The theaters were never full. So it was basically just like watching a movie in your own living room. Yeah, except maybe for the handful of strangers that were there to watch with you.

We got to small talk and the lady mentioned she had once been the only customer for a showing and told the projectionist that she didn’t want to be a bother and could come back and another day.

The projectionist had apparently replied that it was no bother - they would roll the movie even if no one showed up!

Its the norm and its probably why their stock is trading at $1.45 as of this writing.

Its a dead (not dying, dead) entertainment option. When you are competing for the same 24 hrs in a day with TV, Youtube, Gaming, Streaming, TikTok, Instagram and many others the theater is bottom of the barrel for young people today.

And don't tell me its because people are disrespectful or the commercials are too long. These are a problem but Alamo Drafthouse tried to tackle this and they ended up in bankruptcy. AMC would also be bankrupt today but it's saving grace was the meme stock frenzy they had a few years back. Probably bought them a few more years but that ride might be coming to an end.

Currently they fill the rooms for the pop movies like old established franchises but that only comes along every couple weeks at the most and the rest of the time the place is not really busy. This is a bit different in the big cities but AMC has overextended themselves with too many locations in the rural and suburban US.

...Also this app is not displaying accurate data (I assume they are pulling from AMC's API). My local theater is listing no results and I cross checked and there are movies currently listed that have 0 seats booked so the app is counting incorrectly for at least one theater.

EDIT: After I wrote this, the site auto updated with new data. Now I see some screenings but it is still inaccurate because it is still missing movies from that theater...maybe they are scraping instead of using the API? This is a simple problem if using the API (I wrote my own home cooked app): just iterate through all theater ids, find the ones with 0 bookings and display that list.

Around here, films from Bollywood show in Telugu, Hindi, Gujarati languages. There are family films in Spanish (those aren’t bad dubs, but parallel scripts and A-list voice actors.) Want to watch a Studio Ghibli film? Here’s the timetable for dubbed; here’s a timetable for subtitles!

There are live video-game tournaments. There are premieres for live operas and symphony orchestra performances that are simulcast around a region.

There are Christian groups who go in to support a film, and they can turn those into fundraisers and evangelization activity.

The auditoriums can be rented out for special events. Big birthday, Kindergarten graduation, Quinceañeras, etc. They will support teleconferencing and businesses can hold seminars or all-hands meetings there.

I suppose that all of these schemes were harmed by the pandemic and lockdowns, but the advertising is still there, and the Hindus are still showing up on public transit.