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CHARITY SPOTLIGHT 

This year's Giants 

of Exhibition list is 

a reflection of the 

resilience and 

commitment to 

innovation of our 

entire industry. 

THE 

COMPANY 

WEBEDIA GROUP 

02 Q1 2021 

02-03_AD-Boxoffice.indd 2 12/02/2021 12:22

A difficult year for our entire industry was also one of 

unprecedented innovation and creativity as movie theaters found 

new ways to engage with their audiences. From mobile ordering, 

to take out concessions, and even at-home viewing experiences 

like private watch parties--exhibitors have been at the heart of 

defining new ways to redefine the moviegoing experience. This 

year's Giants of Exhibition list is a reflection of the resilience and 

commitment to innovation of our entire industry. We are honored 

to count many of these circuits as partners and clients of The 

Boxoffice Company. 

We thank you for your trust and leadership during this difficult 

time. Your insights and collaborations have helped us reinvent our 

focus to solutions that can help exhibitors get through the 

pandemic and bounce back faster once their cinemas reopen. Our 

latest projects include contactless digital ticketing and concessions; 

customer awareness through SEO, emailing, and social media; and 

co-watching streaming services. 

We look forward to getting out of this crisis together stronger, 

offering a better customer experience than ever before. 

Stan Ruszkowski 

President, The Boxoffice Company 


03 

02-03_AD-Boxoffice.indd 3 12/02/2021 12:22



04_AD-TSS.indd 4 12/02/2021 12:22


CONTENTS 

48 

The 10 Most Important 

Moments of 2020 

Our Look Back at the Top 10 Pivotal 

Moments of a Historic Year 

18 

Giants of Exhibition 

This Year's Giants of Exhibition 

Ranking Stands as a Testament 

to the Industry's Flexibility and 

Resolve 

34 

New Beginnings 

As Theatrical Exclusivity 

Windows Shrink, Cinema 

Owners Look at the Potential 

Impact of Streaming on Their 

Bottom Line 

64 

Going Big 

What Role Will Premium Large 

Format Play in Cinema’s Global 

Recovery? 

76 

Experience over Everything 

For U.K.’s We Are Parable, 

Screenings Are More Than 

Just Movies 


05 

05-06_Contents.indd 5 15/02/2021 15:08

CONTENTS 

INDUSTRY 

THEATER 

12 

16 

18 

34 

40 

48 

NATO 

Farewell to 2020: A Year of Pandemic, 

Pain, Patience, and Perseverance 

Charity Spotlight 

A Recap of Industry-Wide Charity 

Initiatives 

Giants of Exhibition 

This Year's Giants of Exhibition 

Ranking Stands as a Testament to the 

Industry's Flexibility and Resolve 

New Beginnings 

As Theatrical Exclusivity Windows 

Shrink, Cinema Owners Look at the 

Potential Impact of Streaming on 

Their Bottom Line 

A Century in Exhibition 

The 1990s: Globalization and 

Cyberspace 

The 10 Most Important Moments 

for Domestic Exhibition of 2020 

Our Look Back at the Top 10 Pivotal 

Moments of a Historic Year 

64 

70 

ON SCREEN 

76 

81 

Going Big 

What Role Will Premium Large 

Format Play in Cinema’s Global 

Recovery? 

Premium Seating Pros 

Fred and Denise Jacobs Keep It All 

in the Family at Telescopic Seating 

Systems 

Experience Over Everything 

For U.K.’s We Are Parable, Screenings 

Are More Than Just Movies 

Booking Guide 

“With the odds stacked 

against them, exhibitors 

have been strikingly resilient, 

despite the mounting woes 

of 2020.” p. 18 


05-06_Contents.indd 6 15/02/2021 15:08

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07 

07_AD-Enpar.indd 7 12/02/2021 12:23

BOXOFFICE MEDIA 

CEO 

Julien Marcel 

SVP Content Strategy 

Daniel Loría 

Creative Direction 

Chris Vickers & Craig Scott 

at She Was Only 

EVP Chief Administrative Officer 

Susan Rich 

VP Advertising 

Susan Uhrlass 

BOXOFFICE PRO 

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR 

Daniel Loría 

DEPUTY EDITOR 

Rebecca Pahle 

EXECUTIVE EDITOR 

Kevin Lally 

MANAGING EDITOR 

Laura Silver 

CHIEF ANALYST 

Shawn Robbins 

ANALYSTS 

Chris Eggertsen 

Jesse Rifkin 

DATABASE 

Diogo Hausen 

CONTRIBUTORS 

Patrick Corcoran 

Larry Etter 

Vassiliki Malouchou 

Radesh Palakurthi, PhD, MBA 

ADVERTISING 

Susan Uhrlass 

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susan@boxoffice.com 

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CORPORATE 

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corporate@boxoffice.com 

Boxoffice Pro has served as the 

official publication of the National 

Association of Theatre Owners 

(NATO) since 2007. As part of this 

partnership, Boxoffice Pro is proud to 

feature exclusive columns from NATO 

while retaining full editorial freedom 

throughout its pages. As such, the 

views expressed in Boxoffice Pro 

reflect neither a stance nor an 

endorsement from the National 

Association of Theatre Owners. 

Due to Covid-19, Boxoffice Pro 

will be adjusting its publishing 

schedule. For any further 

questions or updates regarding 

your subscription, please do not 

hesitate to contact our customer 

service department at boxoffice@ 

cambeywest.com. 

Boxoffice Pro (ISSN 0006-8527), Volume 157, Number 1, First Quarter 2021. Boxoffice Pro is published 

by Box Office Media LLC, 63 Copps Hill Road, Ridgefield, CT USA 06877. corporate@boxoffice.com. 

www.boxoffice.com. Basic annual subscription rate is $75.00. Periodicals postage paid at Beverly 

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Box Office Pro is a registered trademark of Box Office Media LLC. 


08-09_Executive-Letter.indd 8 12/02/2021 12:23

Executive Letter 

LIGHT AT THE 

END OF THE 

TUNNEL 

Like the most terrifying of horror 

sequels, the beginning of 2021 has 

already delivered enough jump scares and 

plot twists to keep us on our toes after a 

harrowing 2020. A slow and disorganized 

vaccine rollout has pushed the majority 

of 2021’s studio slate to the second half 

of the year. Even positive headlines, like 

those announcing the introduction of 

new vaccines, are tempered by news of 

emerging Covid-19 variants that could 

further prolong the global health crisis. 

There is no denying that the industry 

still has a grim number of months ahead 

before the recovery can begin in earnest. 

But we can already see the light at the end 

of the tunnel. Despite a handful of notable 

exceptions, the vast majority of major 

studio titles have been rescheduled for the 

second half of the year instead of skipping 

theaters altogether for a streaming debut. 

Even the most controversial actions 

from distribution, Universal’s shortened 

window and Warner Bros.’ day-and-date 

release plans, the former a structural 

change and the latter (according to the 

studio) a temporary measure, have helped 

bring new titles to cinemas during the 

toughest months since reopening. The 

vaccination drive might be progressing 

slowly, but it’s moving forward—every day 

there are millions more around the world 

regaining the confidence to leave their 

homes after an extended lockdown. In the 

Asia Pacific market, where virus rates have 

been significantly better controlled than 

in the West, cinemas have already shown 

signs of the long-awaited recovery. 

The unexpected length of the 

pandemic has also forced modifications 

to our own publishing schedule at 

Boxoffice Pro. Our print edition was 

on hiatus from May through July of 

last year, coinciding with nationwide 

cinema closures. We returned in August 

and finished 2020 with two additional 

issues, in October and December, closing 

the year with a total of seven issues. In 

2021, our schedule will be modified with 

the printing of four quarterly issues and 

an additional commemorative issue in 

December celebrating our centennial. 

For all subscribers affected by these 

changes, we will automatically extend 

your subscription for the number of issues 

missed. If you have specific questions 

regarding how these changes in our 

schedule affect your subscription, please 

reach out to our circulation department at 

circulation@boxoffice.com. 

In the meantime, please enjoy this first 

issue of the year—and be sure to check our 

daily updates at BoxofficePro.com, as well 

as digital initiatives like our weekly show, 

the Boxoffice Podcast, and our monthly 

Boxoffice LIVE Sessions webinar series. 

Daniel Loria 

SVP Content Strategy & Editorial Director 

Boxoffice Pro 

There is no denying that 

the industry still has a grim 

number of months ahead 

before the recovery can 

begin in earnest. 

BOXOFFICE 

PRO 2021 

PUBLICATION 

SCHEDULE 

First Quarter: Giants of 

Exhibition 

February 2021 

Second Quarter: CineEurope 

June 2021 

Third Quarter: CinemaCon 

August 2021 

Fourth Quarter: ShowEast 

October 2021 

Commemorative Centennial 

Edition: 

December 2021 

For questions regarding your 

subscription, please contact 

circulation@boxoffice.com. 


09 

08-09_Executive-Letter.indd 9 15/02/2021 15:43


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NATO 12 | Charity Spotlight 16 | Giants of Exhibition 18 | A Century in Exhibition 40 

INDUSTRY 

“With the odds stacked against them, exhibitors have been 

strikingly resilient, despite the mounting woes of 2020.” 

Giants of Exhibition, p. 18 


11 

11_INDUSTRY-Opener.indd 11 12/02/2021 12:24

Industry NATO 

FAREWELL 

TO 2020 

A Year of Pandemic, Pain, 

Patience, and Perseverance 

BY PATRICK CORCORAN 

The pandemic has meant 

an ever-changing mixture 

of crisis response, managing 

expectations, and drawing 

on deep wells of experience 

and relationships developed 

over years. 

Bits of news had been trickling out 

of China about a new and contagious 

respiratory virus at the very end of 2019. 

On January 23, 2020, China announced 

it was closing all 70,000 cinema screens 

as part of its efforts to control the virus. 

On January 31, NATO distributed an 

updated and revised “Preparing for a Flu 

Pandemic,” originally prepared in 2009, as 

well as its “Crisis Management Handbook.” 

That same day, travel restrictions for non- 

U.S. citizens from China went into effect. 

Preparations for the 10th-annual 

edition of CinemaCon, scheduled for 

March 30–April 2, continued, with a 

wary eye on worsening case numbers 

of the novel coronavirus, now known 

as Covid-19. On March 11, the World 

Health Organization (WHO) declared the 

outbreak a pandemic, and NATO canceled 

CinemaCon that same day. NATO, unlike 

many organizations and event planners, 

had pandemic insurance, meaning that 

the organization would incur no losses as 

a result of canceling the show. 

Within a week, movie theaters across 

the country began to close, as audiences 

began staying away from public places 

and the industry anticipated statemandated 

closures. Most observers at the 

time anticipated no longer than a six-weekto 

three-month-long period of closures. As 

we all know now, they were wrong. 

For NATO and its members, the 

pandemic has meant an ever-changing 

mixture of crisis response, managing 

expectations, and drawing on deep wells 

of experience and relationships developed 

over years. 

NATO’s Executive Board began 

meeting weekly two days after the WHO’s 

declaration and before U.S. movie theaters 

began to shut down. First priorities were 

to understand the extent of the crisis, 

state and local mandates, and how to plan 

as an industry for what was expected to 

be a not-far-off reopening. The theater 

industry would make it known that we 

would behave as responsible citizens, that 

the health and safety of our patrons and 

employees were our highest concerns, and 

that we would be back. 

We called upon industry allies, and 

they called on us. Christopher Nolan 

asked what he could do. Within three days 

of U.S. theaters’ closing, we helped him 

place his piece, “Movie theaters are a vital 

part of American social life. They will 

need our help.” in The Washington Post. 

NATO contributed $1 million to a seed 

fund for the Will Rogers Motion Picture 

Pioneers to provide assistance for movie 

theater employees affected by the closure 

of movie theaters due to the pandemic. 

NATO lobbying was in full swing as 

discussions began in Washington over a 

potential aid package for businesses and 

individuals affected by the pandemic. NATO 

coordinated with its regional affiliates on 

outreach to local health officials on how to 

sensibly and safely reopen. 

We began weekly State of the Industry 

webinars on April 23 to keep members 

informed and to learn their concerns. We 

are preparing for our 35th such webinar 

as this article is written. There have also 

been stand-alone webinars on various 

provisions of federal aid packages, as well 

as operational, marketing, and other issues. 

There has been constant 

communication with the studios, large 

and small, on the complexities and 

challenges of the pandemic release 

calendar. While there have been 

disappointments in movies going straight 

to the home, or in hybrid home and 

theatrical “pandemic release windows,” 

the vast majority of major titles have 

chosen to delay their release in theaters, 

rather than abandon it. 

The first stimulus package, known as 

the CARES Act, provided direct aid to 

individuals and enhanced and extended 

unemployment relief. The CARES Act 

also provided two new loan programs: 

the Paycheck Protection Program, which 

granted partially forgivable loans to small 

businesses, and the Main Street Lending 

Program, which made loans available to 

companies with up to 15,000 employees 

and $5 billion in revenue. The CARES Act 

also provided tax relief to businesses of 

all sizes, through payroll tax deferral; the 

long-sought QIP fix, which corrected an 

error that extended capital improvement 

expense depreciation to 39 years and 

allowed businesses to amend those items 

in 2018 and 2019 returns; and the net 

operating loss carryback provision, which 

allowed businesses and individuals to use 

net operating losses against taxes incurred 

up to five years before, yielding hundreds 

of millions in tax refunds for exhibitors. 

As the late spring and summer 

stumbled forward in fits and starts of 

reopenings and closures, it became clear 

that individual company health and safety 

protocols were not effective at convincing 


12-14_NATO.indd 12 15/02/2021 15:10

local officials to consider allowing 

theaters to reopen or to lift restrictions 

on capacity, nor were consumers clear on 

just what movie theaters were doing to 

help keep them safe. Both problems were 

also making studios wary about releasing 

movies with large box office potential. A 

national movie theater health and safety 

protocol was necessary. 

NATO staff and member volunteers 

worked throughout the summer with 

epidemiologists and state boards of 

health to develop voluntary health 

and safety protocols. Unanimously 

adopted by NATO’s Executive Board, 

CinemaSafe was rolled out to members 

and non-members alike, with a national 

press conference and website and 

multimillion-dollar marketing effort in 

time for the release of Chris Nolan’s Tenet, 

in late August. In-theater graphics and 

a consumer-friendly video were made 

available to the historic group of 420 

companies, 3,150 locations, and more 

than 33,000 screens nationwide. Health 

officials in multiple countries adopted 

CinemaSafe as their standard for movie 

theater reopening protocols. 

CinemaSafe became a useful tool 

in convincing health officials across 

the country of the seriousness with 

which movie theater owners took their 

responsibilities and formed a framework 

for their reopening policies. 

This was not effective in all 

jurisdictions, as NATO and NATO of New 

Jersey sued the state of New Jersey in U.S. 

District Court to allow movie theaters to 

reopen at the same time the state allowed 

religious institutions and other similarly 

situated businesses and institutions to 

open. NATO did not prevail in that suit, 

but the pressure undoubtedly prompted 

New Jersey to reopen movie theaters 

weeks before they had originally planned 

and accelerated the opening of theaters in 

adjacent New York State. 

But the pandemic will have its way. A 

second wave of the virus hit the U.S. in late 

summer, and Europe, where the response 

had been far more promising and theaters 

had been allowed to open broadly, in 

the fall. Throughout this time, NATO 

continued to lobby on a badly stalled 

second pandemic stimulus program. 

As it became clear leading up to 

elections in November that negotiations 

on a new relief package were serious, 

NATO engaged its grassroots and industry 

The grants, much discussed 

in yet more NATO webinars, 

provide a lifeline that will 

help small and midsize 

theater companies make 

it until vaccines are widely 

available and business can 

return to normal. 

NATO MEMBERS 

Members 

Feb 2020 

Jan 2021 

Screens 

Feb 2020 


Locations 

Feb 2020 


676 

66,014 

7,425 

1,018 

70,222 

8,320 

allies to lobby key administration and 

congressional leaders to include movie 

theaters in their plans. NATO, through 

its relationship with a new association— 

NIVA (National Independent Venue 

Association)—lobbied for the Save Our 

Stages Act. Initially intended for live music 

venues, SOS had multiple Congressional 

sponsors and a real path to enactment. 

NIVA agreed that movie theaters should be 

included, if we could convince the sponsors 

to agree to add $5 billion to the initial $10 

billion allocated for the provision. NATO 

succeeded in this, and through intense 

lobbying, including thousands of contacts 

from NATO members, SOS, now known 

as the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, 

passed Congress and was signed into law 

by the president. 

The grants, much discussed in yet 

more NATO webinars, provide a lifeline 

that will help small and midsize theater 

companies make it until vaccines are 

widely available and business can return 

to normal. 

Meanwhile, working off a template 

developed by NATO of Wisconsin and 

Upper Michigan to establish statebased 

grants to movie theater operators, 

multiple states have provided more money 

to movie theaters across the country. 

And in an extra bonus, a long-term 

NATO policy goal and lobbying focus, the 

maintenance of the ASCAP/BMI music 

licensing consent decree, was left in place 

by the outgoing head of the Department of 

Justice’s Antitrust Division. The decision 

means that U.S. movie theater companies 

will not have to pay hundreds of millions 

annually to license the music that is in 

movies they play, unlike our counterparts 

around the world. 

In these difficult times, NATO has 

also experienced something unusual for 

an industry in crisis. We have grown. In 

February 2020, NATO had 676 members 

(590 domestic, 3 from U.S. territories, 

21 from Canada, and 62 international), 

comprising 66,014 screens at 7,425 

locations worldwide; 34,171 screens at 

3,389 locations domestic. 

In January 2021, NATO membership 

totaled 1,018 companies with 70,222 

screens at 8,320 locations worldwide; 904 

of those members were domestic, with 

35,854 screens at 3,828 locations. 

Through careful financial 

management and the huge success of 

CinemaCon over a decade, NATO had 


13 


Industry NATO 

accumulated a reserve fund that was 

quite large for an organization of its size. 

As a benefit to existing members and to 

attract new members, NATO announced, 

pre-pandemic, that it would suspend 

dues payments for fiscal year 2020–21. 

A pretty nice deal, but the deal has not 

been the driver. The vast bulk of new 

membership has come as a result of the 

pandemic and NATO’s response to it. 

And NATO’s response to the pandemic 

and all its attendant issues was not 

possible without that robust financial 

reserve, without the active engagement 

of a large, diverse, unified membership. 

Theater owners’ stories, told in hundreds 

of media interviews month after month, 

making personal their plight and their 

value to their communities, and told to 

congressional staff in districts across 

the country, helped make those various 

relief measures a possibility. Members 

embracing the CinemaSafe protocols and 

members working with the NATO regional 

associations got theaters reopened, lifted 

onerous restrictions, and got grants to 

keep going. 

NATO’s response to the 

pandemic and all its 

attendant issues was not 

possible without that robust 

financial reserve, without the 

active engagement of a large, 

diverse, unified membership. 

We’re not done. We will continue to 

lobby the Small Business Administration 

to make sure the Shuttered Venue 

Operators Grants are administered 

fairly; we will continue to lobby 

states and localities to allow theaters 

to reopen when it is safe to do so, 

without discriminatory provisions or 

unreasonable capacity caps; we will 

continue to lobby the studios to provide 

movie product and to return to prepandemic 

windowing models when the 

business returns to normal. 

We will continue to do this and more 

for you. But we can’t do it without you. 

Patrick Corcoran is the Vice President & 

Chief Communications Officer at NATO 

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15_AD-GoldMedal-SpacesBetween.indd 15 12/02/2021 12:25

Industry CHARITY SPOTLIGHT 

CHARITY 

SPOTLIGHT 

Variety of St. Louis 

Studio Movie Grill 

Variety – the Children’s Charity 

Cineplex Supports Food Banks 

Canada 

This past holiday season, Cineplex was 

proud to support Food Banks Canada. 

By donating $1 from every order of food 

delivery and select films on the Cineplex 

Store for the entire month of December, 

Cineplex helped provide over 80,000 

meals to families in need. Cineplex 

employees also contributed by raising over 

$1,700 internally for the cause. 

Studio Movie Grill Celebrates the 

Season 

A little thing like a pandemic was not 

stopping two Studio Movie Grill locations 

from spreading Christmas cheer. Cory 

Brazelton, general manager at the chain’s 

Seminole, Florida, location, spearheaded 

efforts to participate in the Seminole 

Lake Rotary Club’s Red Sled Initiative, 

filling a sled with gifts for foster children. 

And while SMG’s Rocklin, California, 

location didn’t have the 50,000 guests 

they had in December 2019 to help their 

annual toy drive along, manager Elaina 

Newport and her team didn’t stop until 

over 150 children had items from their 

wish lists. For their toy drive, SMG’s 

Rocklin location worked with Foster 

Hope Sacramento and Child Advocates 

of Placer County, the latter of which also 

received a $1,000 donation, thanks to 

Newport’s tireless efforts. 

Variety – the Children’s Charity 

Thank you to everyone who helped 

Variety – the Children’s Charity raise 

more than $21,000 during its Virtual 

Walk, Run & Roll. Your donations helped 

provide vital equipment, services, and 

experiences to kids throughout the United 

States who live with special needs or are 

disadvantaged. 

Variety of St. Louis 

Variety of St. Louis enlisted two designers 

to devise and 3-D-print a handlebar 

adaptation specifically created for eightyear-old 

Maeve Boatman. Maeve has 

split hand and split foot syndrome, a rare 

physical disability occurring in about 1 in 

90,000 births that leaves her hands with 

just one gripping finger that she’s able to 

use to hold on to traditional handlebars. 

Covid-19 made Maeve’s need for a better 

bike apparent. With schools out and 


16-17_Charity-Spotlight.indd 16 12/02/2021 12:25

A MESSAGE FROM THE 

WILL ROGERS MOTION 

PICTURE PIONEERS 

FOUNDATION 

social distancing measures in place, her 

family started to take longer bike rides to 

get out of their home, but Maeve’s hands 

would quickly cramp with the strain of 

trying to grip the handlebars. The final 

product looks much like an ordinary bike, 

except that one of the handlebars has a 

3-D-printed cylinder that Maeve can wear 

like a glove and that clips in and out of 

the handlebar for a more stable grip. Now 

Maeve can enjoy longer rides with her 

parents and five siblings, ages seven to 20. 

Upcoming Events 

Variety of the Desert 

3rd Annual RumChata Variety Golf 

Scramble Presented by Trader Joe’s 

Indian Wells, Calif. 

March 29 

Join Variety of the Desert for a round of 

golf at the Indian Wells Country Club 

while supporting children across the 

Coachella Valley—it’s a real hole-inone! 

Variety will also make a special 

presentation to honor LPGA’s and the 

Desert’s own Susan Maxwell Brening, 

winner of four majors. Maxwell Brening 

will also be inducted into the World Golf 

Hall of Fame alongside Tiger Woods 

in 2022. Find more information at 

varietyofthedesert.org/our-events/. 

Variety of Wisconsin 

Spring Golf Classic 

Pewaukee, Wis. 

May 24 

Join Variety of Wisconsin at the Western 

Lakes Golf Club on Monday, May 24, 

for the Spring Golf Classic. Find more 

information at varietywi.org/events/. 

It takes an industry. We have made that 

statement numerous times since March 

2020, so much so that it has become a 

daily affirmation for many. The way the 

movie industry is pulling together during this 

unprecedented time is a vivid reminder that 

for the Pioneers Assistance Fund (PAF), our role 

in the industry is clear: help industry workers 

make it through this challenging time. 

The Pioneers Assistance Fund has been a 

helping hand to industry workers dealing with 

accident, illness, or injury for over 80 years. 

2020 challenged us to our maximum ability, 

providing financial stipends and counsel for 

some 10,000 people—a 1,580 percent increase 

from 2018, which had been our record year. 

From April 2020 to date, we have distributed 

$3.8 million, a 400 percent increase over 2018. 

The overwhelming majority of financial 

assistance disbursed by PAF went to ticket 

takers, concession workers, projectionists, 

and ushers who work, or formerly worked, 

at movie theaters across the country—from 

small, family-owned theaters to the major 

chains. The Phase One Emergency Grant 

program distributed roughly $2 million in $300 

stipends to furloughed theater workers early 

on in the pandemic to help with their basic 

household needs until they started receiving 

unemployment benefits. 

The Phase Two Emergency Grant distributed 

another $1 million based on need, with 

grants ranging from $300 to as much as 

$2,600. Ninety percent of grant recipients are 

assistant managers or general managers who 

have been on reduced pay (30%–50%) since 

April. Many of them have remained furloughed 

without pay or have been terminated. 

The impact the Pioneers Assistance Fund 

achieved during one of the most difficult times 

in our history would not have been possible 

without the support of the following donors: 

• Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 

• Amazon Studios 

• Cinema Service Company 

• Cinemark Theatres 

• Deluxe Digital 

• Dolby 

• Google 

• James and Theodore Pedas Family 

Foundation 

• James J. Cotter Foundation 

• Kernel Season's 

• Lionsgate 

• Malco Theatres 

• Mihalich Charitable Foundation 

• Motion Picture Club 

• National Association of Theatre Owners 

• NATO of California/Nevada 

• Paramount Pictures 

• Popcornopolis 

• Reel Blend 

• Sony Pictures 

• Universal Pictures 

The PAF is chaired by Chris Aronson, 

Paramount Pictures, president of distribution. 

“We are helping more people than we ever 

thought possible, and we’re not finished yet,” 

says Aronson. “The pandemic has challenged 

the Pioneers Assistance Fund, but we are 

committed to providing financial assistance 

to our dynamic workers and their families 

who have endured enormous hardship. We 

are grateful for the generous contributions 

and incredible support from our industry that 

helped us establish the emergency funds. 

Our reserves were set aside for a rainy day 

and, in this unprecedented time of need, the 

leadership at Will Rogers did not hesitate 

to utilize the funds. While it is our hope that 

the new federal relief program will address 

the looming housing crisis, the Pioneers 

Assistance Fund will continue to help as many 

industry workers as it can to keep a roof over 

their heads.” 

The thank you notes from industry workers 

have been overwhelming and moving. Please 

take a moment to read just a few of the 

examples of how the Pioneers Assistance Fund 

is making a difference now more than ever. 

“You have no idea what this grant has done 

for me and my family. I am living on reduced 

pay, and my prescriptions are so expensive. 

From the bottom of my heart and from 

everyone in my family, thank you so much for 

the help.” 

“I just wanted to say thank you very much for 

your help and blessing. ... This money will help 

pay my rent for a month. ... Hopefully once the 

theater reopens, I will try to get a fundraiser 

going to help out this wonderful organization.” 

“I want to thank you so much for the 

generous grant. It is buying groceries this 

week. We are so fortunate to have an 

organization that helps those in the movie 

theater business. There are very few such 

organizations out there.” 


17 

16-17_Charity-Spotlight.indd 17 12/02/2021 12:25

industry GIANTS OF EXHIBITION 


18-33_Giants-Of-Exhibition.indd 18 12/02/2021 12:26

GIANTS OF 

EXHIBITION 

The Top 50 Domestic Circuits 

of 2020 

After five consecutive years of 

more than $11 billion in revenue at 

the domestic box office, the exhibition 

market came to a violent halt in March 

2020. The biggest crisis in the industry’s 

history wasn’t brought about by familiar 

threats like home entertainment or 

piracy; instead, it was a global pandemic, 

of a scale not seen in at least a century, 

that plunged exhibition into the sort of 

existential crisis it had managed to avoid 

for generations. A promising start to 

the year sputtered to an alarming $2.25 

billion in ticket sales, an 80 percent 

year-over-year drop. 

While there remains to be a full 

accounting of the long-term damage 

caused by the pandemic’s economic 

disruption, changes to the traditional 

theatrical exclusivity model have already 

been felt at circuits across the nation. 

Yet despite the myriad challenges that 

exhibition faced in 2020, the industry 

rallied to persevere. Concession stands 

opened at theaters that were otherwise 

closed nationwide, pop-up drive-ins 

helped keep moviegoing alive during 

the summer months, and gift card drives 

provided a small respite for cinemas 

waiting to reopen. 

The reopening effort was fractured 

and presented its own challenges. After 

closing in March, major markets like 

New York City and Los Angeles never 

came back online, while other locations 

went through a series of openings and 

lockdowns with little to no warning for 

the business community. Those cinemas 

that could open were limited by a scarcity 

of new releases from major studios. 

With the odds stacked against them, 

exhibitors have been strikingly resilient, 

despite the mounting woes of 2020. This 

year’s Giants of Exhibition ranking stands 

as a testament to the industry’s flexibility 

and resolve. 

Presented By 


19 



SPONSOR 

PROFILE 

1 

AMC THEATERS 

Location: Leawood, KS 

Founded: 1920 

Screens: 7,800 ↘ -3% 

Locations: 600 ↘ -5% 

What was supposed to be a festive year 

for AMC Theatres quickly devolved into 

a nightmare scenario. The circuit entered 

2020 ready to celebrate its centennial 

anniversary but was forced to focus 

its energies on making it through the 

biggest economic crisis in its history. 

The circuit was among the first major 

circuits in the United States to cease 

operations, announcing on March 16 that 

it would voluntarily close all its domestic 

locations for six to 12 weeks. It would 

take considerably longer than expected 

for AMC to get back to business, waiting 

until August 20—five months after 

closing its doors—to resume operations 

at 100 of its 600 locations. 

The closures didn’t mean AMC was 

quiet during the spring and early summer. 

In April, the circuit was the first to speak 

out against Universal’s decision to adopt 

a dramatically shortened theatrical 

exclusivity window, vowing not to 

book any of the studio’s titles under the 

policy. By July, it reversed its stance 

and welcomed back Universal titles by 

agreeing to a deal that would give the 

circuit a portion of the films’ digital 

streaming revenues. In June, the circuit’s 

decision to suggest, though not require, 

the wearing of face masks for patrons 

returning to their theaters helped spark 

a national debate about mask-wearing 

policies at businesses reopening during 

the pandemic. The circuit reversed 

course a week after announcing its 

original policy, citing public demand, and 

required face masks at all their locations 

once they reopened. In both instances, 

AMC effectively used its position as the 

country’s and world’s leading cinema 

chain to influence the reopening effort. 

It was also one of the first circuits in the 

nation to announce a comprehensive 

series of health and safety protocols 

ahead of reopening, AMC Safe & Clean, 

developed in collaboration with current 

and former faculty members of Harvard 

University’s School of Public Health and 

in partnership with The Clorox Company. 

AMC weathered significant stress in 

instituting policies and changes that 

will reverberate throughout the industry 

for years—decisions that weren’t easily 

made but were necessary to ensure its 

survival. The circuit enters 2021 as the 

only cinema chain in North America with 

over 7,000 screens. 

Kevin Shepela 

EVP, Chief Commercial Officer 

Fandango 

It’s been an incredibly challenging 

time for everyone involved in 

theatrical moviegoing. Today, we 

honor the Giants of Exhibition, 

who, we know, with their leadership 

and unwavering dedication to the 

industry, will help us go back to 

the movies bigger and better than 

before. At Fandango, we remain 

steadfast as your partner in helping 

film fans return to your theaters at 

the right time, with exuberance, 

confidence, and peace of mind. 

We are proud of the work we’ve 

done together over the past year 

to offer moviegoers new health and 

safety content and product features 

on Fandango, including social 

distance seat maps, occupancy 

guides, search filtering for reopened 

theaters and access to more than 

100 health and safety protocols, 

provided by theaters. With 

Fandango’s mobile ticketing, we’re 

also able to help reduce the number 

of contact points for moviegoers 

and cinema employees at the box 

office and throughout the theater. 

When new movies, event screenings, 

and showtimes are scheduled at 

your theaters, we will make sure 

millions of moviegoers nationwide 

are the first to know, so they can 

grab tickets for their favorite seats in 

your auditoriums. 

Our industry is resilient. There’s 

nothing like the thrill of watching 

a film on the big screen with an 

appreciative audience in a safe 

environment. We are optimistic 

about the future as we work together 

to ensure that the moviegoing 

experience will always be the first 

choice in entertainment, with fans 

more excited than ever to return to 

your wonderful theaters. We can’t 

wait to get back to the movies! 




21 



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SPONSOR 

PROFILE 

Wim Buyens 

Chief Executive Officer 

Cinionic 

The past year has challenged our 

industry like never before, forcing us 

to confront old questions at a time 

when tomorrow, and even today, 

can seem uncertain. But it has also 

reminded us that we are strongest 

when we come together, connecting 

over digital platforms to share 

stories, encouragement, and ideas 

about what business might look like 

when life returns to the new normal. 

Cinionic is proud to work closely 

with you, our partners in exhibition, 

to shape the next generation of 

moviegoing with future-ready 

solutions and services. We salute 

our friends across exhibition. As a 

community, we are seeking new, 

innovative solutions to support our 

recovery while keeping the legacy 

of exceptional cinema alive. It takes 

giants to forge a shared path to a 

brighter future 

2 

REGAL CINEMAS 

Location: Knoxville, TN 

Founded: 1989 

Screens: 6,989 ↘ -3% 


The final days of 2019 gave the exhibition 

industry a sneak peek at what was 

likely to be the sector’s biggest story 

of 2020: the acquisition of Cineplex by 

Regal’s corporate parent, Cineworld. The 

resulting deal was to be the culmination 

of a major international expansion by 

the U.K.-based Cineworld, only two years 

removed from its acquisition of Regal, 

and would supplant AMC as the largest 

circuit in North America and the world. By 

combining Regal and Cineplex under the 

same ownership, Cineworld would have 

essentially created a mega-circuit in North 

America, with nearly 10,000 screens. The 

pandemic derailed those plans, however, 

leaving Regal and Cineplex as separate 

entities in this year’s ranking. The 

companies are instead sorting out the 

broken pieces of the failed merger in court. 

Cineworld’s corporate office in the 

U.K. led Regal’s strategy throughout the 

economic turbulence of 2020. The circuit 

was one of several to voice its concerns 

regarding Universal’s unilateral decision 

to dramatically shorten the theatrical 

exclusivity window for its titles; unlike 

its competitors, however, it has yet to 

announce a subsequent deal with the 

studio—reflecting its corporate parent’s 

staunch positioning on windows. The 

circuit has remained similarly noncommittal 

in reacting to Warner Bros.’ 

controversial day-and-date release 

strategy for 2021. 

Regal suspended operations in mid- 

March along with other top U.S. circuits, 

reopening select locations on August 21 in 

anticipation of what was expected to be a 

consistent studio slate. Tenet’s performance 

at the box office did little to bolster studio 

confidence in the newly reopened market, 

however, prompting a slew of additional 

schedule changes from top distributors and 

leaving exhibitors with few programming 

options. The last straw for Cineworld came 

in the fall with the sudden rescheduling 

of the James Bond title No Time to Die, 

prompting the circuit to suspend operations 

in the U.K. and U.S. until further notice—or 

at least until it could depend on a consistent 

slate of films. The majority of Regal screens 

in the United States remained closed 

through the end of the year. 

Once it reopens, the circuit will be 

taking a case-by-case approach to which 

titles—and under what terms—it programs 

in the nearly 7,000 screens it operates in 

North America. 


23 



SPONSOR 

PROFILE 

Stan Ruszkowski 

President 

The Boxoffice Company 

3 

CINEMARK 

Location: Plano, TX 

Founded: 1984 

Screens: 4.517 ↘ -2% 


Cinemark entered 2020 from a period 

of growth, with 2019 marking its fifth 

consecutive year of record revenues. 

Covid-19, obviously, sent the chain in a 

different direction. On March 18, Cinemark 

closed all its U.S. locations in response 

to the pandemic. June 19 saw the chain 

embark on the first part of its phased 

reopening, which began with five theaters 

in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Initial plans 

to have all of Cinemark’s U.S. theaters open 

by July 10 were pushed back as infection 

rates continued to rise and the theatrical 

debut of major tentpoles continued to 

be delayed. The main part of Cinemark’s 

summer reopening effort took place 

throughout August, leading up to the 

September 3 release of Warner Bros.’ Tenet. 

With 2020 offering up an extremely 

limited slate of studio tentpoles, starting 

in July Cinemark turned to private 

cinema rentals, driving customer 

awareness and interest with giveaways 

tied to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and 

Christmas. By December 9, more than 1.3 

million moviegoers had participated in 

one of Cinemark’s 100,000 Private Watch 

Parties. Private cinema rentals accounted 

for 17 percent of Cinemark’s Q3 2020 

U.S. admissions revenues. In Cinemark’s 

Q3 2020 investor call, CEO Mark Zoradi 

underscored the importance of private 

rentals as a way for customers who had 

not been to the movies since the start of 

the pandemic to experience Cinemark’s 

enhanced safety and cleanliness 

procedures firsthand. 

November saw Cinemark join AMC in 

signing its own agreement with Universal 

to distribute the studio’s films under a 

shortened theatrical exclusivity window. 

Under Cinemark’s “Dynamic Window” 

arrangement, Universal and Focus titles 

will have five weekends (31 days) of 

theatrical exclusivity if they open to $50M, 

or three weekends (17 days) if they do not; 

certain films will receive a five-weekend 

window regardless. 

Cinemark’s deal with Universal 

extends over multiple years, echoing 

Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi’s belief 

that the shifting nature of theatrical 

exclusivity will continue past the 

cessation of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

A difficult year for our entire industry 

was also one of unprecedented 

innovation and creativity, as 

movie theaters found new ways 

to engage with their audiences. 

From mobile ordering to take-out 

concessions, and even at-home 

viewing experiences and private 

watch parties—exhibitors have been 

at the heart of finding new ways to 

redefine the moviegoing experience. 

This year’s Giants of Exhibition list 

is a reflection of the resilience and 

commitment to innovation of our 

entire industry. We are honored 

to count many of these circuits as 

partners and clients of The Boxoffice 

Company. 

We thank you for your trust and 

leadership during this difficult time. 

Your insights and collaborations 

have helped us reinvent our 

focus on solutions that can help 

exhibitors get through the pandemic 

and bounce back faster once 

their cinemas reopen. Our latest 

projects include contactless digital 

ticketing and concessions; customer 

awareness through SEO, emailing, 

and social media; and co-watching 

streaming services. 

We look forward to getting out of 

this crisis together stronger, offering 

a better customer experience than 

ever before. 



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25 



jun 

ce21-24 

ce2021 

convention & tradeshow 

CCIB/BARCELONA 

CELEBRATING 

30 

YEARS OF 

CINEEUROPE 

CENTRE CONVENCIONS INTERNACIONAL BARCELONA (CCIB) 

CINEEUROPE.NET 

OFFICIAL CORPORATE SPONSOR 


CE21_PRINTAD_BOXOFFICE.indd 18-33_Giants-Of-Exhibition.indd 26 1 

12/02/2021 2/3/21 5:58 12:26 

PM


SPONSOR 

PROFILE 

Film Expo Group 

On behalf of the entire Film 

Expo Group family, we’d like to 

congratulate this year’s Giants of 

Exhibition. Like everyone else in 

this industry, Film Expo Group has 

weathered the challenges of the 

Covid-19 pandemic by innovating 

while maintaining our commitment 

as champions of the moviegoing 

experience. Despite not hosting 

any of our traditional conventions 

in person in 2020, we found it 

important to keep in touch with 

the exhibition and distribution 

communities by launching digital 

editions of CineEurope, ShowEast, 

and CineAsia. Their success would 

not have been possible without your 

continued support. 

In 2021 we are looking forward to 

seeing everyone once again in 

person. We hope that you will be 

able to join us in Barcelona, June 

21–24, for CineEurope. We will be 

back stateside, October 18–21 in 

Miami, for ShowEast. And last but 

not least, we are excited to finish the 

year in Bangkok, December 6–9, for 

CineAsia. We remain confident that 

together we will all be able to come 

back better and stronger. 

4 

CINEPLEX 

Location: Toronto, ON (Canada) 

Founded: 2003 

Screens: 1,657 ↘ -2% 


Canada’s leading exhibition circuit found 

itself in the midst of several transitions 

in what proved to be an eventful 2020. Its 

acquisition by U.K.-based Cineworld, first 

announced in December 2019, was expected 

to be finalized in the second quarter of the 

year. Instead, the circuit resorted to legal 

action once Cineworld abandoned its plans 

to acquire the chain in June. 

With the matter headed to court, 

Cineplex turned its focus to the reopening 

effort—effectively becoming the first major 

circuit in North America to reopen its doors. 

Cineplex welcomed moviegoers back to 

their screens in late June, followed by a 

progressive nationwide reopening over 

the rest of the summer. As with cinemas 

elsewhere, the chain had to contend with 

new rounds of localized closures amid a 

surge of cases throughout the year. 

Cineplex joined AMC and Cinemark 

in accepting Universal’s proposal to 

shorten the theatrical exclusivity window, 

signing on to the agreement in late 

November. The dynamic window gives the 

Canadian chain at least three weekends 

of exclusivity for any Universal or Focus 

Features title before it becomes available 

on home entertainment platforms. 

Strategically, the decision could help 

Cineplex further expand its own videoon-demand 

channel, the Cineplex Store. 

The circuit reported positive growth for 

its home entertainment division in 2020, 

reaching 1.8 million registered users by 

the end of Q3—a 41 percent increase over 

the previous year. 

By not relying solely on the studio 

release slate through its diversified 

entertainment offerings, Cineplex stands 

apart from other major North American 

circuits in the recovery effort, as vaccines 

begin to make their way across Canada. 

More than a cinema circuit, Cineplex 

has come to be known as an out-of-home 

entertainment destination for Canadians, 

which has helped launch Scene, one of 

the most successful loyalty programs in 

the country. Redemptions from its loyalty 

program already include discounts on 

digital rentals and concessions items, free 

standard and premium-format movie 

tickets, and vouchers eligible at the 

circuit’s entertainment centers, the Rec 

Room and Playdium. 


27 

5:58 PM 



5 

MARCUS 

THEATRES 

Location: Milwaukee, WI 

Founded: 1935 

Screens: 1,097 ↘ -1% 


Like many of its exhibition 

colleagues in North America, 

Marcus Theatres shut down 

in March and embarked on a 

phased reopening throughout 

the summer months, in the 

interim investing in drive-ins 

as a way to keep the (projector) 

lights on even as indoor 

theaters had to remain closed. 

The Marcus Corporation, 

parent company of Marcus 

Theatres, was affected in 

unique ways by the Covid-19 

pandemic compared with 

other North American 

exhibitors. For one thing, 

The Marcus Corporation is 

involved in both theaters and 

hospitality, two industries 

particularly hard hit by the 

pandemic and its shutdowns. 

On the more positive side, the 

company's real estate holdings 

include most of its cinema 

locations, a distinct silver 

lining in a year when chains 

nationwide were engaged 

in difficult conversations 

with landlords. “We believe 

this remains a significant 

advantage for us relative 

to our peers, as it keeps our 

monthly fixed lease payments 

low and provides significant 

underlying credit support for 

our balance sheet,” said Greg 

Marcus, president and CEO of 

The Marcus Corporation, in 

the company's Q3 earnings call. 

Though Q3 2020 attendance 

was (understandably) down 

considerably from the same 

period in 2019, the average 

concession spend per person 

increased by 28 percent. In 

a call with investors, CFO 

Douglas Neis attributed 

this growth to shortened 

lines and an emphasis on 

advance online and mobile 

ordering. "While the first 

reason will eventually go 

away as attendance increases, 

the second reason has the 

potential to be long-lasting, 

which is very encouraging.” 

6 

HARKINS 

THEATRES 

Location: Scottsdale, AZ 

Founded: 1933 

Screens: 501 ↘ -3% 


“There is no question that this 

has been the most difficult 

time in my 50-plus years in 

the business,” said Harkins 

Theatres owner Dan Harkins, 

in a statement announcing 

the circuit’s initial wave of 

reopenings in August. The 

Scottsdale, Arizona–based 

circuit weathered a difficult 

year by instituting initiatives 

like gift cards, takeout 

popcorn, and a strategically 

priced private rental program 

to mitigate the economic 

downturn. Like other circuits, 

it even opened its doors to 

digital delivery apps like 

DoorDash and GrubHub to 

deliver movie theater popcorn 

to audiences at home to bolster 

concessions sales. 

In its open theaters, the 

circuit extended discounts 

on select concessions and 

implemented $5 admission 

nights tied to classic film 

series. Themed programming 

strands like Tuesday Classic 

Movie Night, Girlfriends Movie 

Night, Hispanic Heritage 

Film Fest, and October 

Fright Nights helped recreate 

part of the communal 

moviegoing experience 

throughout the year, while 

still adhering to reducedcapacity 

guidelines. That 

targeted outreach through 

programming included the 

circuit’s Open Caption Films 

series, a pair of evenings each 

month dedicated to playing 

accessible-format new releases 

for hard-of-hearing audiences. 

Harkins enters 2021 as one of 

only five U.S. circuits with over 

500 screens, a notable screen 

count considering its presence 

throughout four Western states 

as opposed to its competitors’ 

national footprint. 



7 

B&B THEATRES 

Location: Kansas City, MO 

Founded: 1924 

Screens: 429 ↗ 3% 

Locations: 49 ↗ 2% 

Family-owned B&B Theatres 

was among the first major 

circuits to close all its 

locations in mid-March, 

just as the full scope of the 

pandemic began to come into 

view. Days after announcing 

the closures, film director 

Christopher Nolan cited the 

chain by name in a call for 

support of the beleaguered 

industry, published in The 

Washington Post. 

While the majority of their 

locations remained closed 

throughout the summer, B&B 

was able to get back in touch 

with moviegoers at their three 

drive-in screens—a crucial 

lifeline for the circuit during 

the pandemic. While drive-in 

revenue didn’t fully replace 

income lost at its closed 

theaters, it helped contribute 

to other efforts like takeout 

concessions and gift card sales 

during the most difficult period 

of the pandemic. 

Once its theaters reopened, 

B&B expanded inclusive initiatives 

like its nationwide Sensory 

Backpack program. The 

program, developed with the 

guidance of Variety – the Children’s 

Charity of Kansas City, 

makes backpacks containing 

sensory aids like weighted lappads, 

noise-cancelling headsets, 

dark glasses, and fidget 

cubes, available to borrow at 

the box office at no cost. 

Even with all the disruption 

caused by the pandemic, 

B&B was nevertheless able 

to expand part of its circuit 

in 2020. The circuit unveiled 

its newest location, a totally 

renovated 14-screen multiplex 

in Jackson, Mississippi, in 

September, just days before the 

U.S. release of Tenet. 

8 

MALCO THEATRES 

Location: Memphis, TN 

Founded: 1915 

Screens: 363 

Locations: 35 

Like other chains in North 

America and overseas, Malco 

Theatres responded to the 

challenges of the coronavirus 

pandemic—specifically a 

lack of content from major 

Hollywood studios—by offering 

private screenings for small 

groups of up to 20 people, 

branded under the name Malco 

Select. The circuit introduced 

Malco Select in early October, 

following a phased reopening 

throughout the summer. Said 

Malco president and COO David 

Tashie at the time: “While we 

have always offered packages 

for mid-sized and large groups, 

this new program is geared 

toward guests who want to be 

able to select a movie and have 

their own private screening for 

themselves, family, and friends.” 

During the early spring 

months of the pandemic, 

Malco stayed connected with 

its customers with trivia 

nights, bulk popcorn sales, 

and revamped social media 

initiatives; it also welcomed 

moviegoers to its Summer 

Drive-In Theater starting in 

mid-May. The four-screen 

drive-in theater, located in 

Malco’s home city of Memphis, 

remained in operation 

through the autumn and 

winter and into early 2021. 

Moving into the latter part of 

2020, November saw Malco add 

a video game component to its 

Malco Select program, inviting 

those interested in a private 

auditorium rental to bring their 

own console and games. 

Reflecting the challenges 

theaters in general have faced 

throughout 2020, the final 

month of the year saw Malco 

close its indoor Memphisarea 

theaters in accordance 

with local health guidelines; 

Malco locations that remain 

open ended the year with 

a combination of recent 

releases, older classics, and 

specialized programming. 


29 



9 

CMX CINEMAS 

Location: Miami, FL 

Founded: 2016 

Screens: 341 ↘ -17% 


CMX Cinemas, the U.S. arm 

of Mexico’s Cinemex, quickly 

established itself as one of the 

top movie theater chains in 

the North American market 

after opening its first location 

in 2017. A combination of new 

sites and major acquisitions 

thrust the company into a 

market leadership position, 

one it expected to capitalize on 

in 2020. A planned takeover of 

Texas-based dine-in chain Star 

Cinema Grill was announced 

in mid-March, unfortunately 

timed just as the Covid-19 

pandemic started to storm its 

way through the country. The 

deal was abandoned within 

a matter of weeks as CMX 

became the first major circuit 

in North America to file for 

Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to 

the pandemic. Rather than 

grow in size with its latest 

acquisition, the pandemic 

threw both circuits into court 

to resolve the failed merger. 

As CMX emerged from 

bankruptcy in September, 

the circuit quickly moved to 

restructure its existing sites 

and business operations in 

order to make it through the 

pandemic. It has also been one 

of the most vocal entities in 

calling for a renewed business 

model amid studios’ rush 

to shorten or eliminate the 

theatrical exclusivity window. 

In an open letter published in 

Boxoffice Pro in December, 

the circuit’s CFO expressed 

a flexibility in programming 

titles with early streaming 

debuts, as long as the 

percentage of theatrical ticket 

sales going back to studios 

is decreased to account for 

the resulting loss of revenue 

from admissions. Despite the 

bankruptcy, CMX plans to get 

back to growth in 2021 with the 

addition of three new locations. 

10 

LANDMARK 

CINEMAS OF 

CANADA 

Location: Calgary, AL (Canada) 

Founded: 1965 

Screens: 334 ↗ 4% 


Celebrating its 55th birthday 

in 2020, Landmark Cinemas 

of Canada is owned by multinational 

exhibitor Kinepolis, 

which owns MJR Digital 

Cinemas in the United States. 

Canada’s second-largest theater 

chain, it operates in six of 

the country’s 10 provinces. 

After announcing its temporary 

chain-wide closure on 

March 16, the chain kicked off 

a phased reopening on June 

26 with the reopening of six 

locations in Alberta. Additional 

theaters reopened their 

doors throughout the summer, 

though moving into the early 

weeks of 2021 all but a handful 

of its theaters were temporarily 

reclosed due to rising Covid 

numbers. 

Through its reopening 

and closings, Landmark 

Cinemas of Canada 

maintained connections 

with its moviegoers by way 

of a robust social media 

presence, as well as private 

auditorium rentals (offering 

both new and classic films for 

up to 20 guests) and takeout 

concessions sales through 

Uber Eats, SkiptheDishes, 

and DoorDash. Starting in 

July it opened applications 

for the Landmark Cinemas 

Community Advertising 

Grant, offering digital preshow 

advertising to small and 

medium-sized businesses 

within 15 kilometers of one 

of its locations. Late 2020 

saw the completion of a new 

location in the Tamarack 

neighborhood of Edmonton, 

Alberta, boasting its branded 

Laser Ultra technology. 



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31 



11-50 

11 

16 

21 

26 

NATIONAL AMUSEMENTS 

(SHOWCASE CINEMAS) 

Location: Norwood, MA 

Founded: 1936 

Screens: 321 ↘ 11% 

Locations: 24 ↘ 11% 

SOUTHERN THEATRES 

Location: New Orleans, LA 

Founded: 2003 

Screens: 266 

Locations: 18 

READING CINEMAS USA 

Location: Culver City, CA 

Founded: 2000 

Screens: 238 

Locations: 24 

UEC THEATRES 

Location: Maple Grove, MN 

Founded: 1993 

Screens: 191 

Locations: 22 

12 

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE 

CINEMA 

Location: Austin, TX 

Founded: 1997 

Screens: 317 

Locations: 41 

17 

(Tie) 

GEORGIA THEATRE 

COMPANY 

Location: St Simons Island, GA 

Founded: 1992 

Screens: 263 

Locations: 25 

22 

PACIFIC THEATRES/ 

ARCLIGHT CINEMAS 

Location: Los Angeles, CA 

Founded: 1993 

Screens: 234 

Locations: 17 

27 

GALAXY THEATRES 

Location: Sherman Oaks, CA 

Founded: 1998 

Screens: 186 ↗ 9% 


13 

STUDIO MOVIE GRILL 

Location: Dallas, TX 

Founded: 2000 

Screens: 294 ↘ -17% 


17 

(Tie) 

NCG (NEIGHBORHOOD 

CINEMAS GROUP) 

Location: Owosso, MI 

Founded: 1983 

Screens: 263 

Locations: 27 

23 

REGENCY THEATRES 

Location: Agoura Hills, CA 

Founded: 1996 

Screens: 206 ↗ 5% 

Locations: 28 

28 

LARRY H. MILLER 

THEATRES (MEGAPLEX 

THEATRES) 

Location: Sandy, UT 

Founded: 1999 

Screens: 176 ↘ -3% 


14 

CARIBBEAN CINEMAS 

Location: San Juan, PR 

Founded: 1968 

Screens: 281 ↘ -5% 


19 

PREMIERE CINEMA CORP. 

Location: Big Spring, TX 

Founded: 1993 

Screens: 259 ↘ -14% 


24 

LANDMARK THEATRES 

Location: West Hollywood, CA 

Founded: 1974 

Screens: 201 ↘ -20% 


29 

MJR DIGITAL CINEMAS 

Location: Bloomfield Hills, MI 

Founded: 1980 

Screens: 164 

Locations: 10 

15 

CINÉPOLIS LUXURY 

CINEMAS 

Location: Dallas, TX 

Founded: 2011 

Screens: 276 ↗ 5% 

Locations: 28 

20 

EMAGINE 

ENTERTAINMENT 

Location: Troy, MI 

Founded: 1997 

Screens: 255 

Locations: 21 

25 

GQT MOVIES 

Location: Grand Rapids, MI 

Founded: 2020 

Screens: 200 ↘ -29% 


30 

MARQUEE CINEMAS 

Location: Beckley, WV 

Founded: 1979 

Screens: 163 ↘ -7% 




31 

36 

41 

46 

BOW TIE CINEMAS 

Location: Ridgefield, CT 

Founded: 1900 

Screens: 156 ↘ -29% 


CELEBRATION CINEMA 

BY STUDIO C 

Location: Grand Rapids, MI 

Founded: 1944 

Screens: 145 ↘ -11% 


R/C THEATRES 

Location: Reisterstown, MD 

Founded: 1932 

Screens: 119 

Locations: 13 

MITCHELL THEATRES 

Location: Elkhart, KS 

Founded: 2005 

Screens: 107 

Locations: 15 

32 

(Tie) 

CINEMA WEST 

Location: Petaluma, CA 

Founded: 1984 

Screens: 154 ↘ -8% 


37 

(Tie) 

EPIC THEATRES 

Location: Deltona, FL 

Founded: 2003 

Screens: 144 

Locations: 12 

42 

(Tie) 

IPIC THEATERS 

Location: Boca Raton, FL 

Founded: 2007 

Screens: 116 ↘ -1% 

Locations: 15 

47 

SOUTHEAST CINEMA 

ENTERTAINMENT 

Location: Charlotte, NC 

Founded: 2003 

Screens: 104 

Locations: 9 

32 

(Tie) 

CINEMA ENTERTAINMENT 

CORP. 

Location: Waite Park, MN 

Founded: 1964 

Screens: 154 ↘ -4% 


37 

(Tie) 

PHOENIX THEATRES 

Location: Knoxville, TN 

Founded: 2001 

Screens: 144 ↗ 24% 


42 

(Tie) 

ALLEN THEATRES 

Location: Las Cruces, NM 

Founded: 1912 

Screens: 116 

Locations: 17 

48 

(Tie) 

R.L. FRIDLEY THEATRES 

Location: Des Moines, IA 

Founded: 1972 

Screens: 98 


34 

COMING ATTRACTIONS 

THEATRES 

Location: Ashland, OR 

Founded: 1985 

Screens: 153 

Locations: 18 

39 

CINÉMAS GUZZO 

Location: Terrebonne, QC 

Founded: 2003 

Screens: 133 

Locations: 9 

44 

SANTIKOS 

ENTERTAINMENT 

Location: San Antonio, TX 

Founded: 1948 

Screens: 115 

Locations: 9 

48 

(Tie) 

KERASOTES SHOWPLACE 

THEATRES 

Location: Chicago, IL 

Founded: 1909 

Screens: 98 

Locations: 7 

35 

FLAGSHIP PREMIUM 

CINEMAS 

Location: Cambridge, MA 

Founded: 1995 

Screens: 149 ↘ -7% 


40 

CLASSIC CINEMAS 

Location: Downers Grove, IL 

Founded: 1978 

Screens: 131 ↗ 8% 

Locations: 15 

45 

XSCAPE THEATRES 

Location: New Albany, IN 

Founded: 2013 

Screens: 108 

Locations: 8 

50 

PICTURE SHOW 

ENTERTAINMENT 

Location: Colorado Springs, CO 

Founded: 2003 

Screens: 96 

Locations: 11 


33 


Industry BIG DATA 

NEW 

BEGINNINGS 

As Theatrical Exclusivity Windows Shrink, 

Cinema Owners Look at the Potential Impact of 

Streaming on Their Bottom Line 

BY LARRY ETTER & RADESH PALAKURTHI, PHD, MBA 


34-38_Streaming-Vs-theatrical.indd 34 12/02/2021 12:57

Does streaming finally spell the end 

of cinema? It is the question many 

theatrical exhibition professionals are 

asking themselves with greater urgency, 

thanks to a newly shortened theatrical 

exclusivity window and studios rushing 

to get their films on home entertainment 

platforms as quickly as possible during the 

coronavirus pandemic. 

Driven by these concerns, a team from 

the University of Memphis Kemmons 

Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort 

Management, under the leadership 

of Radesh Palakurthi, PhD, MBA, and 

commissioned by Larry Etter, director of 

education for the National Association 

of Concessionaires, compiled research 

on audiences’ streaming and moviegoing 

preferences and habits to determine 

the potential impact of streaming on 

moviegoing. 

Palakurthi enlisted the support of 

Qualtrics, a globally recognized survey 

facilitator, to assist in the study. The 

survey was performed in 2019, before 

Covid-19 shutdowns, allowing for a 

fair comparison between streaming 

and moviegoing. The survey offered 35 

statements comparing streaming services 

with movie theaters on a 5-point Likert 

Scale (1 = strongly agree to 5 = strongly 

disagree). A factor analysis was used 

to reduce the 35 statements to core 

constructs for in-depth study. There were 

420 usable responses (as determined by 

Qualtrics). 

The demographics of the qualified 

respondents were as follows: 

Respondent Demographics 

Age distribution of respondents (% of total) 

Respondents by race (% of total) 

25-34 White 

35-44 

Black 

18-24 

Asian 

45-54 

Other 

55-64 

0 

10 

20 

30 

40 

50 

60 

70 

65+ 

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 

Annual household income of respondents (% of total) 

Education of respondents (% of total) 

$150K+ 

$90-$150K 

$60-$90K 

$30-$60K 

Graduate or 

professional 

degree 

Bachelor’s 

degree in 

college 

Some college 

or associate 

degree 

High school 

or less 

-$30K 

0 

5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 

35 

0 

5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 

35 


35 



The first inquiry concerned the use 

of streaming services. All were asked 

their satisfaction level with their service 

provider and whether they owned a 

home theater. This was a key question, 

since high satisfaction with streaming 

was necessary to qualify for the survey. 

There were at least 10 streaming services 

identified, with an added category of 

“other” to include all possibilities. The top 

four services were Amazon Prime, Hulu, 

Netflix, and YouTube TV. 

The survey also included a “length of 

time” category using a particular service. 

The responses were graded on “Extremely 

Satisfied” to “Extremely Dissatisfied” with 

their streaming services: The answers 

among the 1- to 3-year users were nearly 

equal for all services at 59 percent to 70 

percent extremely satisfied. 

The statistics showed no difference 

in satisfaction between genders, as the 

satisfaction average for streaming services 

was 1.55 (more than very satisfied) and for 

home theater viewing was 2.15 (nearly very 

satisfied) on the 1–5 Likert Scale. There 

were likewise no statistical differences 

based on age or household income. In 

summary, all respondents, regardless 

of demographics, maintained similar 

opinions: roughly a score of 1.5 (more than 

very satisfied) with the service they were 

using, and a score of approximately 2.1 

(nearly very satisfied) with their home 

theater experience. It is important to note 

that the “average Likert score” equals 

Does streaming finally spell 

the end of cinema? It is the 

question many theatrical 

exhibition professionals 

are asking themselves with 

greater urgency. 

Competitive Landscape 

Uniqueness Factor 

Agree 

Disagree 

Agree 

Disagree 

0 5 0 

5 

I have more options to watch the movies I 

want at a movie theater compared to what is 

available through digital streaming services 

The amenities offered at movie theaters 

2.9 positively add to the experience compared 

2.3 

to using digital streaming services 

The overall price-value offered by movie 

theaters is better than any digital streaming 

service can provide 

2.9 

The ambience at a movie theater makes 

it a more thrilling experience compared to 

digitally streaming movies at home 

2.4 

Watching a movie at a theater is more 

convenient than digitally streaming a movie 

3.0 

The immersive movie experience presented 

at theaters cannot be duplicated through 

digital streaming at a home theater 

2.4 

Movie theater technologies are advancing 

at a faster pace than digital movie 

streaming technologies 

2.7 

The best home theater technologies cannot 

compete with what the movie theaters 

have to offer 

2.6 

Easy access to a variety of movie theater 

types makes them more competitive than 

digital streaming services 

2.5 

The benefits of watching a movie at a 

theater clearly outweigh digitally streaming 

a movie 

2.6 

Movie theater bundling packages are a lot 

more attractive than what are offered by 

digital streaming services 

2.7 

The movie theater industry is a lot more 

innovative than the digital streaming 

industry 

2.7 

Thematically connected concession stands 

and commercials at movie theaters make 

the movies more enjoyable compared to 

digital streaming 

2.6 

Nothing that the digital streaming services 

offer can be a replacement for watching a 

movie at a theater 

2.5 

I enjoy the buzz around a release of a new 

movie at a theater, something I cannot get 

when I digitally stream movies 

2.4 

Movie technologies such as 3-D and 

Imax formats make theaters a lot more 

compelling compared to digital streaming 

2.3 



2.5 and was labeled as merely “satisfied.” 

Hence, it appears that most streamers 

are very or more than satisfied with their 

service provider, and the average person 

interviewed is very satisfied (2.1) with 

their home theater use. Remember, the 

closer to the number 1, the more strongly 

individuals agree with the statement. 

One must remember that with over 

400 respondents, an average of 2.5 is a 

moderately positive score. 

A factor analysis was then applied to 

the results. Thirty-five agree-disagree 

statements were grouped into 5 factors, 

or categories: Uniqueness, Competitive 

Landscape, Motivational, Presentation 

Superiority, Coexistence. The factors 

were then classified under the type of 

agree-disagree statements reflected in 

the questionnaire. All of these questions 

were biased toward movie theaters being a 

better experience than streaming. (While 

all the charts and graphs with a complete 

listing are available, the following is 

a representation of the critical data 

discovered.) 

The final analysis was conducted to 

determine the Belief Factors people have 

regarding movie theaters. The 11 agreedisagree 

statements were reduced to two 

factors for movie theaters: They possess a 

positive image, and they provide a highquality 

resource for the user. The factors 

were labeled by the research team as 

Positive Image Factor and High-Quality 

Resources Factor. 

Motivational Factors 

Presentation Superiority (prejudiced in favor of cinemas) 

Agree 

Disagree 

Agree 

Disagree 

0 5 0 

5 

Movie theaters are only for seeing new 

movies that I am very excited about; the rest 

can be digitally streamed 

Digital streaming cannot match the audio 

2.3 and video quality offered at a movie 

2.3 

theater 

Movie theaters are for blockbusters, while 

digital streaming is for whatever grabs my 

attention at that specific time 

2.5 

Movie studios offer fresh content, while 

digital streaming services exist to display 

the leftovers 

2.4 

Watching a movie at a theater is regarded 

as a special event activity, while streaming 

a movie is regarded as watching a movie 

studio’s dumped content 

2.6 

Studio movies are made for best 

experience at a movie theater and not for 

small-screen digital streaming 

2.3 

Watching movies in a movie theater honors 

cinematography, while digital streaming on 

small screens does not 

2.5 

Certain movies should only be seen on 

the big screen at a movie theater for a 

fuller experience 

2.3 

Movie theaters offer fewer but higherquality 

movie choices compared to a 

variety of basic choices available through 


2.4 

Movie theaters offer popular releases, while 

digital streaming services offer movies that 

are rarely found in mainstream theaters 

2.5 

Movie theaters provide a better social 

experience with friends and family 

compared to digital streaming at home 

2.5 

Movie theater screenings are the pinnacles 

of cinematic achievement, while digital 

streaming is not 

2.6 


37 



An analogy could be made 

to the challenges faced by 

radio after the invention of 

the television. Radio did not 

go out of business but found 

a way to coexist with TV. 

The study’s synopsis is succinct: 

Streaming is here to stay; it has 

advantages that cannot be matched by 

brick-and-mortar cinemas. In the same 

way, cinemas have assets that cannot 

be matched by mobile devices or even 

home theaters. An analogy could be 

made to the challenges faced by radio 

after the invention of the television. 

Radio did not go out of business but 

found a way to coexist with TV. Radio 

became the mobile media option, while 

TV became the preferred in-home 

medium. Both of these entertainment 

media were challenges to the cinema 

industry. What did the cinema industry 

do? Continue to employ its strengths: 

state-of-the-art audio and visual 

delivery, a place to congregate and 

share the emotional experience of the 

film, premium production values, and 

authentic storytelling and performances. 

Let’s not forget that back in the day, airconditioning 

was a huge lift for cinemas; 

cool comfort was an amenity many 

could not enjoy at home. Reclining seats, 

gourmet foods, and alcoholic beverages 

are the new “comfort” features cinemas 

can offer to outclass the streaming sector. 

Theaters will have to reinvent themselves 

while still offering the highest quality film 

product, not because of streaming, but 

because human nature requires it. 

Larry Etter is Director of Education at the 

National Association of Concessionaires. 

Radesh Palakurthi, PhD, MBA, is Dean 

at University of Memphis Kemmons 

Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort 

Management, IHG Chair of Excellence 

Coexistance Factor 

Belief Factor 1: Positive Image Factor 

Agree 

Disagree 

Agree 

Disagree 

0 5 0 

5 

I see movie theaters and digital movie 

streaming companies as two distinct 

services that can be used together 

2.4 

I believe that movie theaters are an integral 

2.3 

part of the local community 

I will never stop going to the movies at a 

theater because of the availability of digital 

streaming 

2.1 

I have a very positive opinion about movie 

theaters 

2.3 

One does not have to stop watching 

movies in a theater just because of their 

digital streaming habits 

1.9 

I often talk positively about my movie 

theater experiences with my friends and 

family 

2.3 

The real value of movie theaters comes 

from being able to see new releases 

without waiting for them to be digitally 

streamed months later 

2.2 

I believe movie theaters create a great 

environment to enjoy a movie 

2.2 

My digital streaming habits have not 

reduced my frequency of watching a movie 

at a movie theater 

2.4 

I believe that the movie theater industry 

serves a positive economic purpose in our 

society 

2.3 

I get to enjoy the best technical and 

cinematographic qualities of a movie when 

watching it in a movie theater compared to 


2.3 

I believe that the movie theater industry 

does an excellent job or providing 

entertainment to local communities 

2.3 

CGI-laden, action-packed blockbusters 

are best seen in a movie theater rather 

than being digitally streamed 

2.3 

I do not let weather (very hot day, heavy 

rainfall, or a bitterly cold day) get between 

me and going to movie theater to watch a 

movie I am really excited to see 

2.3 

I often try to sway people to go to see a 

movie at a theater whenever there is an 

opportunity 

2.6 

I usually prefer to see a movie at a movie 

theater rather than go to a local festival 

or event 

2.6 



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39 

39_AD-Proctor-JackRoe.indd 39 12/02/2021 12:31

INDUSTRY CENTURY IN EXHIBITION 

‘ 

92020 

0 s 

marked the 100th anniversary of 

A CENTURY 

IN EXHIBITION 

Globalization and 

Cyberspace 

BY VASSILIKI MALOUCHOU 

the founding of Boxoffice Pro. Though 

the publication you hold in your hands 

has had different owners, headquarters, 

and even names—it was founded in 

Kansas City by 18-year-old Ben Shlyen 

as The Reel Journal, then called Boxoffice 

in 1933, and more recently Boxoffice 

Pro—it has always remained committed 

to theatrical exhibition. 

From the 1920s to the 2020s, Boxoffice 

Pro has always had one goal: to provide 

knowledge and insight to those who bring 

movies to the public. Radio, TV, home 

video, and streaming have all been perceived 

as threats to the theatrical exhibition 

industry over the years, but movie 

theaters are still here—and so are we. 

We at Boxoffice Pro are devotees 

of the exhibition industry, so we couldn’t 

resist the excuse of a centennial to 

explore our archives. What we found was 

not just the story of a magazine, but the 

story of an industry—the debates, the 

innovations, the concerns, and above 

all the beloved movies. We’ll share our 

findings in this series, A Century in 

Exhibition. 


40-47_CiE-90s.indd 40 12/02/2021 12:31

As the exhibition industry entered the 

last decade of the 20th century, the 

outlook was gloomy. Even the record year of 

1990—with a domestic total of $5.02B—was 

not enough to assuage the fears of industry 

pundits who warned that a recession was 

looming. They cautioned exhibitors that 

several factors, including high ticket prices, 

home video, aging Baby Boomers and the 

ascent of a new generation who had grown 

up with home entertainment, as well as an 

oversaturation of screens, painted a bleak 

picture for the exhibition industry. 

The economy plunged into a recession 

in July 1990, taking the box office with it. 

There was, however, still reason for optimism. 

The end of the Cold War ushered in 

the era of the American superpower, bringing 

the promise of a liberal world order to 

the cinema industry. This new geopolitical 

context accelerated globalization and 

offered unprecedented opportunities for 

the expansion of American theater circuits 

abroad at a time when the domestic 

market was tapped out. The enthusiasm 

for international expansion was matched 

by the excitement generated by an entirely 

new kind of frontier: cyberspace. The 

surge in telecommunications innovation 

and new technologies in the 1990s would 

be a boon for some—yet an existential 

threat for others. In any case, it prompted 

the industry to innovate and reinvent itself 

for the digital age of the new millennium. 

‘The World Is Watching’ 

“When pundits and cultural historians 

look back on the 1990s, the globalization 

of the world economy will likely be the 

defining story of the decade,” wrote 

Boxoffice Pro editor Ray Greene in 

July 1996. Greene was right. Not only 

has globalization shaped the world as 

we know it today, but this new global 

interconnectedness—documented by 

Boxoffice Pro and Greene himself— 

pushed American exhibition abroad 

while raising new questions about 

American cinema’s financial and cultural 

role in the world. 

By 1991, Hollywood was already 

experiencing the impact of globalization 

at home. Four out of the seven majors 

had fallen into foreign hands: MGM/ 

UA was now owned by the French Pathé 

Communications, Columbia TriStar by 

the Japanese giant Sony, 20th Century 

Fox by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp 

Australia, and Matsushita Electric had 

just clinched a deal worth $6.59 billion to 

acquire MCA/Universal. But this sense of 

“foreign invasion” began to abate after the 

collapse of the USSR, and the proliferation 

of free-trade agreements brought new 

opportunities in previously impenetrable 

markets. Soon, Boxoffice Pro developed 

its coverage of foreign markets with an 

“International Reports” section, countryspecific 

columns, and special issues on 


41 



CinemaExpo in Europe, the Australian 

Movie Convention, and CineAsia. Greene, 

welcoming the launch of the first CineAsia 

in January 1995, lauded these global trade 

shows for revealing “that we all share a 

human face by celebrating what we share 

and providing an interpersonal conduit 

for educating each other about the things 

we do not.” 

Trade shows were significant spaces 

for global intercultural exchanges. NATO/ 

ShoWest, the amalgam of the annual 

conventions of NATO and ShoWest 

since 1988, emerged both as a forum to 

debate how exhibitors would adapt to a 

globalized world and as a driving force 

for international expansion. The slogan 

for the 1991 NATO/ShowWest trade show, 

“The World is Watching,” encapsulated the 

industry’s new preoccupations. William 

Kartozian, NATO’s president, introduced 

international audiences to the convention 

with “A Global Welcome,” while NATO 

executive director Mary Ann Grasso wrote, 

“Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!” It 

was the first convention chiefly focused 

on the international economy, featuring 

numerous presentations and seminars 

on international exhibition, distribution, 

and marketing. A few months earlier, in 

November 1990, NATO had launched 

an International Exhibition Committee 

to help facilitate American investments 

abroad. Soon, North American exhibitors 

were popping up all over Europe, South 

America, and Southeast Asia, while the 

African and Middle Eastern markets 

remained sidelined. Cineplex, for instance, 

expanded to Eastern Europe and South 

America, while UA expanded to Singapore 

in 1994 following the 1985 introduction of 

its first Asian multiplex in Hong Kong. 

The signing of the North American 

Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 

and the 1993 deregulation of the Mexican 

film market, which lifted caps on ticket 

prices and dropped quota requirements 

for Mexican films from 50 percent to 

just 10 percent by 1997, put Mexico at 

the center of the American expansion 

strategy. According to a Boxoffice Pro 

report from February 1994, AMC had 

“retained a real estate agent in Mexico to 

hunt up potential AMC sites there.” The 

Mexican market seemed particularly 

favorable, as Mexican cinemas, all 

previously owned and/or regulated by 

the government, were not in the way 

“of modern competition” for American 

firms. Cinemark de Mexico president 

Ken Higgins echoed the argument, 

claiming that “Mexico is where the 

U.S. was 30 years ago, with little single 

theaters and twins,” and that it boasted 

the second most avid moviegoers in the 

world after China. While local players 

like Cinemex began to rise, American 

exhibitors were quick to rival them. 

Cinemark, which had opened its first 

Latin American theater in the Chilean 

capital of Santiago in 1993, opened four 

theaters in Mexico right after NAFTA was 

signed. By 1997, Cinemark was on track 

to become the second-largest circuit 

in the world, with locations in the U.S., 

Canada, Mexico, Central America, Peru, 

Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, where the 

first multiplex with Cinemark’s signature 

stadium seating opened in July 1997. 

Cinemark International also announced 

a partnership with the second-largest 

Japanese circuit, Shochiku Co., to build 

100 screens in Japan by the year 2000. 

This expansion was driven by one 

mission: to bring innovative multiplexes 

to underscreened markets. Tim Warner, 

president of Cinemark International, 

summarized this in a May 1997 interview: 

“The thing we’re going to primarily bring 

is the state-of-the-art multiplex theater to 

Japan. Right now, they have something 

like one screen for every hundred and 

some thousand people—as compared 

to the U.S. which is about one screen for 

every 10,000 people—and yet it’s still one 

of the primary markets outside of the U.S. 

for U.S. films from a dollar standpoint.” 

But, he continued, “The potential of the 

marketplace, or the risk versus rewards, 

are very high because most of the markets 

that we are going in are very, very much 

underscreened.” 



“You can expect to meet 

resistance in almost every 

market you go to, and in 

some places, it’s just flat-out 

against the law for anyone 

from outside the country to be 

involved in exhibition.” 

Building global multiplex empires 

was not devoid of challenges. Exhibitors 

needed to change their corporate culture 

to fit into global companies as well as 

navigate local laws, economic regulations, 

and cultural attitudes toward cinema. 

Although the megaplex boom was taking 

off in Europe, particularly in the U.K. and 

Scandinavian countries, the Old Continent 

emerged as a particularly abstruse market. 

“You can expect to meet resistance in 

almost every market you go to, and in 

some places, it’s just flat-out against the 

law for anyone from outside the country 

to be involved in exhibition,” decried AMC 

International president David Seal in an 

interview in July 1994. Seal proposed 

circumventing working with local theater 

operators altogether, favoring instead 

partnerships with financial institutions 

and investors. 

The last-minute failure in 1993 to 

incorporate films and other intellectual 

properties in the General Agreement 

on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the most 

sweeping free-trade agreement until that 

point, further hampered the expansion 

of American audiovisual firms in Europe. 

There was a pervasive fear that these 

trade barriers in conjunction with 

the cultural policies of the European 

Economic Community, which was 

gearing up for a deepened integration 

and expansion after the reunification of 

Germany, would crowd U.S. product off 

of European screens. Jack Valenti, the 

MPAA (now MPA) chief who spearheaded 

the GATT talks on the cinema industry 

and, in the words of Greene, “emerged 

as perhaps the U.S.’s most eloquent 

spokesman for open global markets,” 

spoke to Boxoffice Pro in February 1994. 

“It was absurd—it was a joke. At 3 o’clock 

in the morning, it occurred to me like an 

epiphany that these people never wanted 

to negotiate. … I’m sad and disappointed 

that after seven years we couldn’t come to 

some sane conclusions.” 

Indeed, the lowering of trade barriers 

for cinema was a contentious topic for 

many Europeans, particularly the French, 

who wished to protect their cultural 

identity from a perceived American 

imperialism. Reporting from Amsterdam 

at the CinemaExpo convention in August 

1999, Senior Editor Francesca Dinglasan 

noted that “it was apparent that the 

continent’s individual countries remain 

fiercely proud of their own national and 

cultural identities.” Greene weighed in on 

the debate frequently, offering a qualified 

view on American cultural imperialism 

and arguing that the U.S. had a lot to 

learn from foreign markets. “It might 

be interesting to speculate about the 

invigorating effects of a sort of inverse 

cultural imperialism—in which the often 

more humane and humanistic messages 

celebrated in foreign product begin to 

influence American movies—might have 

on Hollywood,” he wrote in July 1995. 

In 1996, he added: “To Americans the 

notion that U.S. movies could be perceived 

a threat to the intellectual life of other 

societies seems inexplicable since so 

few U.S. movies aspire to do more than 

entertain (…) but there is a certain truth 

to the ‘cultural imperialism’ arguments 

in the sense that even the most seemingly 

mindless American action film often 

deals in attitudes (about violence as a 

rite of passage, about the heroism of the 

common individual), which are American 

preoccupations, if only at the level of 

cliché. American cultural hegemony is 

rapidly becoming obsolete because of 

the commercial importance of foreign 

attitudes on the bottom line.” The 

imperative to please a foreign audience 

was inevitable for Greene, because, just a 

year earlier, American movies had grossed 

more in foreign lands than in the U.S for 

the first time in the history of Hollywood. 

Megacircuits Rising 

The international momentum was not 

only a consequence of a propitious global 

context. It was also a response to a very 

real domestic problem. The overscreening 

of America, due to the megaplex fever that 

started in the 1980s, led to an unrelenting 

hunt for foreign moviegoers. It was also 

a catalyst for the consolidation of the 

exhibition industry at home. The case 

of Ontario, California, where two major 

megaplexes were built across from one 

another and 54 screens existed within 

700 square feet, served as a reminder of 

the nonviability of the current situation. 

“Thou Shalt not Ontario one another,” 

proclaimed NATO’s Kartozian. 

“‘Grow or die’ still seems to be the 

philosophy of the megaplex exhibitors; 

with new construction destined to 

become an increasingly less viable option 

for expansion in the years ahead, the 

acquisition of already existing circuits 

has emerged as exhibition’s next big 


43 



thing,” explained Greene in the Giants of 

Exhibition issue of January 1998. Cineplex 

Odeon and Cinemark had announced a 

merger in 1995. Had the deal materialized, 

the new company would have formed the 

largest North American circuit, with 2,839 

screens. The announcement became a 

starting pistol for a trend of mergers and 

consolidations. 1997 was undoubtedly the 

year of the mergers: Carmike purchased 

the 195-screen First International 

Theatres. Regal proceeded to buy out 

the 95-screen Magic Cinemas chain and 

acquired the massive 643-screen Cobb 

Theatres, pushing Regal’s screen count 

past the 2,000 mark. Sony-owned Loews, 

meanwhile, merged with Cineplex Odeon 

to create the largest exhibition chain in 

history. In 1998, Regal was sold for $1.5 

billion to two investment companies— 

Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, and Kohlberg 

Kravis Roberts & Co.—which combined 

it with the UA Theatre Group and Act III 

Theatres, creating another exhibition 

behemoth. 

The studios were also moving forward 

with megamergers. In 1994, Sumner 

Redstone’s Viacom bought Paramount 

Communications for $9.85 billion. In 

1995, the Walt Disney Co. announced 

plans to buy Capital Cities/ABC for 

$19 billion, making Disney the largest 

entertainment company in the world. The 

following year, Time Warner and Turner 

Broadcasting System merged in a $7.3 

billion deal, creating the world’s largest 

communications company. The decade 

ended with the creation of the secondlargest 

media company, with Viacom’s 

acquisition of the CBS Corporation for 

$37.3 billion. 

Ray Greene warned against the dangers 

of this anticompetitive consolidation. 

He feared that an ever-smaller number 

of megacircuits would exercise an 

unprecedented amount of control over 

what American audiences would watch. In 

January 1998, the editor wrote, “There is 

as yet no reason to view this development 

as anything other than virtue rewarded, 

the upside for a handful of visionaries who 

are reinventing the history of exhibition 

in our time. But big companies can also 

represent big targets, as Microsoft’s 

ongoing antitrust difficulties clearly 

demonstrate. The bad old days of the 

consent decree will almost surely never 

return but that doesn’t mean exhibition 

can’t learn from its history in a time where 

megacircuits for which there has been 

no pre-existing precedent start to define 

themselves and take shape.” Greene’s 

fears were surely justified. Yet the 1990s 

also saw growth for independent circuits 

like Landmark Theatres and Laemmle 

Theatres, coinciding with the boom 

of independent films. Companies like 

Miramax, bought by Disney in 1993 for $80 

“The bad old days of 

the consent decree will 

almost surely never return 

but that doesn’t mean 

exhibition can’t learn from 

its history in a time where 

megacircuits for which 

there has been no preexisting 

precedent start 

to define themselves and 

take shape.” 



million, New Line, and October Films— 

plus Sundance directors like Quentin 

Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh— 

reinvigorated independent films and their 

theatrical consumption. “Independents,” 

wrote Greene in August 1994, “continue 

to survive and even thrive by doing what 

they’ve always done—offering alternatives 

to mainstream sensibilities in which the 

majors specialize.” 

Interactivity and the ‘Information 

Superhighway’ 

The hypercompetitive landscape of the 

American market pushed theaters to 

innovate. American companies began 

creating immense urban screening 

environments capable of handling a wide 

range of films in release at any given 

moment under a single roof. But the 

megaplex of the 1990s was not merely 

a movie theater: It strived to be a total 

entertainment complex. Special formats 

were sought after for their impressive 

effects and potential to explore new 

narratives. After Sony Theatres’ giant 

flagship in Manhattan’s Lincoln Square 

became the first major circuit in North 

America to house an Imax venue, Imax 

rapidly moved into conventional 

exhibition. More and more exhibitors 

capitalized on the convergence between 

film and new entertainment technologies 

to create “family entertainment centers” 

aimed at providing innovative, interactive, 

multimedia experiences to their patrons. 

United Artists had its “Starports,” Regal 

its “Funscapes,” Carmike its “Hollywood 

Connection,” and Cineplex its “Cinescapes.” 

One such multimedia product 

appeared in the winter of 1992 in select 

Loews locations in Los Angeles and 

New York. The “interfilm” I’m Your Man, 

which ran for 20 minutes, gave audiences 

the capability to select plot twists and 

pick the characters’ next moves. In 1994, 

AMC installed the interactive Interfilm 

technology exhibition system in some of 

its auditoriums. Loews partnered with ITT 

Systems Corp. to exhibit games in 10 of its 

multiplexes, and Cineplex teamed with 

Sega, DreamWorks, and MCA for its own 

entertainment center in 1996. Studios, too, 

got in on the action. By 1995, Time Warner, 

Sony, and Viacom/Paramount boasted 

interactive divisions, with Disney jumping 

on the bandwagon that same year. 

The studios capitalized on their IPs with 

film-based video games or CD-ROMs that 

complemented individual movies. That 

strategy paired especially well with the 

exponential growth of animation prompted 

by Disney, Pixar, and the undeniable 

amelioration of computer graphics. In 

1993, Disney’s Aladdin became the first 

animated feature in history to earn more 

than $200 million at the U.S. box office. 

The successes of The Lion King and later 

Pixar’s Toy Story validated the studios’ 

investments in interactive IPs. For instance, 

Disney’s animated storybook of The Lion 

King, which compressed the story of 

the film and offered additional material, 

animated characters, narration, and search 

options, sold successfully for $39.95 apiece. 

Yet, Boxoffice Pro was rather skeptical 

about the marriage of CD-ROMs and 

moviegoing, pointing to the flops of gamebased 

movies like Mortal Kombat and 

Super Mario Bros. 

Theater lobbies, seen as perfect 

locations for cross-marketing due to 

their heavy foot traffic, also underwent 

significant revamps. The lobby needed 

to expand far beyond its old identity as 

a place for concession stands with menu 

boards that merely displayed pricing 

information. “We propose entertainment 

be brought out of the theater and into 

the lobby,” argued Cineplex Odeon’s 

manager of design and construction, 

Dana Kalczak, who supported showing 

trailers and other marketing material on 

HDTVs in theater lobbies. One critical 

innovation, developed by companies 

such as EIMS, ETM, Vast, and RDS Data 

Group, was the introduction of interactive 

POS kiosks that displayed information 

about current and upcoming films and 

discounts and allowed ticket sales to take 

place outside the typical box office stand. 

One example written about in Boxoffice 


45 



“Like many of our readers, 

we view the ‘brave new world’ 

of ‘cyberspace’ with what 

we consider to be a certain 

healthy skepticism.” 

Pro with great enthusiasm, despite its 

numerous glitches, was the installation 

of the first Cinetouch kiosks in Cineplex 

Odeon theaters in Toronto in March 1995. 

“It’s called Cinetouch, and it’s going to 

revolutionize the way moviegoers choose 

movies,” wrote the magazine’s Canadian 

correspondent, Shlomo Schwartzberg. 

Throughout the decade, no other 

technological development garnered 

as much curiosity as the internet. In 

November 1994, a Boxoffice Pro writer 

defined this elusive new technology. “The 

internet comprises more than 20,000 

computer networks in 150 countries and 

has over 25 million users worldwide. The 

internet provides information in both 

an exclusively text-based format and 

in a multimedia format,” he wrote. As 

it became increasingly clear that the 

trend was here to stay, understanding 

the internet became a central mission for 

the magazine. In an editorial in October 

1995, Greene elaborated: “We’ve made 

informing you about developments on the 

‘information superhighway’ a part of our 

mandate, not because we’re particularly 

obsessed with this stuff (like many of our 

readers, we view the ‘brave new world’ of 

‘cyberspace’ with what we consider to be a 

certain healthy skepticism) but because— 

whatever their current status—many 

of the new ‘leading-edge’ information 

transmission technologies may eventually 

have a direct effect on the way exhibition 

conducts business.” One of these effects 

was the emergence of e-commerce. A 

growing number of profiles of and ads 

for companies like Moviefone showed 

that virtual teleticketing and the ability 

to book tickets online 24/7 was beginning 

to intrigue exhibitors. “Patrons like 

it because there’s no fuss—just a site 

and a few keystrokes. Exhibitors like it 

because it extends their box office into 

the multi-ticketing arena, affording 

greater coverage and helping translate a 

cinemagoing impulse into a final ticketsales 

transaction,” noted one writer in 

November 1999. 

Exhibitors also realized the importance 

of the internet in finding information 

about movies and theaters before 

one’s visit. Several theater owners and 

managers reported that they received 

incessant requests from patrons that they 

set up websites. Contributor Christine 

James wrote in February 1997, “More 

and more, modern-day moviegoers are 

turning on their computers and seeking 

out that ubiquitous https:// prefix to find 

the information that they need to decide 

where and when they’re going to see the 

latest Hollywood blockbusters.” In 1997, 

NATO initiated an ambitious plan to 

take all of exhibition into the Digital Age. 

Through an alliance with Times Mirror 

Company, NATO set up “Hollywood 



“The shortening of the video 

release window doesn’t just 

cheat exhibitors. It cheats 

moviegoers, filmmakers, and 

everyone involved with every 

step in the process.” 

Online,” a website providing information 

on films and individual theater locations, 

including what was playing on which 

screen, cinema maps, and details on 

sound systems and accessibility. The 

startling success of 1999’s The Blair Witch 

Project, whose marketing was virtually 

limited to its website, crystallized the 

need to employ internet-based marketing. 

It also foreshadowed the democratization 

of video production and distribution 

as we know it today, while launching 

rudimentary “netcasters” (the ancestors 

of streaming) like Broadcast.com, 

Entertainer.com, and CinemaNow. 

Shrinking Windows in a Fast-Paced 

World 

The internet caused a wider cultural shift, 

one that Boxoffice Pro readers will surely 

relate to today. Already in the 1990s, the 

internet began to accelerate the pace of an 

increasingly fast, interconnected world and 

instilled, as some writers noted, a sense of 

disconnection from the “real world.” This 

changed the way many exhibitors thought 

about the societal role of cinema. Rusty 

Gordon, a theater operator in Tennessee, 

wrote an opinion piece in July 1996 in 

which he stated that “it’s a fast-paced 

world we live in—instant this, overnight 

that. But movies are special. People leave 

their homes, faxes, and phones to forget 

their troubles for a couple of hours at the 

movies. And that’s something you can’t do 

on television.” Director James Cameron 

delivered an impassioned plea to “keep 

showmanship alive in our hearts” as he 

accepted his 1995 NATO/ShoWest Producer 

of the Year Award. He implored exhibitors 

to “embrace the future, while remembering 

the real source of our energy: the images 

flickering on those screens, those big 

screens, in dark rooms, across the planet” 

at a time when “the world is speeding up 

logarithmically, and we are bombarded by 

a million shiny new ideas [... while] surfing 

fast and wobbly across a liquid landscape 

of new media, new delivery systems, whole 

new forms of entertainment made possible 

by the digital revolution.” 

In a fast-paced world, cinemas offered 

a short, magical, breathing spell. The 

advent of new technologies and a societal 

view of theaters contributed to reframing 

the debate on theatrical exclusivity. 

William Kartozian insisted in April 1997 

that a minimum six-month window 

would be necessary if exhibition were 

to remain healthy. The Boxoffice Pro 

team suggested a two-month extension 

for the bigger titles to ensure second-run 

theaters would have a fair chance. The 

internet, online piracy, HDTV, cassettes, 

and DVDs, Boxoffice Pro argued, were 

not just threatening the livelihood of 

theater owners by shortening the length of 

exclusive windows. As the pleas of theater 

owners like Rusty Gordon made clear, they 

were also assailing the sanctity of movie 

theaters as guards against the alienation 

and rush of the interconnected age. The 

issue of windows also became linked to 

the preservation of film as an art form and 

a technology. In April 1997, Greene was 

calling filmmaker/producers like Steven 

Spielberg and George Lucas to support 

the idea of six-month windows even if it 

hurt their bottom line. “The shortening 

of the video release window doesn’t just 

cheat exhibitors. It cheats moviegoers, 

filmmakers, and everyone involved with 

every step in the process. It seems like a 

no-brainer to expect that the same leading 

figures on the film production side who 

stand against the panning and scanning 

of widescreen film prints […] would 

get behind the concept of a six-month 

exhibition window,” he argued. 

It seemed that for Greene, the issue 

of windows was tied to the preservation 

of film against a new threat: digital 

projection. By the mid-1990s, digital 

sound was already advancing fast, thanks 

to the work of pioneering companies like 

Dolby, Optical Radiation Corporation, 

and Eastman Kodak. The rapidity of 

innovation was such that the death of 

the analog soundtrack (even if rejected 

by Boxoffice Pro and its contributing 

specialists) was speculated on as early as 

1996. As analog sound was increasingly 

questioned, so was film. Many alternatives 

to 35 mm film were beginning to rival 

traditional formats. MaxiVision 48, touted 

as far brighter, less wasteful, and more 

inexpensive, or CDP, a format eliminating 

the separations between frames without 

compromising the size or integrity of the 

image, were such examples. These ideas, 

however, never received the attention 

that the most controversial alternative, 

digital projection, would get. As would 

become clear in the first decade of the 

new millennium, no technology since the 

introduction of sound in the 1920s would 

engender as much controversy as digital 

projection. 


47 


Industry 2020: YEAR IN REVIEW 

THE 10 MOST 

IMPORTANT MOMENTS FOR 

DOMESTIC EXHIBITION IN 

2020 

A global pandemic plunged the global exhibition 

business into an existential crisis. Our look back on 

the 10 pivotal moments of a historic year. 

BY DANIEL LORIA 

48-61_Top-10-Moments.indd 48 15/02/2021 15:19

EXHIBITORS HAVE THEIR SAY 

What’s your biggest takeaway from 2020? 

1 

THE SHUTDOWN 

March 

Sony’s Bad Boys for Life hit 

screens in North America 

on January 17, finishing its 

opening weekend at the box 

office with a successful $62.5 

million. The first blockbuster 

of the year signaled a positive 

start for the industry; while 

analysts expected a dip in box 

office sales in 2020, there was 

widespread expectation the 

market would hit $11 billion 

for the sixth consecutive 

year. A day after the film’s 

opening weekend, January 

20, the United States officially 

announced its first positive 

case of Covid-19. 

There was no model by 

which to adequately gauge 

the potential impact of the 

virus on the cinema industry. 

Movie theaters had weathered 

epidemics before, most 

recently in 2009 with H1N1, 

commonly known as the 

Swine Flu, and even the direst 

of forecasts failed to predict 

the crisis that would soon 

unfold. Within days of the first 

confirmed infection in the U.S., 

the Chinese film industry took 

the drastic step of closing all 

its cinemas ahead of its Lunar 

New Year celebration—one 

of the busiest moviegoing 

periods of the year. 

As the number of cases 

started to grow, business 

around the world began to 

feel the economic impact 

of the virus. On March 11 

the National Association of 

Theatre Owners canceled 

its annual convention, 

CinemaCon, hours after it had 

come to light that actors Tom 

Hanks and Rita Wilson had 

contracted the virus while 

on set in Australia. By the 

following week, every major 

circuit in the North American 

market voluntarily closed, 

citing the public health risk 

of the pandemic. While some 

cinemas in the United States 

reopened as early as May, most 

major circuits remained closed 

until late August—after five 

months of working with health 

groups and local authorities 

to determine reopening 

guidelines. 

“People need and crave 

community experiences 

more than ever, and cinema 

is top of the priority list. 

The movie industry was 

built upon the dream of 

providing transformative 

experiences—big, immersive, 

visual stories that stir our 

senses and emotions. The 

pandemic, and the craziness 

of the past months, will pass. 

Alamo Drafthouse will be at 

the front, leading the charge 

to evolve the cinematic 

experience and reemerge 

better than ever.” 

Shelli Taylor 

CEO 

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 

“My biggest takeaway is that 

cinemas are going to survive 

and thrive due to the strong 

commitment of everyone 

involved with our industry. I’ve 

been so impressed watching 

operators and vendors who 

are fierce competitors work 

together for the common 

good of the industry. I’ve 

also been blown away by 

the commitment of our NATO 

staff, who have worked 

around the clock to promote 

our industry, develop 

CinemaSafe protocols, 

talk with the studios to 

encourage the release 

of new films, encourage 

state governments to allow 

cinemas to open again, 

and work with the federal 

government to approve tax 

relief and grants for cinemas. 

After the 1917 pandemic 

came the roaring twenties, 

and I predict that this will 

happen again.” 

Bob Bagby 

President & CEO 

B&B Theatres 

“Last March, I felt like the lead 

driver whose car broke down 

in the middle of the race. 

As I sat on the sidelines, the 

other drivers roared by and 

I helplessly watched. Those 

drivers didn’t feel my pain, 

and their success made it 

harder for me to regain my 

competitive edge. 

“2020 established that the 

business world is fragile, 

and no one is immune to a 

downturn. We’ve helplessly 

watched from the sidelines 

as technology evolves, and 

never before has our industry 

lost such precious time and 

resources needed to keep 

pace. We sailed through the 

Great Recession, and this is 

our turn to face adversity and 

learn from it. I call this a 

devastating opportunity. 

“Through all the adversity, 

I’ve learned that good 

people make a difference. 

Family, friends, employees, 

competitors, and vendors 

make me thankful for the 

many years I’ve enjoyed 

this business. The pandemic 

may have changed the 

landscape, but there’s still 

the opportunity for each of 

us to experience a checkered 

flag. Thank you for all of the 

work you’ve done to share 

information and experiences. 

We’ll be back stronger than 

ever by the summer.” 

Dave Corkill 

CEO 

Cinema West 


49 



2 

THE RELEASE DATE 

SHUFFLE 

March 

On March 4, MGM/UA’s 

James Bond adventure No 

Time To Die became the first 

title to forgo its release date, 

moving its April release to 

November. Universal followed 

suit days later by announcing 

it was delaying the Fast and 

Furious sequel F9 by a year 

to spring 2021. Those early 

shifts in the schedule set the 

stage for a wildly unstable 

(and unpredictable) release 

calendar in 2020. One by one, 

every major studio rushed 

to clear its second-quarter 

theatrical slate, as it became 

clear the crisis would extend 

into the summer. 

July 17 was tentatively set 

as the date that would kick 

off the summer movie season, 

with Christopher Nolan’s 

Tenet, followed by Disney’s 

live-action Mulan a week later. 

Things didn’t go according 

to plan. Warner Bros. moved 

Tenet to July 31st, then August 

12, before finally settling on 

a staggered global release 

launching on August 26. The 

film eventually hit theaters 

in the United States on 

September 3. 

For all the headaches caused 

by Tenet’s delay, exhibitors 

were grateful the film at least 

kept its commitment for a 

2020 theatrical release. The 

same can’t be said about 

Mulan, which was taken off 

the release calendar in favor 

of a PVOD debut on Disney 

Plus. After earning $4.3 billion 

at the domestic box office in 

2019, Disney pulled all its major 

titles from release in 2020. 

While most of those films were 

rescheduled for 2021, others, 

like Pixar’s Soul, were sent 

straight to streaming. 

An unstable release calendar 

has since become a hallmark of 

the Covid-19 era, with release 

delays and cancellations 

occurring well into 2021. 

3 

THE MOST IMPORTANT 

FILM OF 2020: TROLLS: 

WORLD TOUR 

April 

Universal’s decision to move 

Trolls: World Tour to streaming 

as a PVOD rental instead of 

shelving it for theatrical release 

received little comment from 

exhibitors in the early days 

of the pandemic. Several 

titles whose runs had been 

interrupted by the closures— 

including releases from Disney, 

Sony, and Universal—had 

already premiered on home 

entertainment platforms earlier 

than usual, an understandable 

exception to traditional 

exclusivity practices. 

Trolls: World Tour wasn’t 

expected to be a major 

blockbuster in theaters, but 

the film was able to seize a 

unique moment in the market 

just as the United States 

entered what was essentially a 

national lockdown. The film’s 

success became a turning 

point for the industry when 

NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell 

told The Wall Street Journal 

Universal planned to replicate 

the model’s success with 

its theatrical slate moving 

forward. The news was an 

unpleasant surprise to leading 

exhibitors, their circuits closed 

indefinitely, leading AMC 

Theatres to renounce the 

studio and vow not to program 

its titles moving forward. 

The tensions were smoothed 

over by the summer, as 

Universal signed deals with 

top cinema chains granting 

their titles a shorter exclusivity 

window in theaters. Universal’s 

decision to send Trolls: World 

Tour to PVOD would act as a 

catalyst to a slew of changes 

instituted across the industry 

in the months to come. 





“I’ve always said that the 

strength of Cineplex is its 

employees, and that couldn’t 

be more evident than right 

now. Despite the challenges 

of 2020, the team came 

together like never before, 

putting the right measures in 

place to solidify Cineplex’s 

future and ensure we remain 

Canada’s leading source 

of entertainment for many 

generations to come.” 

Ellis Jacob 


Cineplex 

“For many, 2020 caused us to 

reevaluate our priorities, and, 

for most of us, family, friends, 

and communal experiences 

were what we valued and 

missed the most. While we 

could instantly consume 

infinite media within our 

homes and get just about 

any item delivered within two 

hours, 2020 didn’t change 

the fact that we’re social 

creatures. Humans crave 

communal experiences, and 

I believe concerts, movie 

theaters, theme parks, and 

out-of-home entertainment 

will not only prevail but 

eventually thrive again.” 

Luis Olloqui 

CEO 

Cinépolis USA 

“You find out who your true 

partners are; their acts of 

kindness and compassion 

mean the world.” 

Chris Johnson 

CEO 

Classic Cinemas 

“Our takeaway from 2020 is 

that our most competitive 

force was government 

mandates and the impact 

they had on studio movie 

releases, leading to 

disastrous situations for most, 

if not all, of the industry. We 

look forward to a change 

in course of the prejudice 

against the safety of 

theaters.” 

Matt McSparin 

COO 

GQT Movies 

“Along with so many others, 

I will remember the stress 

and damage to the industry I 

love so much. But even more 

so, I will remember how the 

industry came together to 

support each other and our 

team members in 2020. I will 

also remember the efforts 

and valuable guidance of 

everyone at NATO, as well 

as their passionate and 

determined advocacy for 

our industry. Lastly, I will 

remember the support of our 

loyal guests and dedicated 

team members. I have never 

been more confident in the 

theatrical experience and 

look forward to our industry 

roaring back to record 

success in the coming 

months and years.” 

Mike Bowers 


Harkins Theatres 

4 

THE DYNAMIC WINDOW 

July 

If Universal’s PVOD launch of 

Trolls: World Tour was the first 

step in shrinking the theatrical 

window, the studio took another 

leap toward that goal when it 

announced a groundbreaking 

agreement with AMC Theatres 

to shorten that window beyond 

the duration of the Covid-19 

pandemic. After initially vowing 

not to book any Universal titles 

that would break exclusivity, 

AMC went on to negotiate 

with the studio on a deal that 

shortened theatrical exclusivity 

to either 17 or 30 days 

depending on the title. Crucially, 

AMC received a commitment 

from Universal to receive an 

undisclosed portion of digital 

rental revenues in exchange for 

being the first major chain to 

sign on to the proposal. 

Signed in July, the 

AMC-Universal deal sent 

shockwaves across the 

industry. It signaled a shift 

from pandemic-specific 

measures around a handful 

of titles to a long-standing 

change in the economics 

of theatrical distribution. 

Nevertheless, the model was 

unlikely to work without 

additional circuits on board. 

It took nearly four months for 

that to occur, with Cinemark— 

the third largest exhibitor in 

North America—joining the 

deal and coining the term 

“Dynamic Window.” Cineplex, 

Canada’s largest circuit, struck 

its own agreement days after 

Cinemark. 

Universal’s “Dynamic 

Window” establishes a 17-day 

minimum exclusivity for its 

titles at cinemas, after which 

they become available for 

digital rental at home. For 

select titles, that exclusivity 

period is extended to 30 days. 

It stands apart from similar 

moves made by competing 

studios by being the only 

model that has openly engaged 

cinemas (albeit limited to major 

circuits) in collaborating on 

an agreement. What theatrical 

exclusivity will look like once 

the market recovers is still up 

in the air, especially as the 

pandemic drags on into 2021, 

but the Dynamic Window 

model remains the only one to 

have gained significant traction 

with exhibitors. 


51 



GDC Technology Congratulates 

the Giants of Exhibition! 

It’s finally arrived…our favorite time of 

year when Boxoffice Pro spotlights the 

Giants of Exhibition. 

GDC congratulates not only the Giants 

but every exhibitor for demonstrating, 

despite challenges, that “the show 

must go on.” We are proud to be one 

of your trusted partners. 

It’s also that time of year we 

introduce our new products 

and services to improve the 

moviegoing experience. 

Introducing the new 

Espedeo Supra-5000 RGB+ laser 

phosphor cinema projector 

for mini-theatres. 

See you soon. 

Your friends at GDC 

GDC Technology 

Hong Kong ∙ Beijing ∙ Shenzhen ∙ Barcelona ∙ Dubai ∙ Jakarta ∙ Los Angeles ∙ Mexico City ∙ Mumbai ∙ São Paulo ∙ Seoul ∙ Singapore ∙ Tokyo 

Powering your digital cinema experience 

@GDCTechnology 


PA-1056-2101-V1E Copyright©2021 GDC Technology Limited. All rights reserved. www.gdc-tech.com 




5 

CINEMASAFE 

August 

As soon as cinemas went dark 

in March, the industry’s focus 

turned to reopening. A crucial 

part of that step was developing 

and instituting an industrywide 

set of guidelines and best 

practices to mitigate the spread 

of Covid-19 in cinemas. 

That effort culminated 

in August with the launch 

of CinemaSafe, a NATOled 

initiative to establish a 

voluntary set of protocols 

based on World Health 

Organization, Centers 

for Disease Control, and 

Occupational Safety and 

Health Administration 

guidelines, in consultation 

with leading epidemiologists. 

More than 370 companies, 

representing over 33,000 

screens in North America, 

signed up for the program 

at launch. The CinemaSafe 

protocols include provisions 

for mask enforcement inside 

auditoriums, social distancing, 

reduced capacity, air filtration, 

modified concessions 

sales, mobile ticketing, and 

enhanced cleaning and 

disinfection measures for 

employees. The CinemaSafe 

logo became a fixture of 

pandemic-era moviegoing, 

informing and easing the first 

wave of moviegoers returning 

to theaters. 

“The biggest impact this year 

to all of us was the disruption 

of our normal business by 

the Covid pandemic. It 

was a systemic shock to 

the entire entertainment 

industrial complex. The 

March shutdown closed 

movie theaters, canceled 

concerts, shuttered theme 

parks, and stopped film and 

TV production. For movie 

theaters it killed momentum 

built by the first 11 weeks of 

2020, where pictures like 

Bad Boys for Life, 1917, and 

Sonic the Hedgehog were 

overperforming. In a perfect 

example of the Newtonian 

Laws of Audience Dynamics, 

an audience in motion 

was acted upon by that 

other force and completely 

stopped. 

“But it’s not like they 

stopped watching filmed 

entertainment. Oh, no, 

people still watched. The 

biggest beneficiaries of the 

Covid theater crisis were the 

alphabet streaming soup 

of Amazon, Netflix, Apple, 

Disney Plus, Hulu, HBO Max, 

and Peacock. They were 

already competing with 

movie theaters for audiences 

and original productions 

before Covid. The pandemic 

shutdown only accelerated 

that trend. With no theaters 

to show their films, studios 

did what they always do. 

They made decisions in their 

own self-interest and found 

other ways to monetize their 

movies. Darwin would have 

been proud. Some studios, 

like Paramount and Sony, 

sold off releases to streaming 

services. Others, like Disney 

and Warner Bros., used the 

disruption to feed what were 

once theatrical releases to 

their proprietary streaming 

outlets. Universal’s Covid 

strategy was to recalculate 

the theatrical window. Now, 

10 months into the pandemic, 

theaters are still facing 

forced health closures, and 

audiences are gathering 

around the watercooler 

talking about ‘The Queen’s 

Gambit,’ ‘Bridgerton,’ ‘The 

Crown,’ ‘The Undoing,’ and 

other streaming series. 

Sometime in 2021, exhibition 

will awake from its Rip Van 

Winkle slumber to a different 

landscape. Only time will tell 

as to its ultimate effect. As 

the stuttering effort to turn 

vaccines into vaccinations 

ramps up, a cloud will lift 

over all of us. The biggest 

takeaway is that people still 

want stories. Soon they will 

be able to experience them 

again on our big screens.” 

Jeffrey Kaufman 

SVP Film and Marketing 

Malco Theatres 

m 


53 



6 

TENET OPENS—AND 

UNDERWHELMS 

September 

Christopher Nolan was among 

the exhibition industry’s most 

vocal supporters as the global 

health crisis took hold. It 

was therefore fitting that his 

latest film, Tenet, emerged 

as the frontrunner to signal a 

return to cinemas following 

the spring and early summer 

closures. A series of delays 

moved the title’s July 17 release 

date to a Labor Day weekend 

debut in the United States. The 

expectation was that the film 

would spur a gradual return to 

movie theaters, with tentpole 

titles to be released monthly 

to account for capacity 

restrictions. 

Tenet’s box office 

performance did the opposite. 

Rather than encouraging 

studios to adapt to the 

demands of a pandemicstricken 

market, it instead 

inspired an additional wave 

of delays and cancellations 

through the end of the year. 

Tenet’s box office 

performance was unfairly 

maligned: A $363 million 

global haul is hardly 

disappointing, especially 

during a global pandemic. 

The film’s tepid run in North 

America, however, where it 

was never able to reach screens 

in either L.A. or New York City, 

the country’s top two cities 

for box office potential, ended 

with a $57.9 million take— 

setting an underwhelming 

benchmark for the domestic 

market. Ultimately, the title 

suffered from the weight of 

unrealistic expectations: the 

absurd notion that a baroque 

action-thriller could singlehandedly 

initiate the revival 

of moviegoing in the middle 

of a pandemic. Tenet might 

not have saved cinemas, but 

it did offer a crucial financial 

lifeline—and is notable for 

being the only studio tentpole 

released during the pandemic 

to adhere to the preexisting 

theatrical exclusivity timeline. 

7 

DISNEY GOES DIGITAL 

September 

Disney’s live-action version 

of Mulan (2020) was originally 

scheduled to hit screens in 

the United States on March 

27. The title came with 

lofty expectations for the 

studio; shot in China, it had 

blockbuster potential in the 

top two global markets. Disney 

was forced to move the title to 

late July after the coronavirus 

shuttered cinemas across the 

U.S. and China. 

Intended to open a week 

following Warner Bros.’ release 

of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, 

Disney’s Mulan was seen as 

the more commercially viable 

of the two titles. The plan kept 

its shape when both titles 

were rescheduled for August 

but was suddenly scrapped 

in late July, when both Tenet 

and Mulan were removed 

from the schedule with little 

explanation. While Tenet 

eventually settled on a Labor 

Day release, Disney CEO Bob 

Chapek surprised investors 

during an early August 

earnings call by announcing 

that Mulan would skip theaters 

entirely and go straight to 

streaming on Disney Plus as a 

$29.99 digital rental. 

Mulan’s move to PVOD 

marked a significant shift in 

Disney’s approach to theatrical 

distribution. The studio kept 

a steady supply of rereleases 

from its vault through the end 

of 2020, while also releasing 

titles from 20th Century 

Studios like The New Mutants 

and The Empty Man. Its highprofile 

titles, however, were 

either pushed to 2021 or, as 

was the case with Pixar’s Soul, 

skipped theaters to instead 

prioritize a streaming debut on 

Disney Plus. 

The studio offered little 

more than a handful of 

platitudes on the “theatrical 

experience” during a fourhour-plus 

Investor Day 

presentation largely focused 

on diverting its production 

resources to supply content 

for Disney Plus. Crucially, 

however, the studio didn’t 

outright commit to an 

overarching policy on its 

upcoming tentpole titles in 

2021—leaving all distribution 

options on the table amid an 

uncertain recovery time frame 

from the Covid-19 crisis. 





“One of my biggest takeaways 

from 2020 is that our industry, 

leaders, teammates, and 

associates are amazingly 

resilient. Everyone has been 

tested like no other time in 

our history, both personally 

and professionally. While 

‘adapting to change’ is 

a must for the long-term 

viability of any business/ 

industry, 2020 pressed this 

dynamic approach to the 

limits. Dealing with Covid-19, 

economic hardships, an 

important election year, 

separation from family/ 

friends, adjustments in new 

operating models, and social 

changes at the same time 

could be overwhelming for 

the most talented leaders. 

I’m very proud that our 

industry leaders and Marcus 

team were always looking 

ahead and overcoming the 

headwinds we were dealt. Not 

only will 2020 be remembered 

for the challenges faced, 

but the year also made us 

more knowledgeable, caring, 

generous, unified, strong, and 

ready to welcome 2021 and 

beyond. Successful leaders 

emerged, inspiring others with 

their vision and through their 

true character. They displayed 

values, trust, respect, and 

reliability and were committed 

to supporting their industry, 

community, company, and 

people in a very difficult 

environment.” 

Rolando Rodriguez 

CEO 

Marcus Theatres 

“I will measure 2020 by 

how the Megaplex team 

rose to meet seemingly 

insurmountable challenges 

from the global pandemic, 

from developing new health 

and safety procedures to 

innovating and adapting 

business practices to 

holding firm to our founding 

principles of integrity, hard 

work, stewardship, and 

service. I’m especially proud 

of how our team rallied 

to develop innovative 

solutions—like private family 

screenings, curbside popcorn 

service, and much more—to 

preserve an important part 

of ‘normal’ for our loyal 

guests. That exceptional 

effort by the Megaplex 

team and our partners has 

been acknowledged by an 

ongoing wave of follow-up 

calls, texts, and messages 

from grateful guests.” 

Blake Andersen 

President 

Megaplex Theatres 

“Agility is the most vital 

proficiency to maintain 

during a crisis and beyond. 

The ability to make decisions 

and changes to operations 

and processes quickly 

and efficiently is incredibly 

important in ever-changing 

scenarios of extremes. It is 

common that with growth 

comes complexity, primarily 

in the form of added layers 

in operations, processes, 

and people. Under normal 

circumstances these layers 

are important to facilitate 

healthy growth and wellbeing. 

Under extreme 

circumstances, these layers 

can cause latency in process 

improvement and efficiency. 

The ability to respond to 

changing government 

regulations, staffing needs, 

and guest expectations 

in a quick fashion has 

helped many in our industry 

overcome the hardships that 

came in 2020 and continue to 

befall many today.” 

Joel Kincaid 

VP Operations 

MJR Digital Cinemas 

8 

CINEWORLD SCALES 

BACK 

October 

U.K.-based Cineworld entered 

2020 on track to become the 

largest exhibition company 

in North America and the 

world through its announced 

acquisition of Canada’s 

Cineplex. News of the deal 

came only two years after 

the company announced 

its acquisition of Regal, the 

second-largest circuit in the 

United States, and would have 

culminated with a presence 

of over 10,000 screens in the 

U.S. and Canada. Industry 

observers expected the deal 

to close early in the second 

quarter of 2020, perhaps 

even as early as CinemaCon— 

originally scheduled in late 

April. By year’s end, however, 

not only was the Cineplex 

deal off the table, but the 

vast majority of Cineworld 

and Regal locations were 

voluntarily closed until 

further notice. 

Cineworld’s scale back 

began in June, with the 

dissolution of the Cineplex 

acquisition, a move that set 

off a legal dispute between 

the two chains. Cineworld’s 

attention was simultaneously 

drawn to the reopening effort, 

with CEO Mooky Greidinger 

being among the loudest 

voices asking for clarity on 

reopening guidelines from 

government officials. That 

reopening effort was paused 

in October, following MGM/ 

UA’s decision to further delay 

the release of No Time to Die 

to 2021. At the time, the lack of 

a concrete reopening plan in 

important markets like New 

York and L.A., along with the 

instability in the theatrical 

release schedule, led the 

circuit to again shut down 

most of its locations in the U.K. 

and U.S. until further notice. 

Cineworld and Regal 

locations were still closed as 

2021 got under way. Perhaps 

most notably, Cineworld 

finished the year as the only 

major circuit with a leading 

U.S. presence to have not 

committed to terms with 

studios that have announced a 

reduced theatrical exclusivity 

window. 


55 





9 

WARNER BROS. 

SHATTERS THE WINDOW 

December 

The goodwill that Warner 

Bros. earned from exhibitors 

in its commitment to release 

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was 

tested when the studio decided 

to release Wonder Woman 

1984 simultaneously for home 

streaming on Christmas Day. 

In regular circumstances, 

the move would be met with 

strong opposition from the 

exhibition community—but 

in this specific case, with 

this specific studio, the 

decision was met with muted 

understanding. Cinemas 

had suffered from a dearth 

of high-profile titles since 

Tenet’s September release; 

Wonder Woman 1984 would 

hit screens desperate for 

content at a critical time. As 

the studio had already suffered 

a significant financial loss on 

Tenet, few could blame Warner 

for hedging its losses on the 

superhero sequel. 

Whatever goodwill was left 

after that, however, was gone 

once WarnerMedia CEO Jason 

Kilar dropped a bombshell 

announcement: Warner Bros. 

would release its entire 17- 

film slate day-and-date on 

its streaming service, HBO 

Max, at no additional cost to 

subscribers throughout 2021. 

The model treated cinemas 

as a secondary distribution 

channel, their traditional 

exclusivity period pushed 

to a full month after a film’s 

streaming debut. 

The fallout was swift. 

Filmmakers Christopher 

Nolan and Denis Villeneuve 

excoriated the decision 

publicly. “There is absolutely 

no love for cinema, nor for the 

audience here,” Villeneuve 

told Variety. In unilaterally 

breaking theatrical exclusivity, 

Warner Bros. found itself in a 

unique position: facing the ire 

of dismayed exhibitors as the 

only major studio to commit 

to a theatrical release calendar 

for all its major titles. 

10 

SAVE YOUR CINEMA 

December 

As weeks turned into months, 

it became increasingly 

evident that movie theaters 

around the world were 

facing an existential crisis. 

Several key foreign markets, 

whose countries had done 

a better job managing the 

pandemic, successfully 

leveraged local films to take 

the place of Hollywood titles 

in welcoming audiences back 

to the cinema. The United 

States, however, had no such 

advantage. Contending with 

a barren release schedule, 

some exhibitors voluntarily 

reclosed some or all of their 

locations—the cost of staying 

open incurring greater losses 

than going dark. Come 

December, the industry was 

nearing irrevocable damage. 

Without government support, 

NATO president and CEO John 

Fithian estimated that as many 

as two-thirds of the movie 

theaters in the United States 

could go out of business. 

NATO’s role in the 

pandemic was concentrated 

on two principal projects: 

the launch of CinemaSafe in 

September and an ongoing 

effort to secure government 

aid for movie theaters. The 

public-facing side of the 

campaign, Save Your Cinema, 

coordinated over 365,000 

letters of support to all 535 

members of Congress. The 

effort culminated with the 

inclusion of small and midsize 

movie theaters in the 

larger Save Our Stages Act, 

giving eligible theaters a slice 

of $15 billion in government 

funding dedicated to event 

venues. The bill’s passage 

in the waning days of 2020 

provided a crucial economic 

lifeline for cinemas as they 

entered an uncertain 2021. 


57 



THE TOP 10 

DOMESTIC 

RELEASES OF 

2020 

First-Quarter Titles Top the Annual 

Chart in a Difficult Year 

BY CHRIS EGGERTSEN 

1 

BAD BOYS FOR LIFE 

Sony | January 17 

$206.3 Million 

Only in 2020 would a film 

released in mid-January 

finish at the top of our yearly 

ranking. After a nearly 17-year 

hiatus (Bad Boys II came out 

way back in July 2003), the 

Will Smith–Martin Lawrence 

buddy threequel Bad Boys 

for Life proved there was 

still plenty of juice left in 

the series when it debuted 

with a franchise-best $62.5 

million, three-day gross over 

MLK weekend. The leggy 

title went on to gross $206.31 

million domestically and was 

still in wide release when the 

pandemic hit. It may have 

been able to squeeze out a few 

million more were it not for 

Covid, but Bad Boys for Life 

had already made the majority 

of its money by that point, 

marking it as a rare bright spot 

in an all-around dismal year at 

the box office. 

2 

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 

February 14 | Paramount 

$146 Million 

Another film released just 

early enough in the year to 

qualify as a theatrical success 

story was Paramount’s Sonic 

the Hedgehog, the long-in-theworks 

video game adaptation 

based on the Sega series of 

the same name. Released over 

President’s Day weekend, the 

$85 million–budgeted film 

grossed a fantastic $58.02 

million over the three-day 

period and $70 million over the 

four-day span before zooming 

to $146.07 million by the end 

of its pandemic-shortened run. 

Still in over 3,000 locations 

when the shutdown began, 

Sonic the Hedgehog was lucky 

enough to play for a full 

month before Covid brought 

moviegoing to an abrupt halt 

across North America. 

3 

BIRDS OF PREY (AND 

THE FANTABULOUS 

EMANCIPATION OF 

ONE HARLEY QUINN) 

February 7 | Warner Bros. 

$84.1 Million 

Considered a box office 

disappointment when it 

opened to just $33 million in 

early February, Birds of Prey 

nonetheless lands as the third 

highest-grossing film in an 

unprecedented, catastrophic 

year for North American 

exhibitors. Truthfully, there 

wasn’t much gas left in the box 

office tank for the Suicide Squad 

spinoff when the pandemic 

shuttered movie theaters, so 

its $84.16 million final gross is 

pretty close to where it would 

have ended up even without 

the virus. 





4 

DOLITTLE 

January 17 | Universal 

$77 Million 

Universal’s ultra-expensive 

reimagining of Hugh Lofting’s 

Doctor Dolittle book series 

was DOA in North American 

multiplexes, grossing just 

$21.84/$28.3 million over MLK 

weekend against the box office 

behemoth that was Bad Boys 

for Life (in what can best be 

described as a failed bid at 

counterprogramming). Beset 

by withering reviews, the film 

tapped out with just $77.05 

million in North America and 

became star Robert Downey 

Jr.’s latest misfire outside the 

Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

5 

THE INVISIBLE MAN 

February 24 | Universal 

$64.9 Million 

Debuting to a robust $28.21 

million over the final weekend 

of February, Leigh Whannell’s 

acclaimed reimagining of the 

nearly century-old horror 

franchise seemed a good bet to 

join the $100 million club (or at 

least close to it) before Covid 

brought its theatrical run to 

an abrupt end two weeks later. 

Produced on a budget of just $7 

million, The Invisible Man was 

nevertheless a highly profitable 

runaway hit right out of the 

gate, taking at least some of the 

sting out of its abbreviated box 

office reign and injecting new 

life into Universal’s monstermovie 

reboot strategy. 

“Although 2020 will be a low 

point for our industry, upon 

reflection there were many 

key takeaways to a year like 

no other. 

“As operators, the way 

we communicate with our 

employees, customers, 

and partners is our lifeline. 

The importance of good, 

transparent communication 

was a top priority in a year 

we could not travel to visit 

our theaters. I was proud of 

our team as we adapted 

to this new environment 

and maintained regular 

and personal contact with 

both our employees and the 

moviegoing audience. As 

a whole, our proficiency in 

Teams and Zoom meetings 

would rival any company’s! 

“I also take huge pride in 

our managers, who kept our 

theaters functioning and part 

of their communities while 

we have been temporarily 

closed. As we always look to 

give back in the communities 

where our theaters operate, 

our management turned 

our locations into food 

pantries, helping those in 

need during the pandemic. 

These managers also showed 

their pride for our company, 

wearing multiple hats— 

gardening, maintenance, 

painting, and the general 

upkeep of the building and 

property. They know all their 

hard work will be rewarded in 

2021 when we open our doors 

again for our employees and 

guests and return to be the 

best place to watch a movie!” 

Matt Eyre 

COO 

Regal Cinemas 

“Covid continues to impact 

our day-to-day operations, 

but we, as a team, continue 

to battle it every day. The 

whole Santikos Entertainment 

family came together and 

created a safe environment 

with all the PPE items and 

is now the only theater 

company in the world offering 

free weekly Covid testing for 

all employees. My biggest 

takeaway would be the 

perseverance our Santikos 

family demonstrated. It takes 

a team to get through this 

pandemic, and our team 

has excelled at every turn 

since May.” 

Rob Lehman 

COO 

Santikos Entertainment 

“Theater owners are resilient, 

they are resourceful, and it’s 

more than a business, it’s a 

calling. We are more allies 

than competitors, and thank 

you, NATO, for your tireless 

leadership.” 

Jeremy Devine 

VP Marketing & Content 

Showbiz Cinemas 

“Now more than ever, film 

exhibition needs to quickly 

evolve as an industry, 

‘eventize’ moviegoing, and 

excel at everything we do.” 

Mark Malinowski 

VP Global Marketing 

Showcase Cinemas (National 

Amusements Inc.). 

“2020 brought into focus how 

critical movies, theaters, and 

the arts are to our society 

and sense of community.” 

Brian Schultz 

Chairman of the Board of 

Directors 

Studio Movie Grill 


59 



7 

6 

THE CALL OF THE WILD 

February 13 | Disney 

$62.3 Million 

The year’s second bona fide 

mega-flop after Dolittle was 

this Harrison Ford vehicle, 

based on the Jack London 

novel about an elderly 

recluse’s relationship with 

a kidnapped dog. Produced 

on a bloated $135 million 

budget, the FX-heavy actiondrama 

debuted in second 

place with $24.79 million 

(against the sophomore 

weekend of Paramount’s Sonic 

the Hedgehog) and ended 

its pandemic-abbreviated 

theatrical run with just $62.34 

million in North America. 

Not that more time at the 

multiplex would have helped 

much; it was clear from Call 

of the Wild’s debut frame that 

profitability wasn’t in the 

cards for the 20th Century 

Studios leftover. 

ONWARD 

March 6 | Disney 

$61.5 Million 

Pixar’s first movie of 2020 

(to be followed in December 

by Soul, which was released 

directly to Disney Plus in 

North America), Onward 

was released on March 6, just 

two weekends before the 

pandemic shuttered theaters 

across North America. It’s 

likely that news of the 

coronavirus’s spread in the 

U.S. dampened turnout over 

its opening frame in early 

March—when it grossed a 

so-so $39.12 million—though 

it’s impossible to say by how 

much. Whatever the case, by 

Onward’s second weekend 

of release, a national panic 

had officially set in, and its 

sophomore frame plummeted 

nearly 73 percent before 

theaters closed their doors 

altogether. 8 

TENET 

September 3 | Warner Bros. 

$57.9 Million 

By the time Christopher 

Nolan’s heady action sci-fi 

film finally reached theaters 

over Labor Day weekend, 

the pandemic was on the 

wane in the U.S., leading 

to a momentary sense of 

relative calm during a brutal 

year. But analyzing Tenet’s 

performance was complicated 

by Warner Bros.’ cryptic box 

office reporting. Though the 

film brought in $20.2 million 

through end-of-day Monday 

of its opening weekend, the 

studio remained mum on 

how much of that total came 

in prior to the traditional 

Friday–Monday holiday frame 

(the film played in extensive 

“sneak previews” the week 

before Labor Day). Our own 

estimates pegged the film’s 

true four-day opening at 

somewhere between $10 and 

$12 million and its three-day 

opening at between $7.8 and 

$9.5 million, making it the 

highest opening weekend of 

the pandemic—until Wonder 

Woman 1984’s release in late 

December. 





9 

THE CROODS: A NEW AGE 

November 25 | Universal 

$43.9 Million 

A rare theatrical bright spot 

during the pandemic, The 

Croods: A New Age boasted the 

best debut frame since March 

when it opened with $14.27 

million over the five-day 

Thanksgiving weekend and 

$9.72 million over the Friday– 

Sunday period. Though it was 

a far cry from the first Croods’ 

opening-weekend gross, the 

film’s performance offered 

a glimpse into a brighter 

future for the exhibition 

industry, just as vaccines 

from multiple pharmaceutical 

companies were on the cusp of 

emergency-use authorizations 

in the U.S. Over a month 

later, A New Age continues to 

perform relatively strongly in 

North America, marking it as 

the family equivalent to the 

adult-oriented Tenet in terms 

of box office performance 

during the pandemic. 

10 

WONDER WOMAN 1984 

Warner Bros. | December 25 

$39.2 Million 

After numerous release delays, 

Warner Bros.’ female-driven 

superhero sequel finally hit 

the market on Christmas 

Day with a controversial 

day-and-date debut on the 

HBO Max streaming platform. 

A $16.7 million opening 

weekend suggested betterthan-expected 

returns for 

Wonder Woman 1984, but the 

title’s box office momentum 

was swiftly derailed by a 

rise of nationwide Covid-19 

infections and the title’s 

availability to the home. 

Wonder Woman 1984 dropped 

a whopping 67 percent in its 

sophomore frame, crossing 

the $37 million mark by the 

time its availability on HBO 

Max expired. 

“Two words come to mind 

when I reflect on 2020: 

resilience and gratitude. 

The terrible impacts of the 

pandemic on individuals, 

the greater economy, and 

the movie theater industry 

in particular are well 

documented. However, once 

again we as an industry have 

collectively demonstrated 

our resilience. We’ve come 

together to help develop 

and implement protocols for 

the safety of our employees 

and guests upon return to 

our theaters; we’ve lobbied 

Congress like never before to 

help support our devastated 

industry to weather the 

pandemic; we’ve shared best 

practices to generate some 

small levels of revenue in 

these tough times; and we’ve 

looked internally to once 

again reinvent portions of our 

business practices as we look 

to come out the other side of 

this pandemic. 

“At the same time, I look 

back at 2020 with amazing 

gratitude. Our theater 

management teams and 

staff have stood by us and 

safely taken care of our 

guests in these tough times 

while dealing with their 

own personal and financial 

hardships. They have been 

truly amazing. I’m grateful 

for our trade bodies and 

their teams, particularly at 

NATO and NAC, for helping 

us lobby Congress, keep 

us informed, and help us 

share our best practices. 

I’m grateful for my industry 

colleagues, particularly 

for their willingness to 

share experiences in these 

tough times and to help us 

reopen and also get on the 

lobbying bandwagon to push 

Congress to help support our 

industry. 

“There have been countless 

learning experiences out of 

2020. Our industry has again 

demonstrated its ability 

to persevere, and we look 

forward to a strong ramp-up 

in 2021.” 

Ron Krueger 

President/COO 

VSS-Southern Theatres, LLC 


61 



62_AD-Dolby.indd 62 12/02/2021 12:36

Premium Large Format 64 | Industry Insiders 70 

THEATER 

“We expect those returning to the movies in 2021 to 

desire elevated experiences such as a PLF. As we know, 

going to the movies is a fun, immersive experience, 

and people want the best when they go.” 

Premium Large Format, p. 64 


63 

63_THEATER-Opener.indd 63 15/02/2021 15:20

Theater TECH 

GOING 

What Role Will Premium Large Format 

Play in Cinema’s Global Recovery? 

BY REBECCA PAHLEBIG 


64-69_Premium-Large-Format.indd 64 12/02/2021 12:36


65 


Theater TECH 

Left. The Palace Imax 

cinema at Shanghai’s 

iAPM shopping center 

Below. China’s The 

Eight Hundred, the 

highest-grossing 

global release of 2020 

Previous page. Pre- 

Covid audiences enjoy 

a show at a Dolby 

Cinema 

“As markets recover, Imax 

fans—often the most frequent 

and passionate moviegoers— 

have been among the first to 

come back to theaters.” 

The road to theatrical recovery in 

North America has been slower 

than anyone could have anticipated as 

we approach the one-year anniversary 

of the Covid-19 shutdown. Yet as we 

closed out 2020 with a gradual vaccine 

rollout, and with studios continuing to 

delay their tentpole films, one argument 

has consistently emerged as a cause for 

cautious optimism. Take a look, urged 

NATO president and CEO John Fithian 

in December, at the state of affairs in 

China and Japan, where box office has 

become revitalized following the taming 

of the pandemic. “Some of these movies 

in China and a couple of them in Japan … 

they’re doing amazing business,” Fithian 

said in an exclusive interview with the 

Boxoffice Podcast. “That’s very good news, 

because that means people want to come 

back to the cinemas, and they love seeing 

movies on the big screen.” 

There are big screens, of course, and 

there are big screens—premium largeformat 

(PLF) offerings that provide a 

more spectacular, immersive experience 

than audiences can get at home. With 

global recovery in the works—albeit a 

stuttering one, particularly in North 

America and Europe—Boxoffice Pro 

reached out to PLF providers to get a 

sense of what role PLF could play in 

helping the industry bounce back from 

Covid, both domestically and overseas. 

“As markets recover, Imax fans—often 

the most frequent and passionate 

moviegoers—have been among the first to 

come back to theaters,” says Craig Dehmel, 

executive vice president, head of global 

distribution, at Imax Entertainment and 

senior vice president at Imax Corp. In 

countries “where Covid is more under 

control and people feel safe to return 

to multiplexes”—like select markets in 

Asia and the Middle East—Imax is seeing 

“excellent numbers” for both local titles 

and the rare Hollywood release like Tenet. 

In Tenet’s first weekend of 



international release, premium formats 

accounted for over a quarter of box 

office receipts in some markets, while 

Imax’s per-screen average for Tenet’s 

opening weekend—representing nearly 

250 screens across 38 countries—was 

over $20,000. As of December 21, the film 

had earned $42 million on Imax screens. 

Tenet was followed by fellow Warner 

Bros. release Wonder Woman 1984, which 

by December 27 had earned $8.2 million 

on Imax screens worldwide, making up 

nearly a tenth of its overall gross. 

With Hollywood tentpoles thin on the 

ground since March 2020, PLF providers 

have had to look to other programming 

categories to fill their screens and give 

moviegoers hungry for out-of-home 

entertainment a reason to hit up their 

local theater. For Imax, the solution has 

been local content, with films like The 

Eight Hundred and Jiang Ziya: Legend 

of Deification (China), Demon Slayer the 

Movie: Infinite Train (Japan), and Train 

to Busan sequel Peninsula (South Korea) 

drawing audiences to Imax screens across 

Asia in droves. 

By far Imax’s biggest market in 2020 

has been China, where a network of 

nearly 700 screens saw a gross box office 

(GBO) of nearly $80 million from July 

up to (but not including) the December 

release of Wonder Woman 1984. “Our 

success in China in 2020 has more to do 

with Chinese local titles” than Hollywood 

imports, explains Dehmel. In Japan— 

where between July and December 

Imax earned a GBO of over $30 million 

on 38 screens—the “key driver for our 

success” has been Toho/Aniplex’s Demon 

Slayer the Movie: Infinite Train, which 

in December surpassed 2001’s Spirited 

Away as Japan’s highest-grossing title of 

all time. Reflecting the earnings power of 

local titles in Japan, in November Imax 

inked a deal with Toho for a five-film 

distribution agreement. 

ScreenX—Korea-based cinema 

technology company CJ 4DPLEX’s 

270-degree panoramic screen offering— 

also found success in 2020 despite a lack 

of major Hollywood titles. “Box office for 

both of our premium formats, ScreenX 

and [motion seating technology] 4DX, has 

been increasingly steady as markets have 

begun to open up,” says CJ 4DPLEX CEO 

JongRyul Kim. Over the second half of 

2020, “exhibitor partners have started to 

embrace more and more ScreenX (and 

4DX) as a means of bringing moviegoers 

back to cinema, as the experience can’t be 

replicated at home or elsewhere.” 

As with Imax, East Asia was ScreenX’s 

strongest territory in 2020, with China’s 

box office having “fully recovered to past 

annual averages, while Korea and Japan 

have had a steady inflow of audiences” in 

the final months of the year, says Kim. 

With audiences eager to set foot in 

theaters—and big-budget Hollywood 

releases decidedly not, at least not 

yet—CJ 4DPLEX has had to be flexible 

in terms of programming, says Kim. In 

collaboration with parent company CJ 

CGV and sister company CJ ENM, “We 

recognized the skyrocketing demand for 

alternative content made specially for 

the big screen, and in particular ScreenX. 

PLF’S GLOBAL 

FOOTPRINT 

Imax 

1,572 

screens worldwide 

North America: 420 

Greater China: 724 

APAC: 122 

EMEA: 251 

LATAM: 55 

Dolby Cinema 

450+ 

locations open or committed 

27 

exhibitor partners in 14 

countries 

Dolby Atmos 

6,100+ 

screens open or committed 

90+ 

countries 

ScreenX 

61 

exhibitor partners in 36 

countries 

351 

screens worldwide 

U.S./Canada: 56 screens 

LATAM: 4 screens 

EMEA: 66 screens 

Asia/Oceania: 225 screens 


67 


Theater TECH 

With virtually all offline concerts canceled 

due to Covid, we found that fans find 

inherent value in reliving the exhilarating 

experience of a concert-type event in the 

cinema instead. So we’ve bolstered our 

efforts in creating an immersive and vibrant 

way of enjoying concerts through our 

ScreenX format. The feedback indicates 

that this fledgling segment of cinema shows 

great loyalty and box office potential as it 

provides a comfortable, safe, and communal 

environment for audiences to see their 

favorite stars.” 

Thank You All: The Kim Ho Joong Movie, 

featuring a popular Korean opera star, was 

broadcast live to 40 ScreenX theaters in 

Korea before being filmed and rereleased 

three months later; Kim notes that 80 

percent of the film’s audience market share 

came from ScreenX. Outside the concert 

space, ScreenX’s first-ever livestreams 

of Korea’s League of Legends tournament 

launched in May 2020. ScreenX’s threescreen 

format, explains Kim, allowed 

viewers to augment the real-time broadcast 

with data and other images that “intensified 

the game-viewing experience.” The 

company is also expanding its programming 

to include more documentaries and content 

“[Dolby has] seen our presence 

grow overseas in the last 

year, particularly in Asia 

and the Middle East, which 

are bouncing back from the 

pandemic ahead of the rest of 

the world.” 

from TV and YouTube moving forward. 

With Covid cases not yet under control 

and a consistent movie slate still on the 

horizon, the North American market 

hasn’t yet fully entered its own recovery 

period—though when that day does 

come, says Dolby’s Doug Darrow, SVP, 

cinema business group, “We expect 

those returning to the movies in 2021 to 

desire elevated experiences such as a 

PLF. As we know, going to the movies is 

a fun, immersive experience, and people 

want the best when they go.” That belief 

is shored up by Dolby’s international 

experience, as 2020 was a growth year for 

the company’s premium Dolby Cinema 

offering. Says Darrow: “We’ve seen our 

presence grow overseas in the last year, 

particularly in Asia and the Middle 

East, which are bouncing back from 

the pandemic ahead of the rest of the 

world. We have new screens and exhibitor 

partners in several countries including 

China, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and 

the UAE—showing that people are truly 

demanding the best experience possible.” 

Looking back at North America, 

Dehmel describes Imax’s experience 

in the domestic market as “muted”; as 



THE POWER 

OF PREMIUM 

“Cineplex’s premium offerings, 

including UltraAVX, Imax, D-Box, 4DX, 

ScreenX, and VIP Cinemas, provide 

our guests with an immersive big 

sound and big-screen experience 

that bring films to life—something 

that can’t be replicated at home. We 

know that our guests miss the magic 

of the movies and shared experiences 

right now, and we can’t wait to 

welcome them back to our theaters 

once again.” 

Ellis Jacob 

CEO 

Cineplex 

“Premium large-format (PLF) screens 

provide an unmatchable experience— 

the best screens, cinema sound, 

comfortable seats, and overall social 

environment. It is the way movies 

were meant to be seen, and it can’t 

be duplicated at home. At Marcus 

Theatres we are excited to offer this 

experience through UltraScreen DLX, 

SuperScreen DLX, UltraScreen, and a 

few Imax auditoriums, and our guests 

are excited too. In fact, they are 

seeking out these large-screen formats 

to see new releases and classics in a 

way that they are fully immersed into 

the movie. It’s extremely popular and 

a growing trend, and we look for that 

to continue. We also look forward to 

the day very soon when our guests are 

back to seeing blockbusters on all of 

our screens on a weekly basis.” 

Rolando Rodriguez 

President and CEO 

Marcus Theatres 

of December 21, only 40 percent of its 

North American network was open, and 

top screens in Los Angeles and New 

York had remained closed since March. 

Kim of CJ 4DPLEX, too, notes that “we 

are eager to have our U.S. business 

back,” while MediaMation CEO Howard 

Kiedaisch says that some “customers with 

capital available are investing now” in 

new installations so that they can more 

fully take advantage of “what will be an 

explosion of demand when consumers are 

able to get back out and enjoy what they 

all love—movies on the big screen.” 

At theaters that have been able to open 

in the U.S. and Canada, PLF has played 

a role in getting moviegoers in to see 

such films as are available. According to 

Ryan Noonan, vice president of corporate 

communications at AMC Theatres, “A 

premium large-format experience is a huge 

advantage in the marketplace as it’s become 

a primary driver in getting guests to come 

to the movies right now.” AMC’s North 

American PLF presence includes 153 Dolby 

Cinema installations and 186 Imax screens. 

It’s a sentiment echoed by Rob Lehman, 

COO at Santikos Entertainment, which 

boasts its own exhibitor-branded PLF 

(called AVX) in addition to one Imax 

screen. Starting in May, when Santikos 

locations began to reopen with classic 

titles, ticket prices for both PLF and 

regular auditoriums were reduced to $5. 

“This allowed our customers to experience 

classic movies like Jurassic Park and 

Raiders of the Lost Ark in our AVX 

auditoriums,” says Lehman, with the goal 

that’d they’d enjoy the experience and 

return once prices went back up (as they 

did with the release of Tenet) and new 

movies began coming out. 

On Christmas Day, AVX auditoriums 

at Santikos’s Casa Blanca and Palladium 

locations boasted 92 and 93 percent 

occupancy, respectively (with the caveat 

that occupancy rates for both locations 

were mandated at 50%). As of January 

10, Santikos’s Palladium location was the 

highest-grossing nationwide for the films 

News of the World and Let Him Go, in part 

due to AVX screenings there. 

B&B Theatres, too, finds that audiences 

have responded to the PLF experience 

during the pandemic, with EVP Brock 

Bagby arguing that “customers have a 

sense of safety in these giant rooms with 

tall ceilings. You feel more spread out than 

being in a smaller, more intimate setting.” 

Among its PLF offerings, B&B boasts Imax, 

MediaMation’s MX4D immersive seating 

technology, ScreenX, and its own branded 

PLF experience, called Grand Screens— 

though as of press time, only 23 Grand 

Screens and one Imax screen were open. 

Says Bagby: “During this time, we only 

“We have both XPlus and Imax 

formats in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, and 

Argentina. XPlus is our PLF format 

and includes a giant screen, laser 

projection, recliners, and Dolby Atmos 

sound. Regarding Covid, PLFs made 

a difference for us early on with Tenet 

and somewhat with Wonder Woman 

1984. However, the real difference 

they will make will be felt when we 

are on the other side of Covid and 

people and films are back in force. 

Once that happens, people will 

want a moviegoing experience that 

is dramatically different from what 

they have been experiencing from 

their sofa over the last year. PLFs will 

deliver that.” 

Mark Malinowski 

Vice President of Global Marketing 

Showcase Cinema 


69 


Theater INDUSTRY INSIDERS 

Right: Telescopic 

Seating Systems 

premium seating Imax 

installation 

PREMIUM 

SEATING 

PROS 

Fred and Denise Jacobs 

Keep It All in the Family at 

Telescopic Seating Systems 

BY REBECCA PAHLE 

“Jacobs” might not be in the name—but 

Telescopic Seating Systems counts itself 

among the many family-run businesses 

that keep the exhibition sector moving. 

Married for over 40 years, Fred and 

Denise Jacobs have come up through 

multiple industries together, landing in 

the seating world—along with their son, 

TSS’s engineering manager, and daughterin-law, 

its CPA—as the couple behind 

Telescopic Seating Systems. 

Born in Flint, Michigan, Fred and 

Denise began their respective careers 

in the automotive industry. Fred found 

his niche in automotive interiors, while 

Denise—needing “a little more challenge” 

than her job at General Motors afforded— 

went back to college at the University of 

Michigan. She had two children in four 

years while earning her bachelor’s in 

physics, then joined Fred at the AC Spark 

Plug Division of General Motors as a 

manufacturing engineer. 

“We thought we were going to be 

Flint lifers,” Denise recalls—but a job 

opportunity took them to Holland, 

Michigan, where Telescopic Seating 

Systems is based today. There, Fred 

helped manage an automotive seating 

company. This was the 1990s, when a 

boom in multiplex construction sent 

demand for seating through the roof. Ford 

Motor Company decided it wanted in on 

the action; Fred recalls that he “went in 

to make a presentation on seats for their 

Mustangs and walked out with a contract 

to make movie theater seats instead.” From 

there, Fred ran what he calls the “stealth 

movie theater seat company,” Visteon, 

which from 1998 to 2003 operated as a 

division of Ford. “We were making 40,000 

to 60,000 seats a year. … Going to all the 

trade shows. But people didn’t really know 

that the same people that made seats 

for their Cadillacs and their Buicks were 

making their movie theater seats.” 

In 2003, Ford’s six-year experiment 

in movie theater seating came to an end 

when Visteon was spun off into its own 

entity. Fred became a minority partner in 

Track Seating, which bid unsuccessfully 

for Visteon’s movie theater seat business. 

Track Seating continued to make seats 

for Buicks and Cadillacs while expanding 

into the non-automotive arena, buying 

a company called American Desk. While 

Denise continued in the automotive 

interiors business, Fred expanded 

into other facets of the seating world, 

manufacturing seats for universities 

“People didn’t really know 

that the same people 

that made seats for their 

Cadillacs and their Buicks 

were making their movie 

theater seats.” 


70-72_Premium-Seating-Pros.indd 70 15/02/2021 15:21

and sports stadiums and setting up an 

independent seating company in China to 

service that market. Meanwhile, their son 

Matt, straight out of high school, joined 

Track Seating as an engineering intern. 

When Fred’s partners opted to sell 

Track Seating, he was left at a career 

crossroads. “I wasn’t smart enough to 

retire,” he jokes, and Denise “wouldn’t 

let me just stay at home and go fishing.” 

(Denise counters: “He doesn’t want 

to retire!”) In 2011, building on years 

of industry knowledge and contacts, 

the pair started the U.S. company 

Telescopic Seating Systems LLC, with 

Fred as managing director and Denise as 

president and majority owner. 

The decision to name their new 

company Telescopic Seating Systems 

and not, say, Jacobs Seating, came from a 

desire to center their products, which can 

be found in theaters, arenas, auditoriums, 

and more widely across North America 

and Asia. The “Telescopic” in the 

name refers to TSS’s most eye-catching 

feature: a patented system allowing 

all TSS power recliners (up to 100 on a 

single circuit) to be raised up for ease of 

cleaning underneath. Explains Fred, the 

“You look at recliners 

and you say, ‘Well, yeah, 

I understand they’re 

comfortable.’ But I’m 

thinking, if I were a manager 

of a theater, how in the 

world would you clean them 

between every show?” 

seats “extend and retract … like powered 

recliners, but on a much larger scale.” 

The company’s Smart Clean Sweep and 

Smart Power-2 technologies, Denise says, 

“lower theater construction/operations 

[costs] while make cleaning recliner 

theaters a breeze.” 

Ease of recliner cleaning is not 

originally what the Jacobses were going 

for. Back when Telescopic Seating Systems 

first started, “we developed a very good 

rocker system and led with that, along 

with other products,” Fred says. “And 

then people started buying recliners!” 

AMC, North America’s largest chain, 

upgraded in the early aughts from rockers 

to recliners, leading their competitors 

to follow suit. Fred and Denise took a 

moment to be upset, Fred admits, that 

their new invention was now old-school. 

Then they took a step back and assessed 

what the so-called recliner revolution 

meant for the needs of their customers. 

“You look at recliners and you say, ‘Well, 

yeah, I understand they’re comfortable,’” 

says Denise. “But I’m thinking, if I were 

a manager of a theater, how in the world 

would you clean them between every 

show? Especially if you had to open them 


71 


Theater INDUSTRY INSIDERS 

up every time? … How do you get rid of 

all the residue that you’re going to find 

in the chairs?” The barrier to entry for 

making home recliners, Fred adds, isn’t 

particularly high: “Can you buy fabric? Can 

you buy mechanisms to [recline the seats]? 

Can you buy a staple gun?” Telescopic 

Seating Systems, they decided, would be a 

“technology-based company,” says Fred, at 

its core one innovation designed to better 

the customer experience: “How to power 

a roomful of recliners. How to network 

recliners together in a link.” Since then, 

the technology has evolved, adding such 

features as the ability to lift only the seats 

that have not been cleaned since their last 

use and a red light/green light system so 

the customer can know their seat has been 

freshly cleaned. 

All of that, of course, positions 

Telescopic Seating Systems to meet 

exhibitors’ needs during Covid. They are 

one of a handful of companies that have 

introduced new products since March 

2020 designed to increase theaters’ ability 

to maintain standards of cleanliness 

and sanitation. For Telescopic Seating 

Systems, that product is the Seat Suite, 

a single-use partition that can be put 

between seats, creating a physical barrier 

between customers and their neighbors. 

(As an added bonus, the shields can also 

serve as ad hoc ad spaces.) 

As with Telescopic Seating Systems’ 

rocker system, their Seat Suite was 

originally designed for one purpose, until 

changing exhibition realities shifted the 

company in another direction. While 

they’re marketed now as a way to increase 

“guest confidence in social distancing,” 

they were originally envisioned as a 

less-expensive, more flexible way for 

Telescopic Seating Systems customers to 

adapt to the increasingly popular “pod” 

concept, adopted at luxury chains like iPic. 

“It’s something that we had been working 

on for four or five years,” Fred recalls— 

“but it was for privacy,” not safety. 

For the Jacobses, the needs of the 

customer—and the flexibility required to 

meet those needs—remain top of mind, 

now as when they first started Telescopic 

Seating Solutions. That’s why, though 

the cinema seating industry has moved 

somewhat toward high-tech seats boasting 

heaters, USB ports, and other bells and 

whistles befitting the luxury recliner 

experience, TSS still sells trusty rockers in 

addition to their other products. 

“I think that, ultimately, it’s easy to 

be blinded by the glorious, luxurious 

installation” of high-end chairs, says 

Jacobs. Ticket price being the same, most 

moviegoers would prefer a luxury recliner 

to a ’90s-style rocker—but price usually isn’t 

the same, and while the shift to recliners 

has driven occupancy rates in theaters, in 

some places “a basic rocker chair is all the 

market can afford.” On top of that, there 

are some theaters—for example, those with 

older, sloped floors and a programming 

lineup that caters to families with small 

(age-wise and height-wise) children—where 

a shorter, more compact chair makes 

more sense. “We really try to work with 

a customer to understand their business 

and their market,” says Fred, “rather than 

selling the fanciest puppy in the window.” 

In 2016, Denise retired from the 

automotive world, where she’d worked 

at Magna Mirrors, to devote her energies 

to Telescopic Seating Systems. “When I 

came on board, that was exciting for me, 

because for the first time I could start 

traveling with Fred” to all the regional 

shows, in addition to the major ones she’d 

been able to attend before. That, now, is 

temporarily on hold—but the couple looks 

forward to the day when they can once 

again “pack up the trailer and go out and 

hit the road and visit customers!” Says 

Fred, “the exhibition industry is really 

blessed with that personal connection. 

There is certainly tough competition 

between chains, but most chains 

understand and respect one another. … 

That civility, within the exhibition 

industry, is good to be maintained.” 

“We really try to work with a 

customer to understand their 

business and their market, 

rather than selling the fanciest 

puppy in the window.” 



Change with the Changing Times 

#UpgradeTo 

info@galalitescreens.com | www.galalitescreens.com 

Follow us on : 

/galalitescreens 


73 

73_AD-Omniterm-Galalite.indd 73 12/02/2021 12:38

Big screen. 

Bigger cause. 

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital® is 

leading the way the world understands, 

treats and defeats childhood cancer and 

other life-threatening diseases. But, we 

couldn’t do it without you. By donating 

pre-show advertising to screen the annual 

St. Jude Thanks and Giving® movie trailer, 

you support our lifesaving mission: Finding 

cures. Saving children.® The generosity of 

you and your patrons helps ensure that 

families never receive a bill from St. Jude 

for treatment, travel, housing or food— 

because all a family should worry about is 

helping their child live. 

St. Jude patient 

Luigi 

Art inspired by St. Jude patient Jaden 

For more information, please email 

chance.weaver@stjude.org or visit stjude.org/theaters 


©2020 ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (PRNS1692) 

20-PRNS-1692 74_AD-StJudes.indd T&G Box 74 Office Ad_FY20-FullPg-8.25 x 10.875.indd 1 

12/02/2021 2/20/20 1:36 12:38 PM

We Are Parable 76 | Booking Guide 81 

ON SCREEN 

“We created this raw, immersive moment within the BFI 

Southbank. That was a moment where people really saw 

themselves represented ...” 

We Are Parable, p. 76 


75 

75_ONSCREEN-Opener.indd 75 12/02/2021 12:39

On Screen WE ARE PARABLE 

EXPERIENCE 

OVER 

EVERYTHING 

For U.K.’s We Are 

Parable, Screenings Are 

More Than Just Movies 

BY REBECCA PAHLE 


76-80_We-Are-Parable.indd 76 15/02/2021 15:29

Left: We Are Parable 

co-founders Anthony 

and Teanne Andrews at 

a January 2020 screening 

of Queen & Slim, which 

featured a Q&A and a 

poetry reading 

“That’s something that 

is truly so rare and so 

precious. And I think the 

more that we can create 

those connective threads 

in our audience, the better 

cinema will become.” 

When British exhibition pros 

Anthony and Teanne Andrews 

hosted their first screening in 2013, 

they had no thoughts that their one-off 

event—born of a shared love for Coming 

to America—would turn into an actual 

business. Certainly, that said business 

might throw them into the same sphere 

as Spike Lee was beyond imagining at 

the time. And yet eight years later, the 

Andrewses’ We Are Parable has become 

one of the most exciting companies in the 

U.K. exhibition space, crafting innovative 

events that celebrate Black films, Black 

filmmakers, and Black audiences. 

The core of We Are Parable’s philosophy 

can be found in that very first event, held at 

the Stratford East Picturehouse in London. 

“We just wanted to see one of our favorite 

films on the big screen,” recalls Anthony 

Andrews. Not content with bringing Prince 

Akeem back into a theater and calling it a 

day, the duo began to think of ways they 

could communicate their love of the film to 

moviegoers who hopefully felt the same way. 

The idea to add in a “few visual cues” 

that fans of the films would quickly 

recognize “snowballed,” Andrews 

says, into a re-creation of the fictional 

kingdom of Zamunda in the theater, 

with craftspeople and other vendors 

from the African diaspora, dancers and 

musicians, and—of course—rose bearers 

in attendance. Special touches like these 

“elicit an emotional response from our 

audience,” says Andrews. In an age when 

classics can be rented for a few bucks 

on streaming platforms, We Are Parable 

has found success in adding a “little bit 

novel, a little bit avant-garde” edge to their 

screenings—thus creating a “connective 

thread” between audience members 

who recognize and appreciate the same 

references. “That’s something that is truly 

so rare and so precious. And I think the 

more that we can create those connective 

threads in our audience, the better cinema 

will become.” 

We Are Parable’s approach reflects a 

truth that exhibitors have understood 

since the first days of cinema: that 

moviegoing is a communal experience. 

Following the success of their Coming 

to America screening, We Are Parable 

built similar experiences around other 

films, like Love & Basketball (giving U.K. 

moviegoers “the all-American experience,” 


77 



with cheerleaders and a makeshift 

basketball court) and the “Spike is 60” film 

festival, where (for example), a double 

bill of Do the Right Thing and Crooklyn 

was coupled with a block party. The 

festival had already been programmed 

and scheduled when We Are Parable got 

an email from the man himself with an 

unexpected offer. Spike Lee would be in 

town for a few days. Did they want to do 

an event together? 

“It’s one of those pinch-yourself 

moments,” recalls Andrews. We Are 

Parable had three days to secure a cinema, 

put together an event, and sell tickets. 

(Which they did, to a 400-strong, sold-out 

crowd.) “We had to move heaven and earth 

to make it happen,” Andrews says. “But 

people were so appreciative of being able 

to meet him. He did a wonderful meet and 

greet afterwards, signing memorabilia, 

signing books, taking pictures. The man 

is so much for the people. … We still have 

people come up to us now, saying, ‘That 

was amazing. I never thought I’d meet 

Spike Lee, and you guys did that.’” 

The Spike Lee event marked a turning 

point for We Are Parable, and the fledgling 

exhibitors knew at once that they 

“We created this raw, 

immersive moment within the 

BFI Southbank. That was a 

moment where people really 

saw themselves represented— 

not only in the film, but 

also in the way we put the 

experience together.” 

“want[ed] to build on that momentum as 

much as possible,” Andrews says. “That’s 

when we really started to think of our 

organization, of what we built, as a 

business.” They became more focused 

on funding applications and different 

revenue streams. Their boosted visibility 

and reputation as a result of the Lee event 

helped them make connections and form 

relationships—key among them with the 

British Film Institute. It was the BFI who 

asked We Are Parable, in 2017, if they’d 

like to work together on the first-ever 

public screening of Black Panther, held in 

February of the following year. 

While planning the Black Panther 

event, Anthony and Teanne had not yet 

seen the film—but they “knew what the 

film would mean to our audience” and 

felt a responsibility to get it right. They 

came up with the idea of reimagining 

the BFI Southbank in London as a royal 

space—not as Wakanda itself, but a 

representation of what the regal T’Challa 

would expect to see walking into a cinema. 

“We had interior designers. We had jewelry 

makers. We had booksellers. We had 

fashion designers, music, art.” As well 

as an exhibition showing famous Black 



characters in comics history. “We created 

this raw, immersive moment within the 

BFI Southbank. That was a moment 

where people really saw themselves 

represented—not only in the film, but also 

in the way we put the experience together.” 

In the U.K., as in the U.S., the 

exhibition landscape is largely white— 

though “it’s definitely getting better,” 

says Andrews. “Distributors are starting 

to realize that, yes, they are acquiring 

these [Black] films, but actually, do they 

have the knowledge and the tools and the 

resources to be able to reach the audiences 

that these films need to be seen by? I think, 

on their own, no.” Andrews encourages 

distributors to reach out to organizations 

and exhibitors like We Are Parable that do 

the work to showcase Black films to Black 

audiences. The challenge there, he admits, 

is in “making sure that you’re paying for 

and you’re valuing the service that these 

exhibitors bring.” 

Since the Black Panther event, We 

Are Parable went for “bigger pieces of 

funding” and began to schedule events 

outside the London area. If landing Spike 

Lee and Black Panther (with director Ryan 

Coogler in attendance for a Q&A) were 

key moments in We Are Parable’s story, 

Covid-19 is another—one that shifted We 

Are Parable from more events to none at 

all, at least for a few months. 

During that time, however, We Are 

Parable did not stay silent, shifting their 

resources to conduct a survey on how 

customer confidence about a return to 

cinemas varied across different ethnic 

groups. Missing in wider conversations 

about attracting moviegoers back to 

cinemas, Andrews believed, was an 

awareness that members of minority 

ethnic communities were more likely 

to die of Covid-19 than their white 

counterparts. Suspecting that this fact 

would impact willingness to return to 

cinemas among moviegoers of color, and 

dissatisfied about the level of attention 

paid to this “specific and vulnerable 

audience”—which, per statistics 

published by the BFI, sees movies more 

frequently than the overall population— 

We Are Parable surveyed 1,100 moviegoers, 

40 percent of them Black, Asian, or from 

other non-white ethnic groups, on their 

feelings about getting back to the movies. 

The results, released in July, found 

that Black respondents on the whole were 

significantly less likely to be confident 

about returning to cinemas than white 

respondents. “Almost a fifth of them 

said that they wouldn’t be going back to 

cinemas till 2021. Another third of that 

audience said that they’re not sure about 

when they’re going to go back to cinemas. 

If you think about that, that’s almost 50 

percent of an audience who are some of 

the most frequent visitors.” On a dollarsand-cents 

level, “it doesn’t make sense 

to ignore this cohort of people” and their 

comparative hesitancy about returning to 

cinemas. “From a moralistic view, in some 

ways, it’s unforgivable in my eyes.” 

The data We Are Parable has released, 

Andrews says, has pushed industry bodies 

in the U.K. to think about how they can 

better communicate the safety measures 

they’re taking to prevent the spread of 

Covid-19. Andrews himself integrated the 

insight gained from the survey into We 

Are Parable’s first event post-shutdown: 

a sold-out screening of Sarah Gavron’s 

Rocks, held at the Rio Cinema in London 

on September 8. 

We Are Parable was careful to 

communicate the Rio’s “very stringent” 

safety measures to their audience in 

advance of the event. “What we wanted 

to do is be responsible and not contradict 

our research by saying, ‘Oh, just come to 

the cinema! It’s going to be fine!’” Multiple 

posts on social media reiterated, in a “very 

succinct” way, the guidelines all attendees 

would have to follow. Temperatures would 

be taken. Masks would be worn. Tickets 

should be purchased in advance. Social 

distancing would be in effect. Attendees 

would have to wait outside before the film 

started. The goal was “reminding people 

of the key, fundamental things that you’ll 

need to do and [explaining] why, perhaps, 

“Do they have the 

knowledge and the tools 

and the resources to be able 

to reach the audiences that 

these films need to be seen 

by? I think, on their own, no.” 

Left: Lupita Nyong’o 

and Chadwick 

Boseman in Marvel 

Studios’ Black Panther 

Right: Sarah Gavron’s 

Rocks marked We 

Are Parable’s first 

screening since the 

start of the Covid-19 

pandemic 


79 



that might mean that the screening 

is going to start later than advertised. 

Because it still is very much a new 

normal for people.” 

“To the untrained eye,” Andrews 

admits, “it would look like we are overcommunicating. 

However, I think what 

we’re doing is showing the commitment 

to our audience. Myself and Teanne, we 

always say, ‘We are the audience.’” And, 

like other audience members, they’re 

wary of going into public places with the 

pandemic still under way. “We understand 

some of the concerns, and I think it would 

be remiss of us not to communicate and 

try and alleviate some of those concerns 

for our audience by quote-unquote 

overcommunicating to them.” 

With their own concerns—as exhibitors, 

as audience members—in the forefront 

of their minds leading up to the Rocks 

screening, Anthony and Teanne were 

uncertain that the event would be well 

received. Those concerns were put to rest 

when the event sold out—even if “sold out” 

in September 2020 meant 160 seats filled 

in a 400-seat theater. “That was a great 

result for us, because we weren’t sure. We 

were thinking we’d get a smattering of 

people, but for us to sell out—it vindicated 

our decision to go back into cinemas, 

albeit safely.” 

Other screenings and events have 

followed in the months since—online 

and in physical spaces, both indoors 

and outdoors, reflecting the shifting 

requirements of theatrical exhibition in 

the U.K. In collaboration with the U.K. Film 

and TV Charity, We Are Parable developed 

Momentum, a program designed to support 

aspiring Black filmmakers. And late in a 

tumultuous year, Anthony and Teanne 

Andrews—seven years out from their first 

We Are Parable screening—were added 

as new members of BAFTA. “Not only is 

it a massive honour, but it represents an 

opportunity for us to contribute to lasting 

change within the film and TV industry,” 

Anthony wrote on social media. “There’s 

work to be done, and we couldn’t be 

happier that we’ll be a part of it.” 

Above: A pre-pandemic 

screening (and postscreening 

DJ session) of 

Prince's Purple Rain, held 

in Bristol’s Cube cinema 

in January 2020 as 

part of the BFI Musicals! 

The Greatest Show on 

Screen series 

“[The challenge is in] 

making sure that you’re 

paying for and you’re 

valuing the service that 

these exhibitors bring.” 



On Screen BOOKING GUIDE 

BOOKING 

GUIDE 

Release calendar for theatrical 

distribution in North America 

Release dates are accurate as of February 11. For the latest 

schedule, visit www.boxofficepro.com/release-calendar. 

20TH CENTURY STUDIOS 

310-369-1000 

212-556-2400 

FREE GUY 

Fri, 5/21/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer 

Director: Shawn Levy 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com/Act 

DEEP WATER 

Fri, 8/13/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ana de Armas, Ben Affleck 

Director: Adrian Lyne 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Thr 

THE KING'S MAN 

Fri, 8/20/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ralph Fiennes, 

Gemma Arterton 

Director: Matthew Vaughn 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

UNTITLED 20TH CENTURY 2022 1 

Fri, 1/7/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

NIMONA 

Fri, 1/14/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 


Fri, 2/11/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 


Fri, 6/10/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 


Fri, 9/16/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 


Fri, 10/21/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

AVATAR 2 

Fri, 12/16/22 WIDE 

Stars: Zoe Saldana, 

Sam Worthington 

Director: James Cameron 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Fan/SF 


Fri, 12/23/22 WIDE 

Rating: R 


Fri, 1/13/23 WIDE 

Rating: NR 


Fri, 3/24/23 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

A24 

646-568-6015 

ZOLA 

Fri, 6/30/21 LTD 

Stars: Taylour Paige, Riley Keough 

Director: Janicza Bravo 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra 

THE GREEN KNIGHT 

Fri, 7/30/21 LTD 

Stars: Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander 

Director: David Lowery 

Rating: R 

Genre: Fan 

DEATH ON THE NILE 

Fri, 9/17/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Bateman, 

Annette Bening 

Director: Kenneth Branagh 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Cri/Dra/Mys 

West Side Story 

Fri, 12/10/21 WIDE 

THE LAST DUEL 

Fri, 10/15/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

RON'S GONE WRONG 

Fri, 10/22/21 WIDE 

Directors: Alessandro Carloni, 

J.P. Vine 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

WEST SIDE STORY 

Fri, 12/10/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler 

Director: Steven Spielberg 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Mus 


81 

81-87_Booking-Guide.indd 81 15/02/2021 15:31


CAPTAIN MARVEL 2 

Fri, 11/11/22 WIDE 

Stars: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris 

Director: Nia DaCosta 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/SF/Fan 

UNTITLED DISNEY ANIMATION 2022 

Fri, 11/23/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

UNTITLED MARVEL 2023 1 

Fri, 2/17/23 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

UNTITLED DISNEY LIVE ACTION 

2023 1 

Fri, 3/10/23 WIDE 

FOCUS FEATURES 

Six Minutes to Midnight 

Fri, 3/26/21 WIDE 

DISNEY 

818-560-1000 

Ask for Distribution 

BLACK WIDOW 


Stars: Scarlett Johansson, 

David Harbour 

Director: Cate Shortland 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Adv 

Specs: 3-D 

CRUELLA 

Fri, 5/28/21 WIDE 

Stars: Emma Stone, 

Emma Thompson 

Director: Craig Gillespie 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

LUCA 

Fri, 6/18/21 WIDE 

Director: Enrico Casarosa 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF 

THE TEN RINGS 


Stars: Simu Liu, Awkwafina 

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Adv/Fan 

JUNGLE CRUISE 

Fri, 7/30/21 WIDE 

Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt 

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra 

Rating: NR 


Specs: Dolby Vis/Atmos 

THE BEATLES: GET BACK 

Fri, 8/27/21 WIDE 

Stars: The Beatles 

Director: Peter Jackson 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Doc 

ETERNALS 

Fri, 11/5/21 WIDE 

Stars: Richard Madden, 

Angelina Jolie 

Director: Chloé Zhao 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Adv/SF 

ENCANTO 

Fri, 11/24/21 WIDE 

Drectors: Byron Howard, Jared Bush 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 


2021 

Fri, 12/17/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

TURNING RED 

Fri, 3/11/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE 

MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS 

Fri, 3/25/22 WIDE 

Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch 

Director: Sam Raimi 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF/Fan/Adv 


2022 1 


Rating: NR 

THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER 


Stars: Chris Hemsworth, 

Tessa Thompson 

Director: Taika Waititi 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF/Fan/Act 


2022 2 

Fri, 5/27/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

LIGHTYEAR 

Fri, 6/17/22 WIDE 

Stars: Chris Evans 

Director: Angus MacLane 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

BLACK PANTHER 2 


Director: Ryan Coogler 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/SF/Fan 

UNTITLED INDIANA JONES 

Fri, 7/29/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 



2022 3 

Fri, 8/12/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

UNTITLED MARVEL 2022 

Fri, 10/7/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 


2022 4 

Fri, 11/4/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

FINAL ACCOUNT 

Fri, 5/21/21 WIDE 

Director: Luke Holland 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Doc 

BLUE BAYOU 

Fri, 6/25/21 WIDE 

Stars: Justin Chon, Alicia Vikander 

Director: Justin Chon 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO 

Fri, 10/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Anya Taylor-Joy, 

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie 

Director: Edgar Wright 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor/Thr 


IFC FILMS 

bookings@ifcfilms.com 

COME TRUE 

Fri, 3/12/21 LTD 

Stars: Julia Sarah Stone, 

Landon Liboiron 

Director: Anthony Scott Burns 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF/Rom 

LAST CALL 

Fri, 3/19/21 LTD 

Stars: Jeremy Piven, Taryn Manning 

Director: Paolo Pilladi 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

SIX MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT 

Fri, 3/26/21 LTD 

Stars: Judi Dench, James D'Arcy 

Director: Andy Goddard 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: War 



LIONSGATE 

310-309-8400 

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF 

MASSIVE TALENT 

Fri, 3/19/21 WIDE 

Stars: Nicolas Cage 

Director: Tom Gormican 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Com 

THE ASSET 

Fri, 4/23/21 WIDE 

Stars: Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson 

Director: Martin Campbell 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Thr 

SPIRAL 

Fri, 5/21/21 WIDE 

Stars: Chris Rock, 

Samuel L. Jackson 

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

THE HITMAN’S WIFE'S 

BODYGUARD 

Fri, 8/20/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ryan Reynolds, 

Samuel L. Jackson 

Director: Patrick Hughes 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Com 

AMERICAN UNDERDOG: THE KURT 

WARNER STORY 

Fri, 12/10/21 WIDE 

Directors: Jon Erwin, Andrew Erwin 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 

Fri, 5/27/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

MAGNOLIA PICTURES 

212-379-9704 

Neal Block 

nblock@magpictures.com 

ENFORCEMENT 

Fri, 3/19/21 LTD 

Stars: Jacob Lohmann, Simon Sears 

Directors: Anders Ølholm, 

Frederik Louis Hviid 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Cri 

HELD 

Fri, 4/9/21 LTD 

Stars: Jill Awbrey, Bart Johnson 

Directors: Travis Cluff, Chris Lofing 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor/Thr 

ABOUT ENDLESSNESS 

Fri, 4/30/21 LTD 

Stars: Martin Serner, 

Jessica Louthander 

Director: Roy Andersson 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

NEON 

hal@neonrated.com 

THE KILLING OF TWO LOVERS 

Fri, 5/14/21 LTD 

Stars: Clayne Crawford, 

Sepideh Moafi 

Director: Robert Machoian 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Thr 

PARAMOUNT 

323-956-5000 

INFINITE 

Fri, 5/28/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF 

TOP GUN: MAVERICK 


Stars: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller 

Director: Joseph Kosinski 

Rating: NR 


Specs: Imax/Dolby Vis/Atmos 

THE TOMORROW WAR 

Fri, 7/23/21 WIDE 

Stars: Yvonne Strahovski, Chris Pratt 

Director: Chris McKay 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/SF 

PAW PATROL 

Fri, 8/20/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

JACKASS 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

A QUIET PLACE PART II 

Fri, 9/17/21 WIDE 

Stars: Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy 

Director: John Krasinski 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Hor 

RTS 


83 



MY LITTLE PONY MOVIE 

Fri, 9/24/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

SNAKE EYES 

Fri, 10/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Henry Golding, Andrew Koj 

Director: Robert Schwentke 

Rating: NR 


CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG 

Fri, 11/5/21 WIDE 

Stars: Jack Whitehall, Darby Camp 

Director: Walt Becker 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Fam 

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7 

Fri, 11/19/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Cruise 

Director: Christopher McQuarrie 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

SCREAM 

Fri, 1/14/22 WIDE 

Stars: Melissa Barrera, Kyle Gallner 

Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, 

Tyler Gillett 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

RUMBLE 

Fri, 2/18/22 WIDE 

Stars: Will Arnett, Terry Crews 

Director: Hamish Grieve 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

UNTITLED PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 

MOVIE 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2 


Stars: Ben Schwartz 

ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS 

323-882-8490 

THE COURIER 

Fri, 3/19/21 WIDE 

Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, 

Rachel Brosnahan 

Director: Dominic Cooke 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Thr 

SABAN FILMS 

COSMIC SIN 

Fri, 3/12/21 LTD 

Stars: Bruce Willis, Frank Grillo 

Director: Edward Drake 

Rating: R 

Genre: SF/Adv 

HAPPILY 

Fri, 3/19/21 LTD 

Stars: Joel McHale, Kerry Bishé 

Director: BenDavid Grabinski 

Rating: R 

Genre: Com/Thr 

THE VAULT 

Fri, 3/26/21 LTD 

Stars: Famke Janssen, Sam Riley 

Director: Jaume Balagueró 

Rating: R 

Genre: Thr 

ASSAULT ON VA-33 

Fri, 4/2/21 LTD 

Stars: Sean Patrick Flanery, 

Rob Van Dam 

Director: Christopher Ray 

Rating: R 


SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES 

212-556-2400 

THE NIGHT HOUSE 

Fri, 7/16/21 LTD 

Stars: Rebecca Hall, 

Sarah Goldberg 

Director: David Bruckner 

Rating: R 

Genre: Hor 

THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE 

Fri, 9/24/21 LTD 

Stars: Jessica Chastain, 

Andrew Garfield 

Director: Michael Showalter 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

ANTLERS 

Fri, 10/29/21 LTD 

Stars: Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons 

Director: Scott Cooper 

Rating: R 

Genre: Hor 

NIGHTMARE ALLEY 

Fri, 12/3/21 LTD 

Stars: Bradley Cooper, 

Cate Blanchett 

Director: Guillermo del Toro 

DIGITAL SIGNAGE 

Integrated Digital Signage, 

Concession Signs, Lobby & 

Directional Signs, Custom Graphics 

MOBILE APP & 

WEBSITES 

Web Management, Website 

Design and Programming, 

Online Ticket Purchasing, 

Mobile App Development, 

Mobile Ticketing Sales 

INTERNET TICKETING 

Online Ticket Sales with Theatre Branded Interface 

Your Complete Theatre 

Management Solution 

Starts Here! 

TICKETING & CONCESSION 

POINT-OF-SALE 

Touch Screen Ticketing, 

Concession Point-of-Sale, 

Two-in-One Terminals, Kiosk Sales 

& Redemptions, Assigned Seating 

BACK OFFICE 

MANAGEMENT 

Show Scheduling, Inventory, 

Cash Control, Remote Access, 

Labor Management, 

Real-Time Corporate Reports 

GIFT CARDS & LOYALTY 

PROGRAMS 

Gift Cards, Virtual Gift Card 

Sales, Customer Rewards 

888-988-4470 Sales 

FILM RENTAL MANAGEMENT 

Automatically Calculate Weekly Film Rental, Create 

Payment Vouchers, Settle Films & Manage Credits 

NETWORK & 

IT SERVICES 

Network Support, Hardware 

Monitoring, Phone & Surveillance 

System Support, ISP Monitoring, 

Security & Antivirus 

RetrieverSolutionsInc.com 



SONY 

212-833-8500 

French Exit 

Fri, 2/12/21 LTD 

FATHERHOOD 

Fri, 4/16/21 WIDE 

Stars: Kevin Hart, Melody Hurd 

Director: Paul Weitz 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

VIVO 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

PETER RABBIT 2: THE RUNAWAY 

Fri, 6/11/21 WIDE 

Stars: Rose Byrne, 

Domhnall Gleeson 

Director: Will Gluck 

Rating: PG 

Genre: Fam 

VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE 

Fri, 6/25/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson 

Director: Andy Serkis 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/SF 

CINDERELLA 

Fri, 7/16/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Fan 

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 4 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani/Com 

DON'T BREATH SEQUEL 

Fri, 8/13/21 WIDE 

Director: Rodo Sayagues 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

UNTITLED RESIDENT EVIL 


Stars: Kaya Scodelario, 

Hannah John-Kamen 

Director: Johannes Roberts 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor/Act 

MAN FROM TORONTO 

FRI, 9/17/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE 

Fri, 11/11/21 WIDE 

Stars: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard 

Director: Jason Reitman 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor/Com/SF 

UNTITLED SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM 

HOME SEQUEL 

Fri, 12/17/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Holland 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

THE NIGHTINGALE 

Wed, 12/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning 

Director: Mélanie Laurent 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

ESCAPE ROOM 2 


Stars: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller 

Director: Adam Robitel 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

MORBIUS 

Fri, 1/21/22 WIDE 

Stars: Jared Leto, Matt Smith 

Director: Daniel Espinosa 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Thr/SF 


UNCHARTED 

Fri, 2/11/22 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg 

Rating: NR 


SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE 

SPIDERVERSE SEQUEL 

Fri, 10/7/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS 

Tom Prassis 

212-833-4981 

FRENCH EXIT 

Fri, 2/12/21 LTD 

Stars: Michelle Pfeiffer, 

Lucas Hedges 

Director: Azazel Jacobs 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra/Com 

THE FATHER 

Fri, 2/26/21 LTD 

Stars: Anthony Hopkins, 

Olivia Colman 

Director: Florian Zeller 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Dra 

THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS 

Fri, 3/5/21 LTD 

Directors: Michael Dweck, 

Gregory Kershaw 

Rating: PG-13 

THE HUMAN FACTOR 

Fri, 5/7/21 LTD 

Director: Dror Moreh 

Genre: Doc 

I CARRY YOU WITH ME 

Fri, 5/21/21 LTD 

Stars: Armando Espitia, 

Christian Vazquez 

Director: Heidi Ewing 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra 

UNITED ARTISTS RELEASING 

310-724-5678 

Ask for Distribution 

SAMARITAN 


Stars: Sylvester Stallone 

Director: Julius Avery 

Rating: NR 


DOG 

Fri, 7/16/21 WIDE 

Stars: Channing Tatum 

Director: Reid Carolin, 

Channing Tatum 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

RESPECT 

Fri, 8/13/21 WIDE 

Stars: Jennifer Hudson, 

Forest Whitaker 

Director: Liesl Tommy 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra/Mus 

DARK HARVEST 

Fri, 9/24/21 WIDE 

Director: David Slade 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

THE ADDAMS FAMILY 2 

Fri, 10/1/21 WIDE 

Stars: Charlize Theron, Oscar Isaac 

Director: Greg Tiernan 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 


85 



Mortal Kombat 

Fri, 4/16/21 WIDE 

NO TIME TO DIE 

Fri, 10/8/21 WIDE 

Stars: Daniel Craig, Rami Malek 

Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga 

Rating: PG-13 


Specs: Imax 

GUCCI 

Fri, 11/24/21 WIDE 

Director: Ridley Scott 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

CYRANO 

Fri, 12/10/21 WIDE 

Stars: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett 

Director: Joe Wright 

Rating: NR 


UNIVERSAL 

818-777-1000 

NOBODY 


Stars: Bob Odenkirk 

Director: Ilya Naishuller 

Rating: R 


MARRY ME 

Fri, 5/14/21 WIDE 

Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson 

Director: Kat Coiro 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Rom/Com 

F9 

Fri, 5/28/21 WIDE 

Stars: Vin Diesel, Charlize Theron 

Director: Justin Lin 

Rating: NR 



SPIRIT UNTAMED 


Director: Elaine Bogan 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU 


Stars: Steve Carell, Taraji P. Henson 

Director: Kyle Balda 

Rating: PG 

Genre: Ani 

THE FOREVER PURGE 


Director: Everardo Gout 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

OLD 

Fri, 7/23/21 WIDE 

Director: M. Night Shyamalan 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Thr 

BIOS 

Fri, 8/13/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Hanks 

Director: Miguel Sapochnik 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF 

CANDYMAN 

Fri, 8/27/21 WIDE 

Stars: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, 

Teyonah Parris 

Director: Nia DaCosta 

Rating: R 

Genre: Hor 

THE BOSS BABY: FAMILY BUSINESS 

Fri, 9/17/21 WIDE 

Stars: Alec Baldwin, Jeff Goldblum 

Director: Tom McGrath 

Rating: PG 

Genre: Ani 

DEAR EVAN HANSEN 

Fri, 9/24/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ben Platt 

Director: Stephen Chbosky 

Rating: NR 


HALLOWEEN KILLS 

Fri, 10/15/21 WIDE 

Director: David Gordon Green 

Rating: R 

Genre: Hor 

SING 2 

Fri, 12/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Matthew McConaughey, 

Reese Witherspoon 

Director: Garth Jennings 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani/Mus 

THE 355 

Fri, 1/14/22 WIDE 

Stars: Jessica Chastain, 

Lupita Nyong’o 

Director: Simon Kinberg 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Thr 

UNTITLED UNIVERSAL EVENT 

FILM 

Fri, 2/11/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

AMBULANCE 

Fri, 2/18/22 WIDE 

Director: Michael Bay 

Rating: NR 




UNTITLED UNIVERSAL MUSICAL 

EVENT 

Fri, 3/11/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Mus 

JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION 

Fri, 6/10/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 


WARNER BROS. 

818-977-1850 

GODZILLA VS KONG 

Fri, 3/31/21 WIDE 

Stars: Millie Bobby Brown, 

Eiza González 

Director: Adam Wingard 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: SF/Act 

Specs: max/3-D/Dolby Vis/Atmos 

MORTAL KOMBAT 

Fri, 4/16/21 WIDE 

Stars: Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee 

Director: Simon McQuiod 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD 

Fri, 5/14/21 WIDE 

Stars: Angelina Jolie, Nicholas Hoult 

Director: Taylor Sheridan 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra/Wes 

THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE 

ME DO IT 


Stars: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga 

Rating: Michael Chaves 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 


IN THE HEIGHTS 

Fri, 6/18/21 WIDE 

Stars: Anthony Ramos, 

Corey Hawkins 

Director: Jon M. Chu 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Mus/Rom/Dra 

SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY 

Fri, 7/16/21 WIDE 

Stars: LeBron James, Don Cheadle 

Director: Malcolm D. Lee 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani/Com 

THE SUICIDE SQUAD 


Stars: Margot Robbie, Taika Waititi 

Director: James Gunn 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

MALIGNANT 

Fri, 9/10/21 WIDE 

Director: James Wan 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK 

Fri, 9/24/21 WIDE 

Stars: Alessandro Nivola, 

Leslie Odom Jr. 

Director: Alan Taylor 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra/Cri 

DUNE 

Fri, 10/1/21 WIDE 

Stars: Timothée Chalamet, 

Rebecca Ferguson 

Director: Denis Villeneuve 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: SF 

KING RICHARD 

Fri, 11/19/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra/Bio 

UNTITLED MATRIX FILM 

Fri, 12/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Keanu Reeves 

Director: Lana Wachowski 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF 

UNTITLED SESAME STREET 

Fri, 1/14/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Fam 

THE BATMAN 


Stars: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz 

Director: Matt Reeves 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

UNTITLED ELVIS FILM 


Director: Baz Luhrmann 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra/Bio/Mus 

UNTITLED FANTASTIC BEASTS 3 

Fri, 7/15/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Fan/Act 

THE 



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Image Credits & Acknowledgments 

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p6: Images courtesy ArcLight Cinemas 

p11: Images courtesy Cinemark 

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p59: Photo: Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures 

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p61: Photo: © 2020 DreamWorks Animation LLC 

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p81: Photo: Niko Tavernise, © 2020 Twentieth Century Fox 

Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved 

p81: Six Minutes to Midnight. Courtesy IFC Films. An IFC Films 

Release. 

p85: French Exit. Photo: Lou Scamble, courtesy Sony Pictures 

Classics 

p86: Mortal Kombat. Courtesy Warner Bros. 


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