, 8/5/18 and Wed, 8/8/18 Classic Film
GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES Sun, 8/12/18, Mon, 8/13/18 and Wed 8/15/18 Anime
TCM BIG SCREEN CLASSICS: SOUTH PACIFIC 60TH ANNIVERSARY (1958) Sun 8/26/18 and Wed 8/29/18 Classic Film
DIGIMON ADVENTURE TRI.: FUTURE Thurs 9/20/18 Anime
TCM BIG SCREEN CLASSICS: REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) Sun 9/23/18 and Wed 9/26/18 Classic Film
MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO 30TH ANNIVERSARY Sun 9/30/18, Mon 10/1/18 and Wed 10/3/18 Anime
202 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TCM BIG SCREEN CLASSICS: MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) Sun 10/14/18 and Wed 10/17/18 Classic Film
SPIRITED AWAY Sun 10/28/18, Mon 10/29/18 and Wed 10/31/18 Anime
TCM BIG SCREEN CLASSICS: DIE HARD 30TH ANNIVERSARY (1988) Sun 11/11/18 and Wed 11/14/18 Classic Film
CASTLE IN THE SKY Sun 11/18/18, Mon 11/19/18 and Wed 11/21/18 Anime
TCM BIG SCREEN CLASSICS: WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954) Sun 12/9/18 and Wed 12/12/18 Classic Film
ROYAL OPERA HOUSE roh.org.uk/cinemas cinema@roh.org.uk
MANON Thu 5/3/18 Ballet
SWAN LAKE Tue 6/12/18 Ballet
MAYERLING Thu 10/4/18 Ballet
DIE WALKÜRE Sun 10/28/18 Opera
LA BAYADÈRE Tue 11/13/18 Ballet
THE NUTCRACKER Mon 12/3/18 Ballet
THE QUEEN OF SPADES Tue 1/22/19 Opera
LA TRAVIATA Wed 1/30/19 Opera
DON QUIXOTE Tue 2/19/19 Ballet
LA FORZA DEL DESTINO Tue 4/2/19 Opera
FAUST Tue 4/30/19 Opera
WITHIN THE GOLDEN HOUR / NEW SIDI LARBI CHERKAOUI / FLIGHT PATTERN Thu 5/16/19 Ballet
ROMEO AND JULIET Tue 6/11/19 Ballet
SCREENVISION MEDIA screenvisionmedia.com/events
LINCOLN CENTER’S ROMEO & JULIET (SAN FRANCISCO BALLET) Sat 5/12/18–Wed 5/16/18 Ballet
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 203

ON SCREEN
SYNOPSES COURTESY OF QUICKLOOKFILMS.COM
PAUL BETTANY AS VISION
CHRIS EVANS AS CAPTAIN AMERICA
JEREMY RENNER AS HAWKEYE
DON CHEADLE AS WAR MACHINE
EVANGELINE LILLY AS WASP
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
APR 27 (WIDE)
>> An unprecedented cinematic journey 10 years in the
making, Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Infinity War brings to the
screen the ultimate, deadliest showdown of all time. The
Avengers and their superhero allies must be willing to sacrifice
all in an attempt to defeat the powerful Thanos before
his blitz of devastation and ruin puts an end to the universe.
DISTRIBUTOR DISNEY CAST ROBERT DOWNEY JR., CHRIS EVANS, SCAR-
LETT JOHANSSON DIRECTORS ANTHONY RUSSO, JOE RUSSO WRITERS
CHRISTOPHER MARKUS, STEPHEN MCFEELY GENRE ACTION, ADVENTURE,
SCI-FI RATING TBD RUNNING TIME 156 MIN.
204 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

Hannover House Proudly Presents
The Only Major Western for Summer '2018
Opens August 24 - Only in Theatres!
LAUREN SWEETSER
BRETT CULLEN
Hannover
House
For booking and publicity information contact: Eric Parkinson / Eric@HannoverHouse.com / 818-481-5277
or Desiree Garnier / Desiree@HannoverHouse.com / 479-283-8318 / Distributed by Hannover House, Inc.

ON SCREEN
RACHEL MCADAMS AND RACHEL WEISZ
DISOBEDIENCE
APR 27 (LIMITED)
>> The film follows a woman as she returns from New York to the Orthodox
Jewish community in North London where she grew up after the death of her
estranged rabbi-father. Once back at home, she stirs up controversy when she
shows an interest in a childhood friend.
DISTRIBUTOR BLEECKER STREET CAST RACHEL MCADAMS, RACHEL WEISZ, ANTON LESSER
DIRECTOR SEBASTIÁN LELIO WRITERS SEBASTIÁN LELIO, REBECCA LENKIEWICZ GENRE
DRAMA, ROMANCE RATING R FOR SOME STRONG SEXUALITY RUNNING TIME 114 MIN.
THEO JAMES AND BEN KINGSLEY
BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS
APR 27 (LIMITED)
>> An idealistic young employee working at the UN investigates the murder of his
predecessor and uncovers a global conspiracy that may even involve his own boss.
DISTRIBUTOR A24 CAST THEO JAMES, BEN KINGSLEY, JACQUELINE BISSET DIRECTOR PER
FLY WRITERS PER FLY, DANIEL PYNE GENRE DRAMA, HISTORY, THRILLER RATING R FOR
LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT, AND SOME VIOLENCE RUNNING TIME 108 MIN.
RORY SCOVEL AND AMY SCHUMER
206 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 ® APRIL 2018

I FEEL PRETTY
APR 27 (WIDE)
>> An ordinary woman who struggles with feelings of insecurity
and inadequacy on a daily basis wakes from a fall believing she is
suddenly the most beautiful and capable woman on the planet.
With this newfound confidence she is empowered to live her life
fearlessly and flawlessly, but what will happen when she realizes
her appearance never changed?
DISTRIBUTOR STX ENTERTAINMENT CAST AMY SCHUMER, MICHELLE
WILLIAMS, EMILY RATAJKOWSKI DIRECTORS ABBY KOHN, MARC SILVERSTEIN
WRITERS ABBY KOHN, MARC SILVERSTEIN GENRE COMEDY RATING TBD
RUNNING TIME TBD
PICTURED: AIDY BRYANT, BUSY PHILIPPS, AND AMY SCHUMER
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 207

ON SCREEN
ANNA FARIS AND EUGENIO DERBEZ
OVERBOARD
MAY 4 (WIDE)
>> Overboard focuses on Leonardo, a selfish, spoiled, rich playboy
from Mexico’s richest family and Kate, a working class single
mom of three hired to clean Leonardo’s luxury yacht. After unjustly
firing Kate and refusing to pay her, Leonardo falls overboard
when partying too hard and wakes up on the Oregon coast with
amnesia. Kate shows up at the hospital and, to get payback, convinces
Leonardo he is her husband and puts him to work - for the
first time in his life. At first miserable and inept, Leonardo slowly
settles in. Eventually he earns the respect of his new “family” and
co-workers. But, with Leonardo’s billionaire family hot on their trail
and the possibility of his memory returning at any moment, will
their new family last or will Leonardo finally put the clues together
and leave them for good?
DISTRIBUTOR PANTELION FILMS / LIONSGATE CAST ANNA FARIS, EUGENIO
DERBEZ, EVA LONGORIA DIRECTOR ROB GREENBERG WRITERS BOB FISHER,
ROB GREENBERG GENRE COMEDY, ROMANCE RATING PG-13 FOR SUGGES-
TIVE MATERIAL, PARTIAL NUDITY, AND SOME LANGUAGE RUNNING TIME TBD
208 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 ® APRIL 2018

ON SCREEN
RACER AND
THE JAILBIRD
MAY 4 (LIMITED)
>> Set against the background
of a brutal crime gang in Brussels,
Racer and the Jailbird tells a
tragic love story between Gigi,
a high-flying gangster, and Bibi,
a young racing driver with very
upper-class roots.
ADÈLE EXARCHOPOULOS AND MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS
DISTRIBUTOR NEON CAST
MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS, ADÈLE
EXARCHOPOULOS, ERIC DE STAER-
CKE DIRECTOR MICHAËL R. ROSKAM
WRITERS THOMAS BIDEGAIN, NOÉ
DEBRÉ, MICHAËL R. ROSKAM GENRE
CRIME, DRAMA RATING TBD RUN-
NING TIME 130 MIN.
TULLY
MAY 4 (WIDE)
>> Marlo, a mother of three including
a newborn, is gifted a night
nanny by her brother. Hesitant to
accept the extravagance at first,
Marlo comes to form a unique bond
with the thoughtful, surprising,
and sometimes challenging young
nanny named Tully.
DISTRIBUTOR FOCUS FEATURES
CAST CHARLIZE THERON, MACKENZIE
DAVIS, MARK DUPLASS DIRECTOR
JASON REITMAN WRITER DIABLO
CODY GENRE COMEDY RATING R FOR
LANGUAGE AND SOME SEXUALITY/
NUDITY RUNNING TIME 96 MIN.
PICTURED: CHARLIZE THERON
210 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 ® APRIL 2018

GABRIELLE UNION
BREAKING IN
MAY 11 (WIDE)
>> The film follows single mother Shaun Russell who, after the
sudden death of her father, takes her two children to his Malibu
mansion in order to settle his estate. But at the mansion are four
criminal convicts intent on finding the deceased’s safe and making
off with its goods.
DISTRIBUTOR UNIVERSAL CAST GABRIELLE UNION, BILLY BURKE, RICHARD
CABRAL DIRECTOR JAMES MCTEIGUE WRITER RYAN ENGLE GENRE
THRILLER RATING PG-13 FOR VIOLENCE, MENACE, BLOODY IMAGES, SEXUAL
REFERENCES, AND BRIEF STRONG LANGUAGE RUNNING TIME TBD
REVENGE
MAY 11 (LIMITED)
>> Evoking Kubrick’s Lolita, Jen, arrives at a remote
desert villa with her millionaire Adonis boy toy for a
weekend of romantic (and illicit) frivolity. Things go
south quickly when her lover’s unseemly hunting
pals show up and make inappropriate advances that
escalate into an outright assault. The men quickly try
to sweep their attack under the rug, but Jen won’t
have it and, well ... hell hath no fury ....
DISTRIBUTOR NEON CAST MATILDA ANNA INGRID LUTZ,
KEVIN JANSSENS, VINCENT COLOMBE DIRECTOR CORALIE
FARGEAT WRITER CORALIE FARGEAT GENRE ACTION,
THRILLER RATING TBD RUNNING TIME 108 MIN.
MATILDA ANNA INGRID LUTZ
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 211

ON SCREEN
THE SEAGULL
MAY 11 (LIMITED)
>> An aging actress named Irina Arkadina pays summer visits to her brother, Pjotr Nikolayevich
Sorin, and her son, Konstantin, on a country estate. On one occasion, she brings Trigorin, a
successful novelist, with her. Nina, a free and innocent girl on a neighboring estate, falls in love
with Boris Trigorin. As Trigorin lightly consumes and rejects Nina, so the actress all her life has
consumed and rejected her son, who loves Nina. The victims are destroyed while the sophisticates
continue on their way. Based on The Seagull by Anton Chekhov.
DISTRIBUTOR SONY PICTURES CLASSICS CAST SAOIRSE RONAN, ELISABETH MOSS, ANNETTE BENING
DIRECTOR MICHAEL MAYER WRITER STEPHEN KARAM GENRE DRAMA RATING PG-13 FOR SOME MATURE
THEMATIC ELEMENTS, A SCENE OF VIOLENCE, DRUG USE, AND PARTIAL NUDITY RUNNING TIME TBD
SAOIRSE RONAN AND COREY STOLL
212 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 ® APRIL 2018

DEBBY RYAN AND MELISSA MCCARTHY
LIFE OF THE PARTY
MAY 11 (WIDE)
>> When her husband suddenly dumps her, longtime dedicated housewife Deanna turns regret
into re-set by going back to college—landing in the same class and school as her daughter, who’s not
entirely sold on the idea. Plunging headlong into the campus experience, the increasingly outspoken
Deanna—now Dee Rock—embraces freedom, fun, and frat boys on her own terms, finding her true
self in a senior year no one ever expected.
DISTRIBUTOR WARNER BROS. / NEW LINE CAST MELISSA MCCARTHY, JULIE BOWEN, DEBBY RYAN DIRECTOR BEN
FALCONE WRITERS BEN FALCONE, MELISSA MCCARTHY GENRE COMEDY RATING PG-13 FOR SEXUAL MATERIAL,
DRUG CONTENT, AND PARTYING RUNNING TIME 105 MIN.
BOOK CLUB
MAY 18 (WIDE)
>> Four older women spend
their lives attending a book
club where they bond over the
typical suggested literature.
One day, they end up reading
Fifty Shades of Grey and are
turned on by the content.
Viewing it as a wake-up call,
they decide to expand their
lives and chase pleasures that
have eluded them.
DISTRIBUTOR PARAMOUNT CAST
DIANE KEATON, JANE FONDA,
CANDICE BERGEN DIRECTOR
BILL HOLDERMAN WRITERS BILL
HOLDERMAN, ERIN SIMMS GENRE
COMEDY RATING TBD RUNNING
TIME TBD
DIANE KEATON
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 213

ON SCREEN
DEADPOOL 2
MAY 18 (WIDE)
>> After surviving a near-fatal bovine attack, a
disfigured cafeteria chef (Wade Wilson) struggles
to fulfill his dream of becoming Mayberry’s hottest
bartender while also learning to cope with his lost
sense of taste. Searching to regain his spice for life,
as well as a flux capacitor, Wade must battle ninjas,
the yakuza, and a pack of sexually aggressive canines
as he journeys around the world to discover
the importance of family, friendship, and flavor—
finding a new taste for adventure and earning the
coveted coffee mug title of World’s Best Lover.
DISTRIBUTOR FOX CAST RYAN REYNOLDS, MORENA
BACCARIN, JOSH BROLIN DIRECTOR DAVID LEITCH
WRITERS RHETT REESE, PAUL WERNICK, RYAN
REYNOLDS GENRE ACTION, ADVENTURE, COMEDY
RATING TBD RUNNING TIME TBD
PICTURED: RYAN REYNOLDS
214 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 ® APRIL 2018

ON SCREEN
SAOIRSE RONAN AND SAMUEL WEST
ON CHESIL BEACH
MAY 18 (LIMITED)
>> Based on Ian McEwan’s novel. In 1962 England, a young
couple find their idyllic romance colliding with issues of sexual
freedom and societal pressure, leading to an awkward and fateful
wedding night.
DISTRIBUTOR BLEECKER STREET CAST SAOIRSE RONAN, EMILY WATSON,
SAMUEL WEST DIRECTOR DOMINIC COOKE WRITER IAN MCEWAN GENRE
DRAMA, ROMANCE RATING TBD RUNNING TIME TBD
POPE FRANCIS:
A MAN OF HIS WORD
MAY 18 (WIDE)
>> Written and directed by Wim Wenders, the film is only the
second co-production that the Vatican has made with outside
filmmakers and the first in which a pope addresses the audience
directly, discussing topics such as ecology, immigration, consumerism,
and social justice.
DISTRIBUTOR FOCUS FEATURES DIRECTOR WIM WENDERS WRITER WIM
WENDERS GENRE DOCUMENTARY RATING TBD RUNNING TIME TBD
SHOW DOGS
MAY 18 (WIDE))
>> Show Dogs is a family comedy about the unlikely pairing of a
human detective and his canine partner (voice of Chris “Ludacris”
Bridges), who has to go undercover at the world’s most exclusive
dog show to solve his biggest case yet.
DISTRIBUTOR OPEN ROAD CAST STANLEY TUCCI, NATASHA LYONNE,
ALAN CUMMING DIRECTOR RAJA GOSNELL WRITERS MAX BOTKIN, MARC
HYMAN GENRE ADVENTURE, COMEDY, FAMILY RATING PG FOR SUGGESTIVE
AND RUDE HUMOR, LANGUAGE, AND SOME ACTION RUNNING TIME TBD
216 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 ® APRIL 2018

ALDEN EHRENREICH
SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY
MAY 25 (WIDE)
>> Board the Millennium Falcon and journey to a galaxy far, far
away in Solo: A Star Wars Story, an all-new adventure with the most
beloved scoundrel in the galaxy. Through a series of daring escapades
deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han
Solo meets his mighty future co-pilot Chewbacca and encounters
the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian in a journey that will set
the course of one of the Star Wars saga’s most unlikely heroes.
DISTRIBUTOR DISNEY CAST ALDEN EHRENREICH, DONALD GLOVER, EMILIA
CLARKE DIRECTOR RON HOWARD WRITERS LAWRENCE KASDAN, JON
KASDAN GENRE ACTION, ADVENTURE, FANTASY RATING TBD RUNNING
TIME TBD
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 217

BOOKING GUIDE
TITLE RELEASE DATE STARS DIRECTOR(S) RATING GENRE SPECS
A24 646-568-6015
BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS Fri, 4/27/18 LTD. Theo James, Belçim Bilgin Per Fly R Dra/His/Thr
HEREDITARY Fri, 6/8/18 WIDE Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne Ari Aster NR Hor
UNDER THE SILVER LAKE Fri, 6/22/18 LTD. Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough David Robert Mitchell NR Thr/Cri
FIRST REFORMED Fri, 6/22/18 LTD. Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried Paul Schrader R Thr
WOMAN WALKS AHEAD Fri, 6/29/18 LTD. Jessica Chastain, Michael Greyeyes Susanna White R Dra/His
EIGHTH GRADE Fri, 7/13/18 LTD. Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton Bo Burnham R Com
HOT SUMMER NIGHTS Fri, 7/27/18 LTD. Timothée Chalamet, Maika Monroe Elijah Bynum NR Dra
A PRAYER BEFORE DAWN Fri, 8/10/18 LTD. Joe Cole
DISNEY 818-560-1000 Ask for Distribution
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR Fri, 4/27/18 WIDE Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans
Jean-Stephane
Sauvaire
Anthony Russo & Joe
Russo
R
Act/Dra
NR Act/Adv/SF 3D/IMAX
SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY Fri, 5/25/18 WIDE Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover Ron Howard NR Act/Adv/SF 3D/IMAX/Dolby Dig
THE INCREDIBLES 2 Fri, 6/15/18 WIDE Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter Brad Bird NR Ani/Adv/Fam 3D/IMAX
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP Fri, 7/6/18 WIDE Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly Peyton Reed NR Act/Adv/SF 3D/IMAX
DISNEY’S CHRISTOPHER ROBIN Fri, 8/3/18 WIDE Ewan McGregor, with Hayley Atwell Marc Forster NR Fan
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE FOUR REALMS Fri, 11/2/18 WIDE Keira Knightley, Mackenzie Foy Lasse Hallström NR Mus/Fan 3D
RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET: WRECK-IT RALPH 2 Fri, 11/21/18 WIDE John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman
Phil Johnston,
Rich Moore
MARY POPPINS RETURNS Fri, 12/25/18 WIDE Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda Rob Marshall NR Fam/Fan
CAPTAIN MARVEL Fri, 3/8/19 WIDE Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson
Anna Boden, Ryan
Fleck
NR Ani/Adv/Fam 3D/IMAX
NR Act/Adv/SF 3D/IMAX
DUMBO Fri, 3/29/19 WIDE Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton Tim Burton NR Fan/Fam 3D
PENGUINS Fri, 4/19/19 WIDE NR Doc
UNTITLED AVENGERS Fri, 5/3/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv/Fan/SF
ALADDIN Fri, 5/24/19 WIDE Will Smith, Mena Massoud Guy Ritchie NR Act/Adv/Com
TOY STORY 4 Fri, 6/21/19 WIDE NR Ani 3D/IMAX
THE LION KING Fri, 7/19/19 WIDE Donald Glover, Beyoncé Jon Favreau NR Fan
ARTEMIS FOWL Fri, 8/9/19 WIDE Ferdia Shaw, Josh Gad Kenneth Branagh NR Fan 3D
UNTITLED DISNEY LIVE ACTION 1 Fri, 10/4/19 WIDE NR
UNTITLED DISNEY LIVE ACTION 2 Fri, 11/8/19 WIDE NR
FROZEN 2 Wed, 11/27/19 WIDE NR Ani 3D
STAR WARS: EPISODE IX Fri, 12/20/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv/SF 3D/IMAX/Dolby Dig
ENTERTAINMENT STUDIOS MOTION PICTURES
REPLICAS Fri, 8/24/19 WIDE Keanu Reeves, Alice Eve Jeffrey Nachmanoff NR SF/Cri
FOCUS FEATURES 424-214-6360 3D
POPE FRANCIS: A MAN OF HIS WORD Fri, 5/18/18 WIDE Pope Francis Wim Wender NR Doc
WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? Fri, 6/8/18 WIDE Fred Rogers Morgan Neville NR Doc
CAPTIVE STATE Wed, 8/17/18 WIDE John Goodman, Ashton Sanders Rupert Wyatt NR SF
THE LITTLE STRANGER Fri, 8/31/18 WIDE Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson Lenny Abrahamson NR Hor/Thr
BOY ERASED Fri, 9/28/18 LTD Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman Joel Edgerton NR Dra
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS Fri, 11/2/18 LTD Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie Josie Rourke NR Dra/His
FOX 310-369-1000 212-556-2400
DEADPOOL 2 Fri, 5/18/18 WIDE Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin David Leitch NR Act/Adv/SF
THE DARKEST MINDS Fri, 8/3/18 WIDE Amandla Stenberg, Mandy Moore Jennifer Yuh Nelson NR SF/Thr
218 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TITLE RELEASE DATE STARS DIRECTOR(S) RATING GENRE SPECS
THE PREDATOR Fri, 9/14/18 WIDE Boyd Holbrook, Jacob Tremblay Shane Black NR Act/SF/Hor
BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE Fri, 10/5/18 WIDE Drew Goddard NR
WIDOWS Fri, 11/16/18 WIDE Michelle Rodriguez, Viola Davis Steve McQueen NR Dra
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL Fri, 12/21/18 WIDE Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz Robert Rodriguez NR Act/Adv/Rom 3D/IMAX
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY Fri, 11/2/18 WIDE Rami Malek, Ben Hardy
Bryan Singer,
Dexter Fletcher
AD ASTRA Fri, 1/11/19 WIDE Brad Pitt James Gray NR SF/Thr
DARK PHOENIX Fri, 2/14/19 WIDE Sophie Turner, Jennifer Lawrence Simon Kinberg NR Act/Adv/SF
THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING Fri, 3/1/19 WIDE Joe Cornish NR Fan/Fam/Act/Adv
BREAKTHROUGH Fri, 4/12/19 WIDE Chrissy Metz Roxann Dawson NR
SPIES IN DISGUISE Fri, 4/19/19 WIDE Will Smith, Tom Holland
Nick Bruno & Troy
Quane
THE FORCE unset James Mangold NR Dra/Cri
GAMBIT Fri, 6/7/19 WIDE Channing Tatum, Lizzy Caplan NR Act/Adv/SF
THE NEW MUTANTS Fri, 8/2/19 WIDE Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams Josh Boone NR Act/Hor/SF
DEATH ON THE NILE Fri, 11/8/19 WIDE Sir Kenneth Branagh NR Dra
UNTITLED FOX/MARVEL FILM 6 Fri, 11/15/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv/SF
FOX SEARCHLIGHT 212-556-2400
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? Fri, 10/19/18 LTD. Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant Marielle Heller R Bio/Com/Dra
LIONSGATE 310-309-8400
OVERBOARD Fri, 5/4/18 WIDE Eugenio Derbez, Anna Faris
Bob Fisher,
Rob Greenberg
UNCLE DREW Fri, 6/29/18 WIDE Kyrie Irving, Lil Rel Howery Charles Stone III NR Com
NR
NR
PG-13
Bio/Mus
Ani
Rom/Com
BLINDSPOTTING Fri, 7/27/18 LTD. Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal Carlos Lopez Estrada NR Com/Dra
THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME Fri, 8/3/18 WIDE Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon Susanna Fogel NR Com/Act
KIN Fri, 8/31/18 WIDE Myles Truitt, Jack Reynor
Jonathan Baker,
Josh Baker
A SIMPLE FAVOR Fri, 9/14/18 WIDE Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively Paul Feig NR Sus
HELLFEST
Fri, 10/12/18 WIDE
Amy Forsyth, Reign Edwards,
Bex Taylor-Klaus
NR
Act/SF
Gregory Plotkin NR Hor
HUNTER KILLER Fri, 10/26/18 WIDE Gerard Butler, Gary Oldman Donovan Marsh NR
ROBIN HOOD Fri, 11/21/18 WIDE Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx Otto Bathurst PG-13 Adv
HELLBOY Fri, 1/11/19 WIDE David Harbour, Milla Jovovich Neil Marshall NR Act
FLARSKY Fri, 2/8/19 WIDE Seth Rogen, Charlize Theron Jonathan Levine NR Com
CHAOS WALKING Fri, 3/1/19 WIDE Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley Doug Liman NR Adv/SF
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER THREE Fri, 5/17/19 WIDE Keanu Reeves NR Act
MGM
THE HUSTLE Fri, 6/29/18 LTD. Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson Chris Addison NR Com
FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY
Fri, 9/14/18 LTD.
Florence Pugh, Vince Vaughn,
Dwayne Johnson
Stephen Merchant NR Dra/Bio
OPERATION FINALE Fri, 9/21/18 WIDE Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley Chris Weitz NR Dra
CREED II
Fri, 12/21/18 LTD.
Sylvester Stallone,
Michael B. Jordan
Steven Caple Jr. NR Dra/Act
THE ADDAMS FAMILY Fri, 10/11/19 WIDE Conrad Vernon NR Ani
NEON
RACER AND THE JAILBIRD
Fri, 5/4/18 NY/LA
Matthias Schoenaerts,
Adèle Exarchopoulos
Michaël R. Roskam NR Cri/Dra
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 219

BOOKING GUIDE
TITLE RELEASE DATE STARS DIRECTOR(S) RATING GENRE SPECS
REVENGE
OPEN ROAD FILMS 310-696-7504
Fri, 5/11/18 LTD.
Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz,
Kevin Janssens
Coralie Fargeat NR Act/Thr
SHOW DOGS Fri, 5/18/18 WIDE Will Arnett, Natasha Lyonne Raja Gosnell PG Com/Fam
THE SILENCE
Fri, 5/18/18 WIDE
PLAYMOBILE Fri, 1/18/19 WIDE NR Ani
PARAMOUNT 323-956-5000
BOOK CLUB Fri, 5/18/18 WIDE NR Com
ACTION POINT Fri, 6/1/18 WIDE Johnny Knoxville, Aidan Whytock Tim Kirkby NR Com
MISSION: IMPOSSILBE - FALLOUT Fri, 7/27/18 WIDE Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson
Christopher Mc-
Quarrie
OVERLORD Fri, 10/26/18 WIDE Wyatt Russell and Jovan Adepo Julius Avery NR War/Thr
NR Act/Adv 3D/IMAX
BUMBLEBEE Wed, 12/21/18 WIDE Hailee Steinfeld, Pamela Adlon Travis Knight NR Act/Adv/SF 3D
ELI Fri, 1/4/19 WIDE Ciaran Foy NR Hor
WHAT MEN WANT Fri, 1/11/19 WIDE Taraji P. Henson, Tracy Morgan NR Com
INSTANT FAMILY Fri, 2/15/19 WIDE Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne Sean Anders NR Com
RHYTHM SECTION Fri, 2/22/19 WIDE Blake Lively Reed Morano NR Thr
AMUSEMENT PARK Fri, 3/15/19 WIDE Mila Junis, Jennifer Garner Dylan Brown NR Ani/Adv/Com
UNTITLED TYLER PERRY MOVIE Fri, 4/12/19 WIDE Tyler Perry NR
PET SEMATARY
Fri, 4/19/19 WIDE
Kevin Kolsch and
Dennis Widmyer
TRANSFORMERS SEQUEL Fri, 6/28/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv/SF
TOP GUN Fri, 7/12/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv
UNTITLED TERMINATOR PROJECT Fri, 7/26/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv/SF
DORA THE EXLPORER Fri, 8/2/19 WIDE James Bobin NR Adv
GEMINI MAN
Fri, 10/4/19 WIDE
Will Smith,
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
NR
Hor
Ang Lee NR Act/Thr
ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? Fri, 10/19/19 WIDE NR Hor
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG
SONY 212-833-8500
Fri, 11/15/19 WIDE
SUPERFLY Fri, 6/15/18 WIDE Tevor Jackson Director X NR Act
SICARIO, DAY OF THE SOLDADO Fri, 6/29/18 WIDE Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner Stefano Sollima R Dra, Cri
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3: SUMMER VACATION Fri, 7/13/18 WIDE Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez Genndy Tartakovsky NR Ani/Com/Fam 3D
THE EQUALIZER 2 Fri, 7/20/18 WIDE Denzel Washington Antoine Fuqua NR Act/Thr
SEARCHING Fri, 8/3/18 WIDE John Cho, Debra Messing Aneesh Chaganty NR Act/Thr
WHITE BOY RICK
Fri, 8/17/18 WIDE
Matthew McConaughey,
Richie Merritt
Yann Demange NR Dra/thr
SLENDER MAN Fri, 8/24/18 WIDE Joey King, Julia Goldani-Telles Sylvain White NR Hor
ALPHA Fri, 9/14/18 WIDE Kodi Smit-McPhee, Leonor Varela Albert Hughes PG-13 Act/Dra/Thr
VENOM Fri, 10/5/18 WIDE Tom Hardy Ruben Fleischer NR SF/Act
GOOSEBUMPS: HORRORLAND Fri, 10/12/18 WIDE Rob Letterman NR Com/Fam/Hor
THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB Fri, 11/9/18 WIDE Claire Foy Fede Alvarez NR Dra/Thr
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE Fri, 12/14/18 WIDE Shameik Moore
Bob Persichetti,
Peter Ramsey, Rodney
Rothman
NR
Ani/Act/Fam
HOLMES AND WATSON Fri, 12/21/18 WIDE Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly Ethan Cohen NR Act/Thr
A DOG’S WAY HOME Fri, 1/11/19 WIDE Ashley Judd, Edward James Olmos NR Dra
220 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

TITLE RELEASE DATE STARS DIRECTOR(S) RATING GENRE SPECS
THE NIGHTINGALE Fri, 1/25/19 WIDE Michelle MacLaren NR Dra
MISS BALA Fri, 1/25/19 WIDE Gina Rodriguez Catherine Hardwicke NR Act/Dra/Thr
SILVER AND BLACK Fri, 2/8/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv/SF
THE ROSIE PROJECT Fri, 5/10/19 WIDE NR Rom/Com
CHARLIE’S ANGELS Fri, 6/7/19 WIDE Elizabeth Banks NR Act/Com
MEN IN BLACK SPINOFF Fri, 6/14/19 WIDE NR SF/Act/Com
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING 2 Fri, 7/5/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv/SF/Com
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD Fri, 8/9/19 WIDE Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt Quentin Tarantino NR Dra
THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE 2 Fri, 9/20/19 WIDE NR Ani
THE CROW Fri, 10/11/19 WIDE Corin Hardy NR Act/Thr/Fan
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE Fri, 12/18/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv/Fan
SONY PICTURES CLASSICS Tom Prassis 212-833-4981
THE SEAGULL Fri, 5/11/18 NY/LA Annette Bening, Saorise Ronan Michael Mayer PG-13 Dra
BOUNDARIES Fri, 6/22/18 NY/LA Vera Farmiga, Christopher Plummer Shana Feste R Dra/Com
PUZZLE Fri, 7/13/18 NY/LA Kelly Macdonald, Irrfan Khan Marc Turtletaub NR Dra
THE WIFE Fri, 8/3/18 NY/LA Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce Björn Runge R Dra
STX ENTERTAINMENT 310-742-2300
I FEEL PRETTY Fri, 4/27/18 WIDE Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams
Abby Kohn, Marc
Silverstein
ADRIFT Fri, 6/1/18 WIDE Shailene Woodley, Sam Claflin Baltasar Kormákur NR Dra
MILE 22 Fri, 8/3/18 WIDE Mark Wahlberg, John Malkovich Peter Berg NR Act
THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS Fri, 8/17/18 WIDE Melissa McCarthy Brian Henson NR Com
PEPPERMINT Fri, 9/7/18 WIDE Jennifer Garner Pierre Morel NR Act
SECOND ACT Fri, 11/21/18 WIDE Jennifer Lopez, Milo Ventimiglia Peter Segal NR Rom/Com
UGLYDOLLS Fri, 5/10/19 WIDE Robert Rodriguez NR Ani
UNIVERSAL 818-777-1000
BREAKING IN Fri, 5/11/18 WIDE Gabrielle Union, Billy Burke James McTeigue PG-13 Thr
JURRASIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM Fri, 6/22/18 WIDE Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard J.A. Bayona NR Act/Adv 3D
THE FIRST PURGE Wed, 7/4/18 WIDE Gerard McMurray NR Hor
SKYSCRAPER Fri, 7/13/18 WIDE Dwayne Johnson
Rawson Marshall
Thurber
NR
Com
NR Act 3D
MAMMA MIA: HERE WE GO AGAIN! Fri, 7/20/18 WIDE Amanda Seyfried, Meryl Streep Ol Parker PG-13 Mus/Com
THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS Fri, 9/21/18 WIDE Jack Black, Cate Blanchett Eli Roth NR
NIGHT SCHOOL Fri, 9/28/18 WIDE Kevin Hart NR Com
FIRST MAN Fri, 10/12/18 WIDE Ryan Gosling, Kyle Chandler Damien Chazelle NR Dra/Bio
HALLOWEEN Fri, 10/19/18 WIDE Jamie Lee Curtis David Gordon Green NR Hor
DR. SEUSS’ THE GRINCH Fri, 11/9/18 WIDE Benedict Cumberbatch
Peter Candeland,
Yarrow Cheney
UNTITLED ROBERT ZEMECKIS PROJECT Wed, 11/21/18 WIDE Steve Carell Robert Zemeckis NR Dra
NR Ani/Com/Fam 3D
MORTAL ENGINES Fri, 12/14/18 WIDE Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan Christian Rivers NR SF 3D
GLASS Fri, 1/18/19 WIDE James McAvoy, Bruce Willis M. Night Shyamalan NR Thr
UNTITLED BLUMHOUSE HORROR PROJECT Fri, 2/15/19 WIDE NR Hor
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3 Fri, 1/3/19 WIDE NR Ani/Com/Fam
UNTITLED JORDAN PEELE PROJECT Fri, 3/15/19 WIDE Jordan Peele NR Thr
UNTITLED DOCTOR DOLITTLE PROJECT Fri, 4/12/19 WIDE NR Com
DETECTIVE PIKACHU Fri, 5/10/19 WIDE Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith Rob Letterman NR Adv
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 221

BOOKING GUIDE
TITLE RELEASE DATE STARS DIRECTOR(S) RATING GENRE SPECS
UNTITLED BLUMHOUSE PRODUCTIONS PROJECT Fri, 5/31/19 WIDE NR Hor
THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 2 Fri, 6/7/19 WIDE Chris Renaud NR Ani
COWBOY NINJA VIKNIG Fri, 6/28/19 WIDE Chris Pratt NR Act/Adv/Com
UNTITLED FAST & FURIOUS SPIN-OFF Fri, 7/26/19 WIDE NR Act/Adv
UNTITLED UNIVERSAL EVENT FILM Fri, 8/16/19 WIDE NR
LITTLE Fri, 9/20/19 WIDE Marsai Martin Tina Gordon NR Com
EVEREST Fri, 9/27/19 WIDE Tim Johnson NR Ani
UNTITLED BLUMHOUSE PRODUCTIONS Fri, 10/18/19 WIDE NR Hor
WILL PACKER COMEDY Fri, 11/15/19 WIDE NR Com
WARNER BROS. 818-977-1850
LIFE OF THE PARTY Fri, 5/11/18 WIDE Melissa McCarthy, Julie Bowen Ben Falcone NR Com
OCEAN’S 8 Fri, 6/8/18 WIDE Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett Gary Ross NR Cri
TAG Fri, 6/15/18 WIDE Jeremy Renner, Ed Helms Jeff Tomsic NR Com
TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES Fri, 7/27/18 WIDE Will Arnett, Kristen Bell
Aaron Horvath,
Peter Rida Michail
THE MEG Fri, 8/10/18 WIDE Jason Statham, Bingbing Fan Jon Turteltaub PG-13 Act/Hor/SF
CRAZY RICH ASIANS Fri, 8/17/18 WIDE Jon M. Chu PG-13 Com
THE NUN Fri, 9/7/18 WIDE Taissa Farmiga, Bonnie Aarons Corin Hardy NR Hor
SMALLFOOT Fri, 9/14/18 WIDE Zendaya, Channing Tatum
Glenn Ficarra, Ryan
O’Loughlin, John
Requa
NR
NR
Ani
Ani/Com/Fam
A STAR IS BORN Fri, 10/5/18 WIDE Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga Bradley Cooper NR Dra/Mus/Rom
MOWGLI Fri, 10/19/18 WIDE Rohan Chand, Andy Serkis Andy Serkis PG-13 Adv/Dra 3D
FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD Fri, 11/16/18 WIDE Eddie Redmayne, Johnny Depp David Yates NR Act/Adv/Fan
AQUAMAN Fri, 12/21/18 WIDE Jason Momoa, Amber Heard James Wan NR Act/Adv/SF 3D/IMAX
THE LEGO MOVIE SEQUEL Fri, 2/8/19 WIDE Mike Mitchell NR Ani
ISN’T IT ROMANTIC Fri, 2/14/19 WIDE Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth
Todd Strauss-
Schulson
GODZILLA: KING OF MONSTERS Fri, 3/22/19 WIDE NR SF/Act
SHAZAM! Fri, 4/5/19 WIDE Zachary Levi, Asher Angel David F. Sandberg NR Act/Adv/Fan IMAX
UNTITLED NEW LINE HORROR FILM Fri, 4/19/19 WIDE NR Hor
THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR Fri, 5/17/19 WIDE NR
MINECRAFT: THE MOVIE Fri, 5/24/19 WIDE NR
THE SIX BILLION DOLLAR MAN Fri, 5/31/19 WIDE Mark Wahlberg NR Act
SHAFT Fri, 6/14/19 WIDE NR Act
UNTITLED NEW LINE HORROR FILM Fri, 7/3/19 WIDE NR Hor
UNTITLED WB EVENT FILM Fri, 8/2/19 WIDE NR
IT SEQUEL Fri, 9/6/19 WIDE NR Hor IMAX
THE KITCHEN Fri, 9/20/19 WIDE NR Cri/Thr
THE GOLDFINCH Fri, 10/11/19 WIDE NR
WONDER WOMAN 2 Fri, 11/1/19 WIDE Gal Gadot, Kristen Bell Patty Jenkins NR Act/Adv/Fan
MARGIE CLAUS Fri, 11/15/19 WIDE NR Hol
NR
Com
222 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018

OUR SPONSORS
1 Better 153
20th Century Fox 10
American Cinema Equipment 81, 149
Arts Alliance Media 45
Atom Tickets
Back Cover
Barco Centerfold, 125
Before the Movie 17, 19
Brunswick Bowl 109
Caiz Optronics 175
Camatic Seating 73
Cardinal Sound 224
C. Cretors & Company 101
CGR Cinemas 14–15
Chef Works 93
Christie 41
CineEurope 179
Cinepolis 131
CJ-4DX 143, 161, 163
Coca-Cola 43
Colonial Theatre 224
Cy Young Industries 224
D-Box 30–31
Diamond Ticketing 111
Dolby Labs
Cover Gatefold
Dolphin Seating 181
Encore by Palliser 20–21
Enpar 143
Entertainment Supply & Technology 77
Fandango 3
GDC Tech 12–13
GenerationNext Brands 38–39
Geneva Convention 47
Gold Medal 71
Golden Link, Inc. 169
Hannover House 205
Harkness Screens 27, 29
Irwin Seating 59
LightSpeedDepth Q 224
LTI Lighting 141, 197
Magna Tech Electronics 81
Marcus Theatres 123, 137
MARS 75
Media Mation 124
Mobiliario 63
MOC Insurance 11
Modelez Intl Foodservice 49
MoviePass 97
Moving image Tech 23
MTI Autofry 139
NAC 173
NCM 79
NEC Display 33
Odells 149
Omniterm 87
Paradigm Design 185
Paramount Pictures 157
Positive Cinema 183
Proctor Companies 69
Promotion in Motion 83, 199
QSC 24–25, 55
Quest Cinema / Thermastor 111
Ready Theatre Systems 145
RealD 200–201
Retriever Software 203
Screenvision 1
Seating Concepts 85
Sensible Cinema 224
ShowSouth 177
SmartBar 167
SNS Products 57
Sonic Equipment 37
Spotlight Cinema Networks 53, 159
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 215
Stadium Savers 141
Survey Me 99
Telescopic Seating Systems
Inside Back Cover
Tivoli Lighting 65
USG 112
Ushio 61
Variety The Children’s Charity 209
Ventura Foods / Louana 145
VIP Cinema Seating 4–7, 9, 34–35
Webedia 113, 115, 117
White Castle 155
Will Rogers 171
Ymagis 67
APRIL 2018 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 223

MARKETPLACE
Passive Polarization
for 3D Digital Cinema
Fast, Bright, Reliable...
Quality you can Trust.
Over 2,000
locations worldwide.
Now Patented in the USA
www.depthq3d.com
HELP WANTED
SENIOR LEVEL CHANNEL ACCOUNT MANAGER
wanted by NEC Display Solutions for expanding
Digital Cinema group. Seeking minimum 8 years’
experience within hi-tech, cinema or Pro A/V industry
to drive strategic growth. Field-based, travel
throughout US & Canada required. Apply: www.necdisplay.com/careers
FOR SALE
PRESTIGIOUS SOUTHAMPTON NEW YORK. Four
screen multiplex on two acres in the heart of the
village. Tremendous upside potential. Email Southoldproperties@gmail.com
or Call Ken 516-642-3116.
BISTRO CHAIRS FOR SALE: (392) Red vinyl and (328)
gray vinyl seven year old Seating Concepts Palermo
style in-theatre bistro chairs to be available in early
Spring 2018. All chairs equipped with tray tables.
Some of the seats will require covers/repairs. Please
contact mhooker@aztcorporation.comor 972-428-
2943 for more information.
USED DIGITAL PROJECTORS, Five complete
booths including sound equipment. Three years
old. Contact seller at moviescope1000@gmail.com.
TWO BRAND NEW 3000 watts Christie Xenon
lamps for 35mm projectors. Contact: Atul Desai
949-291-5700.
PREFERRED SEATING COMPANY, your source for
new, used and refurbished theater and stadium
seating. Buying and selling used seating is our specialty.
Call toll-free 866-922-0226 or visit our website
www.‐preferred-seating.com.
18 SETS OF USED 35MM AUTOMATED PROJEC-
TION SYSTEM (comes with Projector, Console, Automation
Unit and Platter) comprising of 10 sets of
Christie and 8 sets of Strong 35mm system available
on ‘as is where is’ basis in Singapore. Contact seller at
engthye_lim@cathay.com.sg
APPROXIMATELY 2,000 SEATS FOR SALE. MOBI-
LIARIO high-back rockers with cup holders. Located
in Connecticut. Contact (203)758-2148.
6 PLEX EQUIPMENT PACKAGE. Six complete
booths digital projectors/sound, 72 speakers, seats,
screens/frames, concession equipment, computers,
led signs/marquees, safe/misc equipment. Serious
inquiries only. For equipment list email contact@
digitalequipmenttechnologies.com or call 801-548-
0108 or fax 801-281-0482.
HELP WANTED
TRI STATE THEATRE SUPPLY in Memphis, TN has
openings for experienced Digital Cinema Techs nationwide.
Please send your resume to include qualifications,
certifications and salary requirements to
fred@tristatetheatre.com
THEATRE MANAGEMENT POSITIONS AVAILABLE
Pacific Northwest Theatre Company. Previous management
experience required. Work weekends, evenings
and holidays. Send resume and salary history
to movietheatrejobs@gmail.com
POSITIONS AVAILABLE
The three-screen Stavros Niarchos Foundation Parkway
Film Center in Baltimore is seeking an OPERA-
TIONS DIRECTOR to oversee all aspects of running
the theater and concessions. The Film Center, a partnership
among the Maryland Film Festival, Johns
Hopkins University and MICA will open in spring of
2017 and offer a broad range of the world’s best arthouse,
independent, documentary, and classic cinema.
The full job description and application instructions
are found at mdfilmfest.com/about-the-festival/jobs.php.
224 BOXOFFICE ® CINEMACON 2018 APRIL 2018