AMC, Regal and Cinemark in the US are running pre-film adverts and shows that are adding 30 minutes to the start time of a movie.
There’s a fair amount of grumbling in the cinema exhibition industry at how three different American cinema chains are dealing with challenges to ad revenues. Keen to cement the money that comes in via pre-movie advertising, AMC, Regal and Cinemark have all moved towards a 30 minute difference between the advertised start time of a movie and, well, its start time.
That’s the three biggest multiplex chains in America who are giving themselves the wiggle room for more commercials ahead of a film beginning.
I’m in the UK, so was unaware that the chains also run a ten minute pre-show called Noovie. The combination of that, trailers, and advertising? It’s adding half an hour to the running time of a cinema trip.
There’s concern and pushback against this too, with studios concerned about what this is doing to the actual experience of going to the cinema. In a year that’s finally seen cinema audiences bounce back following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re still seeing films where audiences figure the movie in question will be on streaming soon. Furthermore, audiences are also savvy to the amount of time trailers and adverts go on for, and as such, are making less effort to arrive at an advertised start time.
For studios, this is an alarm bell. For all the bells and whistles of social media marketing and such like, it remains the movie trailer that’s regarded as the best and most effective way to sell a film. If people are arriving at the cinema after the trailers have run, then studios fear they’ve lost an attentive and interested audience.
According to Deadline, studios are sending scouts out to cinemas to see how long the pre-show bit of a cinema trip is running. AMC, meanwhile, argues that box office returns up until earlier this year were weak, and it needs to get what money it can.
Somewhere in the middle of it, someone might want to question what the consumer – that’d be us – actually wants. As it stands, more than a third of us are said to be deliberately arriving late for a cinema screening, just to avoid all the adverts.
Expect this argue to run and run. Maybe we need a bit of Hitchcock back in the world…
