Boxoffice - May 2019

CINEMACON RECAP
LES CINÉMAS PATHÉ
GAUMONT CEO JÉRÔME
SEYDOUX
to further develop before going to market. It’s admittedly
more of a curiosity than a product at this
stage—but it wasn’t that long ago when moving
chairs with air and water effects were regarded the
same way. Today, immersive seating has received
the backing of nearly every major exhibitor around
the world.
All this technology means little if there’s no
content to exploit it. Warner Bros. announced
at CinemaCon that it would be providing titles
especially coded for enhanced-seating cinemas
through 2019. At a small Las Vegas reception that
same week, leading Chinese distributor Huaxia
announced it would be entering into an alliance
with cinema tech providers Christie and GDC to
promote the production of advance-format films
that can help push adoption of high frame rate
(HFR) and high dynamic range (HDR) titles.
Addressing that reception was filmmaker Ang
Lee, who called his experience making Life of Pi
in cutting-edge 3-D technology “the beginning of
something completely new in cinema.” Paramount
will be releasing Lee’s Gemini Man later this year, a
3-D title shot at 120 frames per second. Lee joins
the alliance as its first mentor filmmaker in a program
dedicated to making these technologies more
available to the next generation of directors.
These premium formats are intended to
complement cinemas’ existing investment in 3-D
PHOTO: RYAN MILLER / CAPTURE IMAGING FOR CINEMACON
technology and provide moviegoers additional
options to customize their moviegoing experience.
Exhibitors’ ultimate hope is that these innovations
can help drive both attendance and frequency; a 5
percent bump in domestic admissions suggests the
strategy might be working.
Premium amenities aren’t the only innovation
behind last year’s admissions growth. The rapid
rise—and subsequent fall—of MoviePass in 2018
helped clarify two important things for the exhibition
community: 1) Consumers are interested
in cinema subscription services, and 2) cinema
subscriptions are only as good as their business
model. A new crop of companies emerged in the
wake of MoviePass and Sinemia to offer their
own third-party and white-label subscription
solutions, most notably digital ticketing start-up
Atom Tickets and ticketing solutions provider
Influx Worldwide.
Jérôme Seydoux, chairman and CEO of Les
Cinémas Pathé Gaumont, admitted in a roundtable
discussion that his circuit has benefited strongly
from its own subscription scheme. According to
the executive, subscriptions account for approximately
25 percent of Pathé’s admissions in the
Netherlands and 20 percent in France. The allure
of subscription isn’t limited to achieving a higher
frequency of visits from patrons, but of collecting—and
controlling—the consumer data that
comes along with those increased visits. While
majors like AMC and Cinemark have already
launched their own in-house services in the United
States, many other circuits are taking a wait-andsee
attitude as to which, if any, solution to adopt.
Will Palmer, CEO of cinema analytics firm
Movio, has evangelized the importance of data collection
for years and says he believes the industry
is headed in the right direction. “There’s been a
massive movement towards data collection,” Palmer
told Boxoffice. “There aren’t many significant
cinema chains today that are not actively collecting
data through a loyalty program, online ticket sales
or some other medium.”
What cinemas do with that data, however, can
make all the difference in the world. Implementing
a strategy to best utilize consumer data is quickly
becoming a challenge for exhibitors. Pathé’s Seydoux
highlighted the issue in his panel, “We know
a lot about our customers; what we have to learn
next is how to use all the data we have.”
Exhibitors aren’t the only industry players
58 MAY 2019