By Gavin Boyle
AMC recently added more ads to its pre-shows, so the company will now warn theatergoers that movies do not actually start until up to 30 minutes after a movie’s showtime.
“The listed showtime is when trailers and additional content begin,” AMC’s website now reads when a customer purchases a ticket, per The Verge. “The movie will start 25-30 minutes after the listed showtime.”
This new warning comes as AMC adds ads into its pre-show lineup along with trailers for upcoming movies. Its competitors, Cinemark Theaters and Regal Theaters, have doing this since 2019, and audience reception — along with a more dire financial situation — has led AMC to do the same.
“Our competitors have fully participated for more than five years without any direct impact to their audience,” AMC told The Hollywood Reporter. “The new deal between AMC and National CineMedia allows both companies to drive new revenues to offset the impact of being hit by the shutdown of cinemas due to the COVID pandemic, followed by an at times faltering Hollywood industry recovery since the reopening of theaters and advertising being affected by macro-economic headwinds.”
Even if the introduction of ads has not impacted audience size, the ballooning of pre-show ad and trailer time has not gone unnoticed. In January, Connecticut state senator Martin Looney even proposed a bill that would require theaters to list exactly when a movie will start, rather than when ads begin to air.
“It seems to be an abuse of people’s time,” Looney told The Register Citizen while discussing the ads shown before movies. “If [audiences] want to get there early and watch the promos, they can. But if they just want to see the feature, they ought to be able to get there just in time for that.”
“I got a couple of calls from constituents who said that they went to the theater a few times and the feature did not start for a considerable period of time after the advertised starting time,” he added. “It does seem to me that people are, in effect, a sort of captive audience watching the advertising before they get to see the feature they came to see.”
While such a bill might benefit moviegoers, it could lead to the further demise of theaters as they rely on the revenue from pre-show ads and trailers to subsidize operating costs.
“This is kind of a strange bill,” said Peter H. Gistenlinck, executive director at the Avon Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut. “We, as an independent movie house, are financially dependent on our previews as well as our overall messaging, including commercials. We always announce the start time of our screenings so that our patrons can enjoy the whole experience.”
“Announcing the start time of the actual movie would definitely disincentivize our business partners’ video messaging which would have a direct negative impact on our financial stability in an already so challenging environment,” Gistenlinck continued.
Thus, AMC’s 25-30 minute window (rather than providing an exact start time) allows the company to sell time slots close to the actual movie start time at a premium and continue to generate significant revenue from these sales. At the same time, moviegoers know now to show up right at their showtime unless they are willing to sit through minutes of ads to ensure they do not miss the opening scenes of the movie.
Read Next: What You Need to Know About AMC’s Changes to Stubs A-List Subscription
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