Movies at Dundrum: A new direction?

spank_inferno

I've noticed that the Dundrum cinema has scaled back on showings of the bigger "Hollywood" movies & at the same time started showing a lot of pre-recorded Ballets & Opera's.

While I've no problem with showing more culture, is there something afoot with the Cinema?

eg: Hurt Locker & District 9, two big new releases are getting fairly few screenings and in the case of Hurt locker are being shown on their smallest screens.

Is there something up with the cinema?
Are they losing money so they have to scale back on showings?

Kooli

The operas aren't prerecorded, they're live.

Kooli

I'm also not sure of the point you are making or the question you are asking.

Do they have empty screens? Because if all the screens have a movie showing, then I don't see how this can point to a 'scaling back', just because you are surprised which movies they show in which screens....

Movies@ is a business, like every other, profit driven, the Opera shows guarantee regular customers (same people came every single week!) at a higher ticket price.

One thing I will say is that the Opera shows were incredibly successful at Movies@, regularly selling >500 tickets at €25 a pop for each evening, they started off in one single small screen, and by the last set of the operas, they were filling the two largest screens in the cinema.

On the flipside, they do have to be careful about alienating others, obviously yourself has picked up on this!

Another thing that should be considered is the lenght of the films. Both Hurt Locker and District 9 run in at close to 2.5 hours with trailers and credits included. If the cinema has only got analouge prints of these films, its unlikely that they will be able to show in more than one screen, therefore with approx a 3 hour turnaround between showings. Even with digital projectors, it takes quite a long time to load the film onto the projector, approx 1hour for most films, this is another factor.

I worked there during the showings of "there will be blood" and we had several complaints that there was not enough shows of it, the fact was the film was 3hours long, and it was next to impossible to organise a decent schedule around that!

spank_inferno

fair point

& I didnt think there would be such an appetite for the opera either.

00112984

While Opera and Ballet aren't my particular thing, it's great to see a cinema doing something a little different and I'm glad they've had success with it. While it's not something I'd spend €25 to see, it wouldn't impact on my decision to choose Movies@ to see a film.

Was there last night (District 9) and also last Sunday night (Moon) as it happens. Found it strange last night that District 9-a much-hyped film on its opening weekend was only shown in screen 9 while The Final Destination was in the largest screen. We booked our tickets for the 21.30 screening at about 15.45 yesterday afternoon and the seats were about 60% booked at that stage. Had another look at about 6.30pm and all tickets were booked for District 9 but very few were gone for the screening of TFD at a similar time.

To me, it would've made more sense to have D9 in the largest screen.

Does anyone know why they did this? The only thing I can think of is that because TFD is being shown in 3D, there are limitations on what screens it can be shown on but I'm not sure.

Most screens in Movies@ can now show 3D films. You will notice that some of the screens are silver, and others white, those that are silver are equipped to show 3D films.

Screens and times are chosen according to forecasts of ticket sales, and anticipation of the buzz or hype of a film, sometimes these forecasts are way off, as was obviously the case this time.