Bring back double bills

Sad Professor

Two films for slightly less than twice the price but –

No ads and no trailers! Just the films. And the screening starts on time.

Would audiences go for it? Would the multiplexes?

Harry Palmr

Ah the good old days when you could go and see Holy Grail and Blazing Saddles back to back for 3 glorious hours of laughter.

Of course now films are just far too long, even utterly routine instantly forgettable rom-coms drag on for two hours or more, never mind your comic book stuff that stretches out forever. So even a main feature and a shoter support film would end up at 4 hours and that is bad for business with fewer screenings possible and two films for one ticket would be fought against for the same reason. Obviously re-issues have been killed by home entertainment media.

Sad Professor

Yeah, length would be a issue with studio movies. But I'd be thinking this would be more for smaller, grown up movies. Say one mid budget studio film (which aren't really made anymore, but this might be a way of bringing them back) and one indie. If people can sit through 100 hours of wheel spinning on tv, they can sit through two movies back to back.

I think the key thing is no ads/trailers. I mean, I couldn't watch a tv show with ad breaks anymore, even at the beginning, and I think a lot of people are the same. You can really feel the sense of frustration from the cinema audiences these days from having to sit through 25-30 minutes of ads. Previously this would have been a short film or something.

mikhail

Sad Professor wrote: »

Two films for slightly less than twice the price but –

No ads and no trailers! Just the films. And the screening starts on time.

Would audiences go for it? Would the multiplexes?

The Light House does the odd double bill of older movies.

FireOne

If Double Bills caught on then it might work against the trend for movies that are too long. The Peter Jackson King Kong is just one example of a movie that could have been a lot shorter.
Maybe going back to showing a short before the main feature would be enough to work against that trend as well.

Sad Professor

FireOne wrote: »

If Double Bills caught on then it might work against the trend for movies that are too long. The Peter Jackson King Kong is just one example of a movie that could have been a lot shorter.
Maybe going back to showing a short before the main feature would be enough to work against that trend as well.

Not necessarily. There was 3+ hour epics going back to the '30s and earlier. Tickets usually cost the same as a double bill of two shorter films.

Liam McPoyle

The IFI used to do "Friday Night Frights" once a month.

A double bill of horror movies, one new, one classic.

Last one I went to was Hobo With a Shotgun and Re-Animator.

It was awesome.

Harry Palmr

You can see them on Horror Channel though! In fact both were on in the last couple of weeks.

As for running times, the mean r/t for films has increased greatly down the decades, the 20s and 30s had some epics - stuff like Greed and the Ten Commandments (1923) but most were 80-100 mins long as exhibitors were quite uncertain as to how long the average ticket buyer would actually spend in a dark room looking at a film. Since then though the length has incrementally grown to the point where you'd nearly be praying for a crisp 90 mins for a major release!

Fysh

A lot of independent cinemas do these, at least in larger cities that have enough of an audience to support them. I don't know if multiplex audiences would go for it, I suppose it depends on the film. I'm 100% down for anything which involves fewer trailers and ads.

MilesMorales1

They do still have them occasionally, though its not a regular feature. For the big superhero films specially.

Keplar240B

The modern human brain is being rewired by technology, attentions and concentration spans have collapsed.
No way people are going to sit thru two movies.
I barely managed to Finnish this post.

OU812

I can remember in 1993 going to a double bill of Die Hard & Die Hard 2 straight after a night shift. Pre mobile phone & didn't call anyone to let them know I was going out. Search party was going out for me when I got home. Great double bill though.

Victor

I think it might be difficult, with the logistics of bathrooms, food / drink, mobile phones, etc.

It would be good though if they showed shorts (cartoons or not), especially before 90-minute films, sometimes one can feel hard done by when paying the same price as a 150-minute film.

Another possibility would be to show Episode 1 when Episode 2 comes out and have a short interval. That would be a whole day's cinema when Episode VIII comes out.

Sad Professor

As it stands, ads and trailers take up 30 to 40 minutes of the theatrical presentation. They've basically replaced the shorts and b-movies that used to precede the feature presentation. That's why regular double bills as they used be (two for the price of one) will never come back - it would cost too much and take up too much time.

The only way it might work is to get rid of ads and trailers altogether and charge say 1.5 times a ticket for two movies. In most cases you'd only be in the cinema for an extra hour. The cinema would also save on clean up costs, etc. The problem is we don't have shorts or b-movies anymore, so maybe show an indie movie in front of a superhero movie, or after as a palate cleanser.

Victor

Sad Professor wrote: »

As it stands, ads and trailers take up 30 to 40 minutes of the theatrical presentation.

Where are you going to the cinema? Swan are reasonably strict on 15 minutes (longer at primetime Friday-Saturday). Savoy, 10 minutes.

Sad Professor

Victor wrote: »

Where are you going to the cinema? Swan are reasonably strict on 15 minutes (possibly longer at primetime Friday-saturday). Savoy, 10 minutes.

Vue, which is at the high end. But i didn't think anywhere was still showing 15 minutes or less.

judeboy101

Vue did all the marvel movies last yr I think, sold out show 20hrs.

IMC in Galway during the week, two trailers and two ads and then the film. Film began 5 minutes after advertised time which was a nice change of pace. Other cinemas have started listing how long ads will be and it's always 20-30 minutes, which is way too long.