Boxoffice Pro

for that one. But we’re renting auditoriums
for $135 going through our projectors. So,
we said, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, this isn’t
gonna work. Give us 60 more dollars. We’ll
run it through our projector.’... That was
pretty creative. We had to tweak our FAQs
again on that one.”
Other changes didn’t involve rulebending
teenagers. For private cinema
rentals to have any sort of longevity—at
least enough to get the industry through
the pandemic—the booking process would
need to be streamlined and simplified
for the benefit of both the customers
and the theaters. That involved another
trend that’s seen a major boost during
the pandemic: mobile ticketing. At AMC,
previous investment in online ticketing
made its private rental campaign easier to
launch. Notes Noonan: “Online ticketing in
general has exploded over the last decade,
and AMC has invested greatly in our online
ticketing technology, as well as in features
that accompany online ticketing, like our
website, reserved seating, and mobile
ordering. Guests were already accustomed
to going online to purchase tickets and,
in many cases, purchase tickets well in
advance of a showtime, making it easier to
plan a night out with friends and family for
a Private Theatre Rental.”
“Bringing it online made a huge
difference for us,” says Marcus Theatres’
V.P. Sales Clint Wisialowski. “As much
as I love my crew and our Group Sales
Department, once we automated this
system and allowed people to come in
through what we’re calling our micro site,
it dramatically changed the numbers for
us. It allowed us to, with greatly depleted
staff based on all the furloughs we had,
monetize these private rentals.”
Added to that, notes Annelise Holyoak,
national director of marketing and
communications at Cinépolis Luxury
Cinemas, “The people that are renting
[cinemas] are the millennials that are very
tech savvy, and they really don’t have any
interest in dealing with the sales team.”
For Marcus, as they moved into April
2021, the volume for private cinema
rentals remained “tremendous,” says
Wisialowski. “Right now, we’re booking
about 40 percent more events than we
had in 2019 over this first quarter.” What
doesn’t match up in the current private
cinema rental landscape, he notes, is
attendance and revenue, which “[don’t]
even compare” to what Marcus was pulling
in pre-pandemic. “So, even at this volume,
it’s still not significant enough for us to
say that this would be our business model
going forward.”
“I call it the 100/100 phase,” Wisialowski
continues. “When you get to 100 percent
open and 100 percent occupied, this
system no longer works.” It’s a sentiment
echoed by other exhibitors. Deeply
discounted private cinema rentals (the
average event pre-pandemic at Marcus
cost around $850) make sense when
capacity limits and a lack of content
put a cap on attendance, but once those
restrictions are removed, a cinema can
typically make more money on a general
admission screening than they can by
renting it to a small group.
At Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas, private
cinema rentals kicked off in a beta form
in May 2020 at their Moviehouse and
Eatery locations before they were even
open to the public. “It was a family affair,”
says Holyoak. “We had the CEO running
drinks. … Having a limited menu and just
opening up to those reservations made it
really easy for us to get started.” Private
cinema rentals later expanded to the wider
Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas brand, and
demand ballooned—to a point where it has
outstripped supply, at least when it comes
to what Holyoak terms “prime time hours.”
“People are kind of frustrated that they
can’t get a theater for four people, or even
20 people, now that capacity is up to 50
percent [in California],” says Holyoak. “It
really makes more sense for us to just have
it as a regular show.”
In April 2021, B&B Theatres stopped
letting people rent its cinemas to watch
older titles on weekends. Even a multiplex
with a dozen-plus screens, argues Tickner,
needs to devote most of those screens to
Once those restrictions are
removed, a cinema can
typically make more money
on a general admission
screening than they can by
renting it to a small group.
Q2 2021
47