This is a very interesting article from the July 13 edition of the New Yorker, which followed a multiplex owner throughout the showest period. This gets inside the business of cinema ownership, where in reality, the movies don't seem to count.
ANNALS OF COMMERCE MULTIPLEXITIES
The least important commodities in American movie theatres may be the movies themselves.
BY EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN
ONCE upon a time, attending the local movie theatre was an experience that most Americans shared on a regular basis. For example, in 1929, the year of the first Academy Awards, an average of ninety-five million people - about four fifths of the ambulatory population - went to movies every week. There were more than twenty-three thousand theatres, many of palatial size, like the six-thousand- two-hundred-seat Roxy in New York. In those days, the major studios made virtually all the movies that people saw (over seven hundred feature films in 1929). The stars, directors, writers, and other talent were under exclusive con- tract, and, in addition, the studios owned the theatrical circuits where first-run movies played. This regime, which allowed the major studios to exert total control over movies, from script to screen, came to be known, and feared, as "the studio system'; it more or less ended in 1950, when the United States Supreme Court upheld antitrust decrees ordering several of the major Hollywood studios to divest themselves of their theatre chains.
Today, in a world with television, video, the Internet, and other home diversions, weekly average movie attendance is about twenty-seven million, or slightly less than ten per cent of the population. As a result of this diminishment, many larger theatres either closed or divided themselves into smaller auditoriums under one roof (There are only a third as many theatre sites today as there were in 1929, but there are more screens-over thirty thousand.) These multiplexes afforded theatre owners significant economies of scale. They could also show a greater variety of films, tailored to different, if smaller, audiences. And as smaller theatres closed the chains expanded; today, the fifteen largest North American chains own approximately two-thirds of all the screens'. These large chains, and their centralized film bookers, are the principal gatekeepers for the American film industry. They are responsible for determining what movies most Americans see.
EARLIER this year, to learn how the E chains exercise this responsibility, I accompanied Thomas W. Stephen- son, Jr., who heads Hollywood Theatres, to ShoWest, an annual event (this year at Bafly's Las Vegas) at which movie distribution and exhibition executives meet over four days to discuss plans for releasing and marketing upcoming films. Stephenson, who collects abstract art as well as multiplexes, had an eighteen-year career in investing and investment banking before he entered the movie business, three yeas ago, by founding his Dallas based chain. It now has seventy-seven theatres and four hundred and seventy-four screens in six Midwest and South-west states. With just a trace of a Southern drawl, he told me, 'Our plan is to build about a hundred screens a year for the next five years"-in other words, to become one of the major players in the movie industry. Many of Stephen- son's newer multiplexes are state-of-the- art-their own "entertainment destination," unlike any that one frequents in New York. On the way to Las Vegas, Stephenson, an energetic, peppery-haired man in his early forties, gave me a quick course in the economics of his business. Of the fifty million dollars customers paid for tickets last year, he said, Hollywood Theatres kept only twenty-three million; most of the rest went to the distributors. But, he continued, since it cost 531.2 million to pay the operating costs of the theatres, his company would have lost 58.2 million if it were limited to the movie-exhibition business.
Like all theatre owners, though, he has a second business: snack foods, in which the profit margin is well over eighty per cent. Last year, Hollywood Theatres made a profit of $22.4 million on sales of 526.7 million from its con- cession stands. 'Every element in the lobby,' Stephenson told me, "is designed to focus the attention of the customer on its menu boards.' Stephenson was willing to let me tag along to meetings in Las Vegas on the condition that I not directly quote or identify those with whom he met. When we arrived, he decided to skip the reception hosted by independent distributors. "I personally enjoy watching many of the low-budget films that come from independents," he said, "but they are not a significant part of our business." In fact, according to Stephenson, ninety-eight per cent of the admission revenues of his theatres in 1997 came from principal Hollywood studios - Sony, Disney, Fox, Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. These companies supplied his multiplexes not only with films but with the essential marketing campaigns that accompany them. (Occasionally, to be sure, independent films do succeed in winning a mass audience, as, for example, 'The Full Monty" did; but, as Stephenson put it, "We don't count on them.')
The organization of the
marketing campaigns begins months before the release date. The
campaigns use the most sophisticated methods available to target
demographic groups, and intensify in the final week, often with
saturation television advertising, in order to capture
'impulse" moviegoers. Stephenson and other theatre owners
rely on them to muster, if not to create, the audience for a
film's crucial opening weekend. The campaigns require massive
resources. The major studios spent, on average, 519.2 million in
1997 to advertise each of their films, a sum that would he
considerably higher if it included the advertising provided by
fast-food restaurants, toy companies, and other retailers in
promotional tie-in arrangements that can amount to many times
what the studio itself budgets.
Rather than attend the large reception, therefore, on our first
night we dined with the representative of Coca-Cola, a company
that exclusively "pours" the soft drinks in over
seventy per cent of American movie theatres, including
Stephensons. Soft drinks are an important part of the movie
business. All the seats in Stephenson new theatres, and most
other multiplexes, are now equipped with their own cup holders, a
feature that theatre executives consider one of the most
groundbreaking innovations in movie-theatre history. With cup
holders, customers can not only handle drinks more easily in
combination with other snacks but can store their drinks while
returning to the con- cession stand for more food. Hollywood
Theatres, which now offers an over- sized plastic cup with
unlimited refills, sold slightly in excess of eleven million
dollars' worth of Coca-Cola products in 1997, of which over eight
million was profit.
ALTHOUGH most of ShoWest's official functions take place in convention halls and hospitality suites, much unofficial business was done in the sprawling coffee shop. It was there, early the next morning, that I joined Stephenson for a breakfast meeting with an analyst from J. C. Bradford &Co., an investment firm. Acquisitions were in the air; Kohlberg Kravis Roberts had just bought and consolidated two of the largest theatre chains. Stephenson, as he made clear at the outset, planned to par- take in this industry consolidation by acquiring state-of-the-art multiplexes. Since he planned to finance this aggressive expansion by selling part of his company to public or private investors, he needed the services of investment bankers, who, in turn, needed a ',story,' or convincing rationale, to raise the money. Stephenson's story centered on stadium seating, in which every row of seats is elevated about fourteen inches above the row preceding it, allowing all customers to have an unimpeded view of the screen. While the seats take up more space, Stephenson said:
"Our focus groups show that people now seek out theatres with stadium seating and will drive as far as twenty miles to find one that has it."
Attendance increased between thirty and fifty-two per cent where he had installed such seating. Stephenson would repeat this story to four other investment bankers over the next two days.
A little later, Stephenson moved to a different table to meet with two of the top executives of another major chain. He had told me beforehand that he wanted to buy five of their multiplexes and sell them an equivalent number in different locations, or "zones." In the movie business, the country is divided into zones, as they were being informally called at ShoWest, that contain anywhere from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand people. The major distributors almost always end up licensing their films to only one theatre owner in each zone. just over two-thirds of Stephenson's theatres are in zones in which he is the only owner, and he wanted to increase this number. These talks ended inconclusively, and in the late morning I accompanied Stephenson to the convention hall, where we took assigned seats in the grandstands. Stephenson, along with thirty-six hundred other attendees, was there to see the first major studio presentation, Sony's "Product reel.' Sony's top executives sat on a dais, as if addressing a shareholders' meeting.
Jeff Blake, the president of Sony's distribution arm, said that last year Sony films had brought a new record gross into North American theatres: 51.27 billion. Indeed, Sony accounted for nearly one out of every four dollars spent on movie tickets in 1997. Vanna White, the television personality, then conducted a mock 'Wheel of Fortune' game in which every clue referred to films coming from Sony this year, including "Godzilla" and "The Mask of Zorro." As Vanna White announced each title, actors from the film in question rushed onto the stage - among them such as Michelle Pfeiffel, Julia Roberts, Nicholas Cage, Antonio Banderas. All of this was followed by excerpts from the films. A highlight of sorts came when the stage suddenly filled with dancers costumed as characters from Sony's movies. Robert Goule played the part of Jeff Blake and sang to the tune of "The Impossible Dread:
"This is our quest, To be king of the box ... There'll he lines round the block When that big hunk Godzilla is finally here And you'll know what we've done for you lately When we beat the unbeatable year."
A Private meeting held
afterward, in Sony's Las Vegas conference room, was far more
grounded in reality, A top Sony executive immediately set the
tone by observing that the presentation had cost Sony four
million dollars (a gross exaggeration, it turned, out) and then
quipped that next year instead of hosting the event, Sony would,
just send a ten-thousand-dollar check to each of the chains' film
buyers.
It became apparent at this meeting that the negotiations did not
concern whether a chain would show Sony films on their prescribed
release dates; that was taken for granted. At issue were the
terms under which they were to be played and positioned against
the films of competing distributors - for instance, the number of
screens they would be shown on in a multiplex, the guaranteed
length of each folds run, the amount of free advertising there
would he in the form of trailers and lobby displays, and the
division of the boxoffice receipts. For example, regarding
"Godzilla," the executive outlined the enormous
marketing campaign, supported by worldwide licensees of three
thousand "Godzilla" products, as well as promotional
tie-ins with such retail partners as Taco Bell, Sprint, Swatch,
Hershey's, Duracell, Kirin beer, and Kodak, which were designed
to drive a huge and voracious audience of teenage boys to their
theatres. This particular audience, as he de- scribed it, was not
concerned with the quality of the film, or even whether it was in
focus, as long as there was action and popcorn. He joked that the
theatres 'potential popcorn sales should persuade them to agree
to give Sony a larger opening-week cut. Joke or not, the
implication was not lost on Stephenson film buyer, although for
the moment he successfully resisted Sony's suggestion. (As it
turned out, the "Godzilla' campaign succeeded in 'driving'
people to pay seventy-four million dollars to see the poorly
reviewed lizard in its opening, Memorial Day weekend.)
The next private meeting, in the hospitality suite of Twentieth Century Fox, was more relaxed. After offering Stephenson a soft drink, the Fox executive discussed the strategy for the summer season, which provides the largest audience for theatres. Indeed, of the nearly 1.4 billion tickets sold in 1997, some five hundred million were for the summer season, when, as the Fox executive put it, 'Every day is a school holiday." (An- other two hundred and thirty million were sold in the so-called holiday season, between Thanksgiving and New Year's.) This summer, Fox was facing competition from a number of catastrophe films, such as "Godzilia," "Deep Impact," and "Armageddon," which early tracking polls showed were attracting the attention of large numbers of male teens. The polls I saw, which were conducted by the National Research Group, had divided respondents into five demographic 'quadrants"- under twenty-five, over twenty-five, male, female, and a racial category - and asked about their awareness of, and interest in, upcoming films. On the basis of these data, along with other research supplied by the company, the major studios can avoid simultaneously competing in the same demographic categories and dividing up their opening-weekend audiences.
Even in March, the Fox executive reckoned that competitors' films, particularly "Godzilia' and "Armageddon," would dominate two crucial quadrants - male and under twenty-five in the early summer. He therefore opted to counterprogram, which meant scheduling romantic comedies, such as "Hope Floats,' that would appeal to the female and over-twenty-five quadrants. Al- though the Fox people had an easier style than their Sony counterparts, they wanted the same limited commodity: the chains' better screens, play dates, and in-theatre advertising. So did the four other distributors Stephenson met with during ShoWest. By his count, in four days he watched brief excerpts from some fifty films. "They all tend to blur together," he said, and plots were never described. Instead, the accompanying pitches identified them in such jargon as "Clearasil" (coming-of-age), "genre" (teen-age horror), "romantic comedy" (love story), "ethnic' (black characters), "franchise" (the carbon-copy sequel of another film), and "catastrophe" (volcano, comet/asteroid/monster, loud sound effects). The Holy Grail was a film like 'Titanic," which appealed to all five quadrants.
THE last and longest meeting was with Disney's distribution arm, Buena Vista; its senior executives were eager to spend an hour or so discussing market- ing plans with Stephenson. While they voiced some concern about the proximity of Julys "Armageddon," in which the earth is on a fatal collision path with an asteroid, with Paramount and DreamWorks'May "Deep Impact," in which the world is on a fatal collision path with a comet, they had an ingenious scheme for differentiating their product. Holding up a rectangular box, their executives explained that it contained a kit that would help theatre managers to build a mock asteroid. Disney planned to distribute this package to theatres playing "Armageddon' and award prizes to theatre managers who used it to create the most forbidding cosmic rock. The theme would then he amplified through such stunts as end-of-the world parties hosted by local disk jockeys.
LATER, Stephenson, along with several E of his top executives, toured the trade-show pavilions located in two giant tents behind Bally's, where delegates to ShoWest were somewhat greedily sampling popcorn, jelly beans, chocolates, licorice, frankfurters, nachos, and other snacks, many of which claimed to have innovative flavors and aromas. Others were getting a look at the non- consumable products at the booths, such as loudspeakers, projectors, ticket rolls, cleaning equipment, marquee letters, plastic cups, and remote ticketing systerns, such as MovieFone.
As we walked around, a theatre executive, who was assessing different popcorn- topping oil, said that salt was the secret to financial success, since it drives customers back to the concession stand for drinks- where they buy more popcorn. Stephen- son stopped to try an oversized Wetzel's pretzel which comes in flavors that include cinnamon, garlic, and pizza. According to the representative, the Wetzel's, though about three hundred calories, would appeal to diet conscious non-popcorn-eaters, such as women who wait on the concession line with their boyfriends. This, of course, is a domain where the theatre owner is in control. "We are in a very high margin retail business," Stephenson said.