Want to Improve the Moviegoing Experience? Start by Losing the Recliners.

Plush auditoriums are great, but they shove smaller films to the margins

Ted Hope, the film producer, industry reformer, and one of the most generous FilmStackers out there, has issued a new FilmStack Challenge to this community: how to improve the filmgoing experience. I’ve a plan. We ride at dawn.

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AMC’s plush reclining seats. (Source: New York Times)

One trend in film exhibition over the last decade that seems almost universally praised: the posh, plush auditoriums with stadium-style seating for optimal viewing and pleather-bound, reclining seats that mark a significant upgrade in comfort over the spring-mounted, fold-down seats that were once the bugbear of many a filmgoer.

I love these recliners. They’re supportive, they’ve got fat armrests and footrests that allow the viewer to really stretch out, and they’re equipped with convenient cupholders right at hand. But these creature comforts come with a price. I’m not talking strictly about the price of tickets to these swanky cineplexes, which, indeed, have ballooned over the years. No, there’s a larger issue. A significant (and likely unintended) consequence of the movie theater glow-up, which was meant to lure audiences back to theaters after the rise of the streaming era, is that in reducing the number of overall seats in each auditorium to accommodate big-ass recliners, they’ve fundamentally altered the box office prospects and longer-term viability of smaller scale productions. Hear me out.

(Source: Ben Gray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The closest cinema to my suburban Atlanta home is owned by industry giant AMC. I’d much rather spend my money at The Plaza, the lovingly curated indie/arthouse/cult theater that’s been operating continuously in midtown Atlanta for almost 90 years. But as a suburbanite, with two kids, who primarily sees movies on weekday nights, the Plaza isn’t always in the cards for me. This, along with the fact that AMC has a subscription membership that allows me to see up to 4 movies a week for under $25 USD a month, means that I take in most of my new releases there. And as a part of a chain in the burbs of a major American city, I think my local AMC is fairly representative of the mainstream moviegoing experience for many people across the country.

Below is what’s on offer at my local multiplex this coming Friday. Focus less on the selection of movies than on the showtimes.

A moviegoer who wants to see Thunderbolts* at this specific theater on this particular day has 22 showtimes from which to choose; for Sinners, she’s got 18. Together, these films account for over 55% of the screenings on May 2. Now I don’t begrudge the exhibitors for building their schedule around movies that are, or are forecast to be, massively popular. It’s a business. I get it.

But what if someone wants to see one of the smaller films? There are five movies at this AMC that will screen less than twice each on this day for a grand total of seven screenings. And how many of those are after a normal 9-5 workday? Just three. I applaud AMC for slotting in a film like Hit: The Third Case, but if I hope to see the Indian action flick after work, I’m shit out of luck. Along the same lines, I was recently dismayed to check the times for two films I’d been dying to see — The Friend, the Naomi Watts/Bill Murray comedy, and the Soderbergh spy thriller Black Bag — to find they were only screening that day at 11:10am and 9:55pm, respectively. I eventually stayed out past midnight on a Thursday to catch this theater’s very last screening of Black Bag; The Friend ended its two-week engagement before I had a chance to see it.

You might be thinking, okay, sure, those times are inconvenient — but what’s that got to do with recliners? Well, the average seating capacity of the 15 auditoriums at Parkway Point is 90. The median is significantly smaller thanks to the Dolby showcase auditorium seating over 150 and the tiniest room in the building holding less than 40. It raises the question: rather than screening the newest Marvel movie to a crowd of 90 every half hour, wouldn’t it be more cost-effective and space-efficient to increase the size of the theaters to, say, 200 seats and run the film every hour? In theory, the house would sell the same number of tickets over the course of the day and be able to offer more convenient times for more niche offerings.

Alas, you can’t fit 200 Barcaloungers within that footprint. When what’s under your ass is more important than what’s on the screen, can we even call it a movie theater anymore?

Recent successes aside, we hear endlessly about the dire situation movie exhibitors find themselves in: people aren’t going to the movies at the same clip as they once did; they’d rather sit home and watch Hulu from their couches; cinema has lost its cultural cache. Just throwing this out there: perhaps more people would go to movie theaters if we didn’t push half the offerings to the margins of the schedule?

I go to the movies to watch films, with strangers, in a room designed for just that purpose, with a giant screen, crystal-clear projection, and enveloping sound. A comfy chair is great — but not at the expense of making movies that already have a shortened theatrical window even harder to see. And anyway, I’ve got a recliner at home. It’s where I sit to watch Netflix.

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