Night Owls

running cinemas for 72 hours straight just sounds completely exhausting, no wonder they are squeezing everyone in now!

kookaburra99 wrote:running cinemas for 72 hours straight just sounds completely exhausting, no wonder they are squeezing everyone in now!

Always follow the money, folks... When a studio realizes a three-hour run time cuts their daily screenings down, they panic and mandate these crazy around-the-clock schedules just to manufacture the ILLUSION of endless momentum before the well runs dry.

They want everyone believing this sprint will last all year, but you cannot artificially inflate real demand forever. By the time I take my nephew to our screening in Edinburgh next week, all that manufactured opening chaos will have burned clean through. Then we will see just how few people are left to fill those empty seats.

TheyKnow wrote:By the time I take my nephew to our screening in Edinburgh next week, all that manufactured opening chaos will have burned clean through.

totally reckon those quiet second-week cinemas will prove the marathon belongs to avatar, not manufactured hype.

Dead right, kookaburra99... Avatar didn't need midnight carnival stunts or PR smoke and mirrors, it just brought folks back week after week through word of mouth. When the corporate hype machine has to throw EVERYTHING into the pot at once, that is usually a confession that they fear what happens when the dust settles!

Once the opening circus wraps up and real life takes back over, that massive three-hour time sink is going to catch up with them. We will see the true picture soon enough.

exactly! everyday families just don't have three spare hours to burn on a whim every week. the novelty wears off fast and normal routines kick in. tomorrow arvo will definitely show if that front-loaded buzz holds up or not.

kookaburra99 wrote:everyday families just don't have three spare hours to burn on a whim every week. the novelty wears off fast and normal routines kick in.

That hits the nail on the head, my friend... When folks have to carve out half a day just to sit in a theatre, repeat viewings drop off a cliff. Once the hardcore fans finish their opening rush this weekend, ordinary family life will take over and those cavernous rooms are going to quiet right down.

PintOfMild wrote:It's a quick sprint to hoover up the diehards, but once normal workweeks kick back in, that pace is completely unsustainable.

The overnight scheduling in the United States simply illustrates how severely front-loaded the release structure has become. Squeezing early screenings into the early morning hours exhausts the pool of enthusiastic viewers immediately. Once that initial cohort has attended, attendance must rely on general patrons who arrange their leisure around ordinary working weeks. Avatar accumulated its total across months of steady, unforced business. A three-day surge, regardless of how many temporary overnight slots are operated, cannot compensate for the absence of sustained weekly footfall.

OffByOne makes so much sense explaining the mechanics of it. Burning through the entire eager crowd in four days flat means there is basically nobody left waiting in line next fortnight. Avatar kept chugging along quietly without any of that rush.

Dead right, once you burn through all the keen fans at dawn, regular footfall will plummet.

There is also no need to see sinister corporate panic in these overnight rosters. It is standard operational efficiency: when extraordinary pre-sales demonstrate immediate local demand, exhibitors naturally add marginal capacity during dormant hours to maximize their receipts while the interest is acute.

However, that operational adjustment does not alter the underlying demographic arithmetic. Once the dedicated audience has attended their 3 a.m. screenings, subsequent weekends depend entirely on broader public habits. Without the multi-month, casual appeal that carried Avatar, that initial burst simply leaves fewer prospective attendees for May.

quasistatic wrote:There is also no need to see sinister corporate panic in these overnight rosters. It is standard operational efficiency: when extraordinary pre-sales demonstrate immediate local demand, exhibitors naturally add marginal capacity during dormant hours to maximize their receipts while the interest is acute.

Now quasistatic, you call it operational efficiency, but you have to ask yourself why the trades are pumping out breathless near-billion-dollar opening predictions just as these all-night slots get added... That is textbook PERCEPTION management, my friend! They want everyone stampeding before anyone pauses to think.

Running theatres at 4 a.m. isn't business as usual, it is an outright admission that they know their window is razor-thin. Like OffByOne said, once you burn up all those diehards in seventy-two hours flat, there simply is nobody waiting in reserve come next week. The ledger never lies once the circus packs up.

TheyKnow wrote:you have to ask yourself why the trades are pumping out breathless near-billion-dollar opening predictions just as these all-night slots get added... That is textbook PERCEPTION management, my friend!

Trade publications report projections because high numbers generate clicks, not because cinema managers collude with studio publicists. Meeting documented advance demand during otherwise dark hours is entirely routine asset utilization.

We both agree the demographic tail will be short, but attributing everyday logistics to grand deception simply muddies the accounting.

quasistatic wrote:Meeting documented advance demand during otherwise dark hours is entirely routine asset utilization.

It is quite unnecessary to postulate dark motives when simple bookkeeping explains the situation. Exhibitors add extra showings because fixed overhead costs - rent, staff, electricity - remain largely identical whether a screen sits dark or runs a film for paying customers.

Opening projections reaching 900 million dollars merely reflect those added seats multiplied by advance reservations across thousands of venues worldwide. However, filling auditorium space at four in the morning merely borrows patrons from next week. When I visit Path in Rotterdam next week, I fully expect empty rows precisely because of this initial clearing out.

quasistatic and OffByOne have it right. If folk are willing to hand over cash at 4 am, you turn the lights on. It is not rocket science or a conspiracy, just practical business. Whether anyone is still buying tickets come Monday once the keen ones are sorted is another question entirely. We will see soon enough.

Sysop_Kev wrote:If folk are willing to hand over cash at 4 am, you turn the lights on. It is not rocket science or a conspiracy, just practical business.

Bang on, Kev, and OffByOne puts it brilliantly! There is no grand plot going on, mate, just cinemas making hay while the sun shines - or while the moon is out, in this case! If hundreds of folk are hammering the website desperate to sit in a dark room at dawn, you would be barmy not to sell them a ticket and a bucket of popcorn. It just makes practical sense for the managers.

Mind you, OffByOne is completely spot on about borrowing patrons from the future. Once every eager fan like me gets shuffled through the turnstiles before breakfast this weekend, the tank is going to be running on empty. With that massive three-hour run time, your average casual filmgoer who only pops out once a month is going to look at the timetable next week and decide to do something else entirely. It is going to be an unbelievable weekend for the record books, no doubt about that, but the drop-off afterwards is going to be steep!