Boxoffice Pro - Winter 2020

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Winter 2020 

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Save the Dates... 

CCIB, BARCELONA 

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CONTENTS 

90 

Coming Attractions 

A selection of upcoming 

releases through the 

beginning of 2021 

50 

The Perfect Pairing 

Could Wine Emerge as One 

of Cinema's Post-Pandemic 

F&B Trends? 

58 

International Excellence 

Celebrating This Year’s ICTA 

EMEA Award Winners 

80 

Promising Young Women 



Candy-Colored Thriller, 

Promising Young Woman 

84 

On the Road Again 

Chloé Zhao Takes to the Great 

Outdoors with Nomadland 


05

CONTENTS 

INDUSTRY THEATER ON SCREEN 

12 

17 

18 

20 

NATO 

NATO Members Discuss Path 

Forward for Exhibition Industry 

During Annual Meetings 

NATO: In Memoriam 

Lene Løken (1947–2020) 

Charity Spotlight 

A Recap of Industry-Wide Charity 

Initiatives 

Bridging the Gap 

A Conversation About Diverse 

Representation in Cinema with 

Rolando Rodriguez 

40 

46 

50 

58 

Holding Down the Fort 

Shelli Taylor Joins Alamo 

Drafthouse as New CEO 

Food & Beverage 

Concessions Will Play a Crucial 

Role in Cinemas’ Recovery. It Also 

Introduces New Challenges. 

The Perfect Pairing 

Could Wine Emerge as One of 

Cinema's Post-Pandemic F&B Trends? 

International Excellence 

Celebrating This Year’s ICTA EMEA 

Award Winners 

80 

84 

90 

97 

Promising Young Women 





On the Road Again 

Chloé Zhao Takes to the Great 

Outdoors with Nomadland 

Coming Attractions 

A selection of upcoming releases 

through the beginning of 2021 

Booking Guide 

24 

28 

Industry Insiders 

Daniel Borschke Says Goodbye 

to the National Association of 

Concessionaires 

A Century in Exhibition 

The 1980s: Megabucks, MTV, 

and Megaplexes 

67 

A Century of Innovation 

An Abridged Timeline of the Last 

100 Years of Cinema Presentation 

Presented by Dolby 

“[The three theaters] in 

different ways illustrate how 

innovation and continued 

diversification of the big 

screen experience help 

attract audiences.” p. 58 


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EXECUTIVE LETTER 

EXECUTIVE 

LETTER 

“I am hopeful that 

2021 will allow us to 

reclaim a sense of 

normalcy; when that 

day comes, we’ll have 

a new appreciation 

for our ability to 

adapt and improvise.“ 

An extraordinarily difficult year 

is finally coming to a close. The 

Covid-19 pandemic has left a lasting 

mark on the world, most tragically in the 

number of deaths and hospitalizations it 

has caused. The summer’s optimism for 

a swift recovery was soon tempered by 

a new rise in cases, leading to a second 

wave of lockdown measures across key 

European markets in the fall. As we 

approach winter, it is painful to take stock 

of what we’ve lost, yet we must continue 

to focus on the challenges that remain in 

the months ahead. 

Despite this state of affairs, I am 

personally looking forward to 2021 and the 

promise it might bring. As of this writing, 

there is little certainty as to when the 

global health crisis will abate, but there are 

clear signs of hope, as promising vaccine 

trials and virus treatments continue to 

advance. From an economic perspective, 

Covid-19 has taught us to adapt. Every 

business is operating at a fraction of its 

potential—cinemas are no exception—but, 

just as scientists find new ways to understand 

the virus, we are finding new ways to 

engage and stay close to audiences. This is 

hardly business as usual, but that doesn’t 

mean we’ve lost sight of the business. I am 

hopeful that 2021 will allow us to reclaim 

a sense of normalcy; when that day comes, 

we’ll have a new appreciation for our 

ability to adapt and improvise. 

In this edition of Boxoffice Pro, 

we’ve assembled a collection of stories 

about how the pandemic has already 

begun to change theatrical exhibition. At 

the concession stand, for example, we 

look at how vendors have adjusted their 

offerings to better suit consumer habits in 

the pandemic. Even as concession menus 

shrink to the core essentials (popcorn, 

candy, soda), several exhibitors we spoke 

to report a rise in average spend per person 

and an uptick in alcohol sales. It gave 

us the opportunity to explore the potential 

of wine service at the cinema, a staple 

at cultural and arts venues that is slowly 

catching on at movie theaters. 

Among our executive interviews in this 

edition are a conversation with Marcus 

Theatres CEO (and newly elected NATO 

chairman) Rolando Rodriguez about the 

positive changes inclusive practices can 

bring the industry, and a profile of Alamo 

Drafthouse’s new chief executive, Shelli 

Taylor. Rodriguez’s and Taylor’s approach 

to exhibition reflect their respective 

backgrounds, and their insights offer a 

look at how our industry can contribute to 

a more diverse and equitable future. 

Once again, I’d like to extend our 

gratitude to all our sponsors and allies 

in the exhibition community who have 

helped keep this magazine going during 

the pandemic. We could not do this 

without you. We may not have the end 

of this crisis in sight, but we remain 

committed to covering it for our readers 

every step of the way. 

Daniel Loria 

SVP Content Strategy & Editorial Director 

Boxoffice Pro 


09

NATO 12 | Charity Spotlight 18 | Industry Insiders 24 | A Century in Exhibition 28 

INDUSTRY 

“And there’s a bigger picture here: There’s an underserved 

community out there that is struggling economically without 

an outlet for out-of-home entertainment.” 

Bridging the Gap, p. 20 


11

INDUSTRY NATO 

KEEPING IN 

TOUCH 

NATO Members Discuss 

Path Forward for Exhibition 

Industry During Annual 

Meetings 

BY NATO STAFF 

NATO’s Annual Meetings are usually held 

in Los Angeles every fall. This year, those 

meetings were all held virtually. 

While a lack of in-person interaction 

with members left a void, we still received 

a lot of great feedback on how NATO 

should move forward during these 

difficult times. Here is a summary of the 

meetings that were held: 

EXECUTIVE BOARD 

MEETING 

Following the Advisory Board 

meeting, the Executive Board 

met in closed session to provide 

direction regarding NATO’s priorities, 

to consider recommendations presented 

by NATO committees and to review 

NATO financial reports. 

The Executive Board discussed 

strategic initiatives currently under way at 

NATO, including efforts to help member 

companies survive the Covid-19 pandemic— 

the state/local government relations 

grants program, lobbying support for relief 

legislation, an industry public relations 

campaign promoting “CinemaSafe,” and the 

dues hiatus for fiscal year 2020–2021. 

In keeping with its fiduciary 

responsibility to the organization, the 

Executive Board periodically reviews 

NATO financials in detail. At the October 

7 meeting, reports were presented by 

NATO treasurer Joe Masher, Investment 

Committee chairman Dan Harkins, and 

Audit Committee chairman David Wright. 

A Nominations Committee report, 

delivered by outgoing NATO secretary Jeff 

Logan, recommended the following slate 

of NATO officers for the 2020–2022 term: 

• Chairman: Rolando Rodriguez, 

Marcus Theatres Corp. 

• Vice Chairman: Bob Bagby, 

B&B Theatres 

• Secretary: John Vincent, 

Wellfleet Cinemas 

• Treasurer: Joe Masher, 

Bow Tie Cinemas 

An election was held, and the slate was 

elected as presented. The Executive 

Board members expressed their gratitude 

to outgoing officers, chairman Ellis 

Jacob and secretary Jeff Logan, for their 

leadership and service. 

GLOBAL CINEMA 

FEDERATION / 

INTERNATIONAL 

COMMITTEE MEETING 

The Global Cinema Federation and 

NATO International Committee 

held a joint meeting on Tuesday, October 

6. Exhibitors from around the world 

gathered virtually to hear from guests 

from the Fédération Nationale des 

Cinémas Français (FNCF), Federación de 

Cines de España (FECE), Hauptverband 

Deutscher Filmtheater Kino (HDF), 

and the U.K. Cinema Association, who 

reported on some success stories 

regarding box office and back-to-cinema 

campaigns in their respective territories. 

Several studies regarding the safety of 

cinemas were highlighted during the 

meeting, and NATO representatives 

discussed CinemaSafe. A review of the 

upcoming film release schedule was a 

reminder to all that exhibitors worldwide 

are being affected by the struggle to defeat 

Covid-19 in the United States. Despite 

many territories around the world having 

reopened cinemas safely months ago, they 

too are lacking new, exciting content from 

major Hollywood studios, which is hurting 

their businesses as well. On October 14, 

the Global Cinema Federation sent a letter 

to New York’s Governor Cuomo, urging 

him to reopen cinemas in his state for the 

sake of exhibitors worldwide. 

STRATEGIC PLANNING 

COMMITTEE 

Members of the Strategic Planning 

Committee (SPC) used their time 

together to discuss several important 

topics related to NATO’s work in the 

months and years to come. 

As the industry looks to rebound 

from the pandemic, the SPC will advise 

on the timing of any media campaigns 

designed to reinvigorate moviegoing and 

the resources that will be devoted to those 

campaigns. Continuing to work with the 

creative community on those campaigns 

will be essential. 

The SPC discussed the potential of 


On October 14, the Global 

Cinema Federation sent a 

letter to New York’s Governor 

Cuomo, urging him to reopen 

cinemas in his state for the 

sake of exhibitors worldwide. 

live sports in movie theaters to offset the 

volatility of the release calendar. NATO 

staff members are in the process of 

connecting to the major sports leagues. 

The SPC is also developing ways to 

improve diversity and inclusion within 

NATO’s committee structure. 

MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE 

NATO’s Membership Committee, 

consisting of volunteer members 

representing a multitude of member 

categories, met on Thursday, October 

1. Jeff Logan (Logan Luxury Theatres, 

Mitchell, S.D.) chaired his final meeting 

of the committee, as John Vincent 

(Wellfleet Cinemas, South Wellfleet, Mass.) 

assumes the chair position following 

his recent election as NATO secretary 

on the Executive Board. Also new to the 

committee is Gurbani Marwah (Cineplex 

Entertainment), a leader on NATO’s Young 

Members Committee, who represents the 

Canadian member category. In addition 

to the traditional governance issues 

(Advisory Board roster and emeritus 

member approval), the committee agenda 

consisted of the current NATO member 

dues hiatus, existing member benefit 

programs, regional association activities, 

and potential educational webinar topics. 

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION 

MEETING 

NATO’s Diversity and Inclusion 

Committee met virtually via 

Zoom webinar. During the meeting, the 

committee thanked their inaugural 

chair, Moctesuma Esparza, CEO of 

Maya Cinemas, for his dedication and 

leadership during the D&I committee’s 

first two years of activity. The committee 

also welcomed the new chair of the 

committee, Racheal Wilson, COO of 

Harkins Theatres. Racheal led the meeting 

as various NATO staff discussed previous 

accomplishments of the D&I Committee, 

including the NATO scholarship program, 

the elections toolkit, the D&I case study 

white paper, the Greenlight Committee 

meetings, and NATO committee 

benchmarking. Meeting attendees 

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13

INDUSTRY NATO 

were surveyed about their companies’ 

D&I efforts during the pandemic. It 

was inspiring to see that a majority of 

companies remained committed to D&I 

efforts during the pandemic. Attendees 

offered plenty of ideas for future D&I 

Committee projects, which NATO staff are 

looking forward to exploring further. 

CODES COMMITTEE 

The Codes Committee met via 

Zoom webinar on October 5, 2020. 

The meeting was well attended and 

supported by our committee chair Don 

Harton. Gene Boecker, NATO’s codes 

consultant, discussed relevant codes 

issues, and Randy Smith, NATO’s legal 

consultant, covered relevant ADA issues 

for the committee. 

Gene Boecker covered issues associated 

with the International Code Council (ICC), 

NFPA Life Safety Code (101) and Building 

Code (5000), ICC/ANSI A117.1, as well as 

issues related to adult changing table 

requirements. Boecker noted that the 2021 

ICC was in the process of being published 

and that the NFPA 2021 codes are available 

and he will prepare updates associated 

with same soon. However, he noted again 

that few jurisdictions are ready to adopt 

them at this time. As far as ANSI, the code 

has no updates, but the group is working 

on the scoping appendix to make it code. 

Finally, Boecker addressed the issues 

associated with existing and proposed 

state laws concerning adult changing 

stations, which are currently required in 

certain facilities in California and Arizona. 

Boecker noted that ANSI is also looking 

at the issue, which could create enhanced 

requirements, such as those in the U.K. 

and Australia, beyond those currently 

existing in the U.S. Boecker’s team will 

continue to monitor the issue. 

Randy Smith provided an update 

on how the industry’s efforts to modify 

theater operations to comply with 

federal, state, and local guidelines/ 

mandates could create ADA issues for 

operators. He covered the duty to provide 

reasonable accommodations during the 

pandemic and how such efforts must 

be reflected in operator’s policies and 

protocols. The key areas of compliance 

The independent member 

category represents the largest 

group of member companies, 

with over 720 companies 

in the United States, which 

includes 75 nonprofit cinema 

organizations. 

RTS 


discussed included ensuring effective 

communication, appropriate parking 

options, compliant points of entry/egress, 

the impact of mandatory mask policies, 

public symptom screening, impact of floor 

markings and other signage on individuals 

with visual impairments, queue line 

issues for individuals with mobility 

impairments, maintaining physical 

distancing, and impact of reduced 

seating capacity. Finally, Smith provided 

some basic deescalation protocols that 

members could consider in the event 

they find themselves having to deal with 

an aggressive guest objecting to newly 

introduced safety protocols. 

The committee will continue to 

monitor code and ADA issues and provide 

updates as necessary. 

TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE 

Over 200 joined the open 

Technology Committee meeting on 

Monday October 5, 2020. It is clear that 

technology remains important but has 

taken a change of direction as theaters 

prepare to reopen, and there is a need 

to extend the life of existing equipment 

rather than invest in new technology. 

There is interest in the Digital Cinema 

Picture Level (DCPL) Project, but it will 

hibernate until we are up and running as 

an industry. 

Work has continued in the 

standardization bodies including those 

working on immersive audio. The SMPTE 

standard for immersive audio has been 

published, and we expect new movies 

will change the name of their audio file 

from “Atmos” to “IAB.” Those that have 

Dolby Atmos systems will be able to play 

the newly named files. Those that have 

upgraded their immersive systems (DTS/ 

Barco and others) will be able to play the 

new files (and, in fact, the files named 

“Atmos” as well). 

We held a lively discussion on 

the upcoming Direct View (LED) 

requirements that are being discussed 

at DCI (the studio committee—Digital 

Cinema Initiatives—that set the original 

standards for the rollout of digital 

cinema). NATO hopes that the industry 

recognizes that new equipment and 

change of standards is a long-term issue 

and not a short-term requirement. 

NATO will continue to engage with 

DCI to share our common views and 

industry reality. 

INDEPENDENT THEATRE 

OWNERS COMMITTEE 

The NATO Independent Theatre 

Owners Committee (ITOC), 

composed of companies operating fewer 

than 75 screens, met on Tuesday, October 6, 

led by chair Scott Lotter (Paradise Cinemas, 

Chico, Calif.) and vice chairwoman Colleen 

Barstow (Main Street Theatres, Omaha, 

Neb.). The independent member category 

represents the largest group of member 

companies, with over 720 companies in the 

United States, which includes 75 nonprofit 

cinema organizations. NATO’s lobbying 

efforts receive a substantial amount of 

support from the independent members, 

both at the state and federal level. The 

meeting agenda covered several key topics 

confronting smaller cinema companies 

during the pandemic, including ancillary 

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15

INDUSTRY NATO 

cash flow, staff rehiring, and cutting 

expenses. Many smaller exhibitors also 

face the reality of possible bankruptcy due 

to state/local closures and a lack of film 

product. Like many other small businesses 

across the country, the pandemic has 

greatly affected these members. The four 

elected members of the NATO Executive 

Board from the independent category also 

joined the ITOC leadership to share an 

update on the association’s deliberations 

over the past months. 

REGIONAL ASSOCIATIONS 

MEETING 

NATO regional association leaders 

came together to discuss reopening 

updates and priority issues. These 

priorities included reopening followup 

issues, emerging issues for the 2021 

legislative session, regional legislative 

grants, and the top priority, helping to 

obtain state-by-state grants for exhibitors. 

The NATO regionals will continue 

to have bi-weekly calls in order to share 

current experiences and coordinate 

messaging on the various issues being 

addressed nationwide. 

YOUNG MEMBERS 

COMMITTEE 

Leaders of the Young Members 

Committee met to discuss the 

status of the industry. The overwhelming 

consensus of the meeting was, no matter 

how safe cinemas are, the industry will 

continue to suffer until there is a more 

reliable stream of new, wide releases from 

major studios. In the meantime, repertory 

content such as classic holiday films 

and alternative content like, hopefully, 

professional sports games will be key. 

Erin Von Hoetzendorff was assigned as 

the new NATO staff lead for the Young 

Members Committee. If you are interested 

in learning more about this committee, 

please reach out to her at evh@natoca.com. 

All NATO members younger than 40 are 

eligible to join. 


Industry IN MEMORIAM 

IN MEMORIAM 

Lene Løken (1947–2020) 

Boxoffice Pro regrets to inform our 

readers that industry veteran Lene 

Løken passed away in October at the age of 73. 

Løken was appointed CEO of Film & 

Kino in 1993, serving as the head of the 

Norwegian trade association until her 

retirement in 2014. 

Alongside her considerable 

achievements in the Norwegian cinema 

sector, Løken was a great supporter of 

UNIC, where she served as a vice president. 

Løken was one of the co-signatories 

of the revised UNIC Statutes when the 

decision was made in 2011 to relocate the 

organization from Paris to Brussels, in 

order to better to influence the European 

Commission. In addition to her roles in the 

cultural sector, she served as state secretary 

to the Norwegian prime minister and as 

state secretary to the minister of culture. 

“European exhibitors were hugely 

saddened to learn of Lene’s recent passing,” 

said UNIC president Phil Clapp. “Her 

achievements in leading the Norwegian 

cinema sector for over two decades were 

matched only by the contribution she 

made over a number of years to the work 

of UNIC. Having served as vice president 

to the organization for nine years, we 

were very pleased to be able to present 

her with the UNIC Achievement Award at 

CineEurope 2012. Lene was instrumental 

in helping UNIC deliver the changes which 

have made it the strong voice for European 

cinema operators that it is today.” 

NATO president and CEO John Fithian 

said, “I started representing exhibition as 

a lawyer for NATO in Washington D.C., in 

1992, and Lene started her leading role at 

Film & Kino in Norway in 1993. We worked 

together as NATO and UNIC developed a 

strong partnership over the years until she 

retired in 2014. For example, I believe that 

she was one of the early signatures on a 

global exhibition letter calling for standards 

for digital cinema in the early aughts. She 

was one of the first to understand that 

exhibition would be stronger if we all 

worked together on a global basis.” 

“Lene was instrumental in 

helping UNIC deliver the 

changes which have made it 

the strong voice for European 

cinema operators that it is 

today.” —Phil Clapp, UNIC 


17

INDUSTRY CHARITY SPOTLIGHT 

CHARITY 

SPOTLIGHT 

Variety – the Children’s Charity 

With golf being such a popular way to 

spend time outdoors during the pandemic, 

Variety – the Children’s Charity of the 

Delaware Valley (Pa.) held its Black Hat 

Golf Challenge throughout September 

and October. As part of the challenge, 

participants played a round of golf and 

raised funds in support of Variety. All 

were sent a black top hat to wear as they 

played (pictured top right) and were asked 

to document their outing on social media 

using #blackhatgolfchallenge. 

On October 10, Variety – the Children’s 

Charity of the Delaware Valley (Pa.) held 

its annual Fall Fest (pictured above), 

welcoming over 200 community members 

for a safe, family-friendly celebration of 

fall and Halloween open to children of 

all abilities. Attendees enjoyed pumpkin 

picking and decorating, sensory-friendly 

trick-or-treating held in a haunted forest 

filled with costumed characters, live 

music, hayrides, raffles, and even a visit 

from the Mummers! 

Between November 29 and December 

5, Variety – the Children’s Charity invited 

supporters to raise money for children with 

special needs by taking part in their firstever 

Holiday Walk, Run, & Roll. Participants 

in this inclusive event were invited to 

complete a distance of their choosing 

using a method of their choosing—whether 

walking, running, biking, or something 

else—either indoors or outdoors. 

On November 18, Variety – the 

Children’s Charity hosted Family Movie 

Night at the Mary Pickford Theater in 

Cathedral City, California. Attendees 

enjoyed a fun, family-friendly, free night 

at the drive-in, with safety protocols such 

as masks and social distancing in place. 

Each child was happy to receive a swag 

bag full of goodies. 

One hundred masked and socially 

distanced golfers hit the course at the 

Moorpark Country Club on September 17 

to support Variety – the Children’s Charity 

of Southern California’s Social Distancing 

Golf Outing. Attendees got the chance to 

reconnect with friends and colleagues—all 

for a good cause. Variety – the Children’s 

Charity thanks all who sponsored and 

attended the event for their support. 

Studio Movie Grill 

Over the last several months, Dallasbased 

Studio Movie Grill has continued 

to be active in engaging with its local 

community. The chain sponsored Dallas’s 

2020 EarthX Gala, recognizing those 

paving the way for a more sustainable, 

environmentally conscious future. 

Additional support has been given to a 

variety of groups and causes, including: 

the Jason’s Dream Foundation Toy 

Drive in September; the Spectrum 

Autism Support Group; the Georgia Run 

for Autism; and Nurses and Medical 

Professional Support Staff Appreciation 

Day at Parkland Memorial Hospital in 

Dallas. SMG donated auditoriums to JCC 

of Dallas and Bryan’s House, a Dallasbased 

charity that provides services to 

at-need children and their families. They 

also offered up one of their Houston 

locations for an anniversary memorial 

procession in honor of Harris County 

deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal, killed in the 

line of duty in 2019. In addition, SMG is 

one of the theaters participating in Variety 

of Texas’s Cinema Passport campaign, 


“Here at Film Row LEAD, our 

goal is to ensure everyone 

has a seat at the table ... If 

that means building a bigger 

table, then that’s exactly 

what we are here to do. We 

want everyone to have the 

same opportunities.” —Shelly 

Kratzer, Film Row LEAD 

Know of a recent or upcoming event 

that should be included in Charity 

Spotlight? Send us the details at 

numbers@boxoffice.com. 

which offers free movies at participating 

theaters in exchange for a $500 donation 

to the charity. Find more information at 

www.varietytexas.org/cinemapassport. 

Will Rogers’s Film Row LEAD Hosts 

Panel on Diversity & Inclusion 

The Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers 

Foundation has launched Film Row LEAD 

(Leadership, Education, Advancement, 

and Diversity), a committee dedicated 

to providing resources to encourage a 

more diverse and inclusive environment 

in the film industry. The committee is a 

major milestone for Film Row, a group for 

up-and-coming industry professionals 

established by Will Rogers in the spring 

of 2019. 

September saw Film Row LEAD 

host an online panel that addressed 

fostering diversity and inclusion 

in the entertainment industry. The 

discussion was moderated by Heather 

Morgan, vice president, content and 

programming, for Harkins Theatres, and 

featured panelists Wendy Armitage (SVP, 

marketing clearances and ratings, Sony 

Pictures), Kimberly Graham (director, 

global diversity & inclusion, Nielsen), 

Rolando Rodriguez (CEO & president, 

Marcus Theatres), and Todd Vradenburg 

(executive director, Will Rogers Motion 

Picture Pioneers Foundation). More than 

200 people registered for the inaugural 

event, and the feedback was encouraging. 

Film Row LEAD is composed 

of a diverse group of motion 

picture distribution and exhibition 

professionals committed to empowering 

underrepresented minorities in the 

entertainment industry through 

education and career development. The 

objective of Film Row LEAD is to expand 

the film community by offering workshops 

and giving professionals more exposure 

to studio executives, exhibition partners, 

and vendors, thus having more potential 

applicants with a diverse background who 

can apply for positions throughout the 

entertainment industry. 

The committee is chaired by Shelly 

Kratzer, a longtime member of the film 

industry with nearly two decades of 

theatrical film distribution experience. 

Kratzer and her team devised a wellrounded 

approach that seeks to merge 

professional development, diversity, and 

meaningful inclusion and community 

outreach. LEAD plans to offer various 

resources, including a speaker series, 

university partnerships, an internship 

program, a mentor program, and 

volunteer activities. “Here at Film Row 

LEAD, our goal is to ensure everyone has 

a seat at the table,” Kratzer said. “If that 

means building a bigger table, then that’s 

exactly what we are here to do. We want 

everyone to have the same opportunities.” 

Since its launch last year, Film Row 

has hosted several events, including 

lunch and learns, social gatherings, and 

volunteer service days—many of which 

have benefited Will Rogers’s Pioneers 

Assistance Fund (PAF). During these 

challenging times, Film Row pivoted 

from in-person activities to an online 

trivia series, which helped raise 

thousands of dollars for the PAF. “We are 

honored to support industry members 

in need through the Pioneers Assistance 

Fund Covid-19 Emergency Grant 

program,” said Melanie Valera, vice 

president, theatrical sales, at Paramount 

Pictures Studios and president of Film 

Row. “To date, the program has spent 

$2.7 million and provided more than 

8,000 emergency grants. We are grateful 

to supporters of Film Row and to all 

the members of our industry who have 

contributed to the Fund.” 

Upcoming events 

On December 3, 4, and 5, Variety – the 

Children’s Charity of the Delaware Valley 

(Pa.) will open its campus to visitors to 

walk along a festively decorated Holiday 

Lane. The exteriors of the campus’s rustic 

cabins will be lit up with holiday lights 

and decorated in holiday themes by the 

talented members of the Norristown 

Garden Club. Families will get a glimpse 

of Santa’s workshop, Candy Land, a 

gingerbread house, and more. For more 

information and to purchase tickets, visit 

varietyphila.org/holidaylane. 

Registration is open for Variety of the 

Desert’s third Annual Golf Scramble, to be 

held at Palm Valley Country Club in Palm 

Desert, California, on January 18, 2021. 

KESQ meteorologist Patrick Evans will 

host the event, which welcomes special 

guest Susie Maxwell Berning, a three-time 

U.S. Women’s Open champion. Register at 

varietyofthedesert.org/our-events/. 


19

Theater BRIDGING THE GAP 

BRIDGING 

THE GAP 

A Conversation About Diverse 

Representation in Cinema— 

On- and Off-Screen—with NATO 

Chairman & Marcus Theatres 

CEO Rolando Rodriguez 

BY DANIEL LORIA 

A veteran executive in theatrical 

exhibition, Rolando Rodriguez held 

leadership roles at AMC Theatres and Rave 

Cinemas before a stint as an executive 

at retail giant Walmart. Rodriguez 

returned to the exhibition industry in 

2016 as CEO and president of Marcus 

Theatres, currently the fourth-largest 

cinema circuit in the United States. He was 

recently named chairman of the National 

Association of Theatre Owners. 

In this conversation with Boxoffice 

Pro editorial director Daniel Loria, 

Rodriguez spoke about the importance 

of embracing diversity and inclusivity 

initiatives in the cinema industry. After 

Hispanic Heritage Month came and 

went largely unnoticed in 2020, the two 

engaged in a frank discussion on missed 

opportunities and the future potential in 

promoting Latin American leaders and 

audiences. 

Rolando, the last time I saw you in 

person was at the Geneva Convention 

last year. You came up to me before a 

panel we were doing and asked, “Do 

you know what day it is?” I said, “It’s 

Mexican Independence Day,” and 

you said, “Well, yes, it is, but it’s also 

Hispanic Heritage Month.” 

It was an interesting exchange 

because it shows that this month—a 

chance to celebrate and unite all 

Hispanic Americans—is overlooked 

even within our own community. And 

that’s really a missed opportunity, I 

think, for a number of reasons. So, to 

preface our conversation, let’s start 

with a basic question as it relates 

to the cinema business: What role 

do Hispanic audiences play in our 

industry? 

“What’s exciting to 

see is the dialogue 

starting to take 

place in our country 

relating to diversity 

and inclusion and 

the impact that 

it has, not only 

economically, but 

what it means for 

our country.” 

Hispanic and Latinos play an incredible 

part in our industry, in particular when you 

think about the fact that one in every four 

customers to come through our doors [in 

2019] happened to be of Hispanic heritage. 

Hispanic Heritage Month—running 

from September 15 to October 15—started 

with the fact that seven countries basically 

celebrated their Independence Day around 

these dates, but it wasn’t necessarily 

limited to those seven countries. It’s 

about Latinos and Hispanics celebrating 

the richness of our culture and the fact 

that we’re an incredible economic labor 

force and consumer base in this country. 


Hispanic Heritage Month should play 

an integral part in our communities, our 

country, and, frankly, in our industry. 

What’s exciting to see is the dialogue 

starting to take place in our country 

relating to diversity and inclusion and the 

impact that it has, not only economically, 

but what it means for our country. We 

represent almost 60 million people in the 

United States. We are 18 percent of the 

population and growing rapidly; there’s a 

general feeling that we could be as much 

as 30 percent of the population within 

the next 10 years. That’s a significant 

number of the workforce, leadership, 

and consumerism of our future. In our 

industry, we’ve been able to recognize 

that already, knowing one out of four 

customers that comes through our door 

happens to be Hispanic or Latino. This 

month is a great way for our country to 

learn about the culture, the background, 

and also the potential economic impact 

that we represent today and will continue 

to represent in the future. 

In terms of frequent moviegoers— 

those that go to the movies most often 

throughout the year—Latin American 

moviegoers are over-indexed in terms 

of their share of the general population. 

Right now, we represent around 18 

percent of the general U.S. population, 

and Latin American audiences represent 

26 percent of frequent moviegoers. That’s 

more than any other ethnic group, by 

quite some distance. 

When I think about diversity and 

inclusion, there’s been an incredibly 

positive movement that’s taking place 

in our industry relating to women being 

recognized, behind the camera and 

in front of the camera. It’s also great 

that we’re now starting to see much 

more representation from the African 

American and Black communities, 

which is a tremendous and necessary 

improvement. They are also a huge part 

of the moviegoing population. But we still 

lack improvements that are necessary to 

see more Hispanic actors, directors, and 

producers. We over-index because we play 

a product that’s family-oriented, which 

relates to the consumer base. As you relate 

to consumers, I think it’s important that 

we also see ourselves, that our kids are 

able to see themselves on the screen. And 

by the way, that also applies to leadership 

positions within the film studios, and, 

frankly, within exhibition itself. 

“If you take a broader look 

and say, how many Hispanics 

sit on boards of directors 

at public companies in the 

United States, that number 

gets really small. It’s less 

than 2 percent.” 

I think that was the beauty of a movie 

like Black Panther. Kids could sit there 

and say, “That hero looks like me.” It’s a 

great way to not only create inspiration but 

also drive aspiration in our communities 

to chase leadership positions, acting 

positions, political positions, board of 

directors’ positions. These are areas that, 

unfortunately, diverse communities 

continue to lag in. The state of California is 

taking some interesting steps to correct that, 

but it shouldn’t be government driven. It 

should be done because it’s the right thing 

to do, to recognize the consumer base, and 

recognize where consumer growth is going. 

In exhibition, we’ve seen more 

representation because of the growth 

of Latin American circuits in the U.S., 

which has introduced Latin American 

executives through that expansion. 

We have Hispanic executives among 

some of the leading vendors that 

service the exhibition industry. At the 

studio level, however, it is alarming 

that we don’t have that same 

presence. What is there left to do so 

we can see more of that diversity in 

other sectors of the industry—namely 

in production and distribution— 

that can hopefully influence more 

programming for Latin American 

audiences? 

I would start by saying that even in 

exhibition, as you noted, we have been 

very fortunate to have some very effective 

leaders and companies that are owned by 

Hispanics. But most of them started outside 

the United States. Even within exhibition, 

an industry that generated over $11 billion 

in 2019 in the U.S., a country with nearly 

60 million Hispanics, there’s more left to 

do. I’m very fortunate and grateful that I 

happen to be a Hispanic CEO, representing 

the fourth-largest circuit in the United 

States. But aside from that, if you take a 

survey, even within the top 20 circuits, you 

will not find many others. 

If we represent one in every four 

people that walk through the door in this 

industry, then it goes beyond just looking 

at the CEO level. How many Hispanic 

CMOs, COOs, or CIOs are there? It’s about 

leadership. If you take a broader look and 

say, how many Hispanics sit on boards 

of directors at public companies in the 

United States, that number gets really 

small. It’s less than 2 percent. 


21

Theater BRIDGING THE GAP 

There is still a lot of work to be done, 

not only in exhibition, but clearly with our 

partners in the film companies. I think 

they’re starting to make changes, there’s 

clearly an awakening through the social 

dialogue that’s happening, but I think it 

needs to be a balanced approach. I think 

that they are making good progress in 

female leadership, which is fantastic, I 

think that they’re starting to really move 

significantly in improving the numbers of 

African Americans and Black Americans 

represented in their senior leadership 

ranks. But there’s no question that there’s 

a tremendous gap associated with our film 

and distribution partners that relates to 

Hispanics and Latinos. 

At NATO, we started the Diversity 

and Inclusion Committee. There’s a 

lot of group work that’s been done that 

represents all diversities, not just one 

group. We need our friends and partners in 

the distribution and film companies to ask 

themselves, “Are we properly representing 

our consumer base in our leadership 

positions and on our board of directors 

positions?” 

We need to push the importance of 

that narrative, so young Hispanic kids can 

“We need our friends and 

partners in the distribution 

and film companies to ask 

themselves, ‘Are we properly 

representing our consumer 

base in our leadership 

positions and on our board of 

directors positions?’” 

look up at the screen and say, “That could 

be me someday.” Obviously, it’s not about 

becoming a superhero, but the idea behind 

it is that you can strive to better the lives of 

those in your community. Because as you 

do better, you’re in a better position to help 

influence your community. 

It’s also important to emphasize that 

this Latin American and Hispanic 

population isn’t limited to a few cities 

or key markets in the U.S. I think the 

national conversation sometimes 

ends up being misrepresented as a 

regional conversation. In previous 

stages of your career, at AMC 

Theatres and Walmart, you were able 

to see how the Hispanic population 

spread nationally from a regional 

concentration. When you came back 

into the exhibition industry at Marcus 

Theatres in 2013, headquartered in 

Milwaukee, not a market directly 

associated with a Hispanic or Latin 

American population, did you see 

that expansion firsthand? 

In earlier days, if asked to name places 

where a concentration of Hispanics existed, 


you would have said Miami; Chicago; 

Texas, in particular Houston, parts of 

Dallas and San Antonio; and obviously 

California. Maybe some of Colorado and 

Arizona. That was the case 20 years ago. 

Now you talk about Hispanic populations 

in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Minnesota. 

There is more representation in Colorado 

and Nebraska. 

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when I first 

joined the company over seven years 

ago, it was a movement that was starting 

to happen. I’m also the chairman of the 

Hispanic Collaborative in Milwaukee, and 

we do a lot of research on this. Over the 

past decade. the reason the entire state of 

Wisconsin has shown a population growth 

is thanks to Hispanics. If not for Hispanics, 

there would have been a declining 

population in the entire state. It is the most 

rapidly growing population base in the 

state of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, and in 

the southern portions of Wisconsin. 

The importance of that, from a business 

perspective, is about consumerism and 

the workforce. It’s also represented in 

the age group—Hispanics and Latinos 

happen to represent the youngest average 

age in America. We happen to represent 

the highest percentage of millennials, the 

highest percentage of Gen Zers. 

This is not to discount all the other 

diverse populations, by any means. Asian 

communities are growing, so are African 

Americans and Black communities. 

Hispanics just happen to be growing at 

the fastest rate and are the largest ethnic 

minority in the entire United States. 

Minorities and underrepresented 

groups in the United States aren’t 

monolithic audience blocks that only 

go to movies that represent them. 

Hispanic audiences buying one in 

every four tickets sold at U.S. cinemas 

last year confirms that. When we start 

talking about bringing audiences 

back to the cinema during this very 

difficult recovery effort, how should 

we approach our outreach to Hispanic 

audiences? 

When you think about marketing to 

Hispanics, the fact that we ended Hispanic 

Heritage Month—and I know that there 

are a lot of other topics currently going on 

in the world—but how much discussion 

did you see, on any level in the media, 

of Hispanic Heritage Month? Very 

little to none. We missed a tremendous 

opportunity, at a time when we’re talking 

a lot about diversity and inclusion; we still 

managed to miss this particular gap. 

I’m Cuban American, born in Cuba, 

and grew up watching movies from across 

the world. The movies I couldn’t watch 

were actually from the United States— 

they were blacked out. I grew up watching 

Chinese, Japanese, Canadian, German, 

Spanish films, films from Mexico, from 

South America. For me, the beauty of our 

industry and what we represent is that we 

provide an education and other views of 

cultures that you wouldn’t otherwise get 

without traveling. 

We have an incredible richness as 

an industry. How do we relate that to a 

consumer base that appreciates it? When I 

think about my own background, growing 

up in Cuba, I love the movies because my 

parents and I went every Sunday. Every 

Sunday, that was our outing. No matter 

what, we went to the movies as a family 

on Sundays. 

We have an incredible audience base 

that is very loyal to our product. It’s an 

audience base that really relates to brand 

loyalty and brands that actually represent 

them well and recognize them. When you 

recognize Hispanics within your product, 

it helps make sure that they stay loyal to 

you and keep coming back. 

Part of that is reinforcing moviegoing 

habits that already exist. In Latin 

America, it’s customary to have a 

discount day in the middle of the week. 

When you came back to exhibition 

with Marcus Theatres in 2013, just as 

the country was recovering from a 

recession, the circuit introduced a 

discount day, $5 Tuesdays. Did you 

see a different sort of engagement 

after putting practices in place that 

Hispanic audiences might have 

already been familiar with? 

We introduced that concept just slightly 

over seven years ago as a $5 Tuesday, 

with free popcorn. We wanted our studio 

partners to recognize that we were putting 

skin in the game as well. Seven years 

ago, there were still economic challenges 

… it was very well accepted, almost 

immediately. 

The thing that most impacted me, both 

personally and professionally, was figuring 

out very quickly that we found an audience 

we had lost. Many of those audiences are 

diverse, from underserved communities 

with limited income to take their families 

out for any form of entertainment. All of a 

sudden, I’m getting letters and calls from 

moms saying, “Thank you, I’m now able to 

take my family to the movies, and thank 

you for the popcorn.” It felt like the right 

thing to do: reintroducing ourselves to 

communities that were now able to take 

their families out for a fun evening, while 

at the same time creating a very exciting 

day that does a lot of business. 

Especially right now, as we’re facing 

a very difficult part of the reopening 

phase, an initial reopening cycle with a 

lot of changes, a lot of things outside our 

control. At the heart of this challenge is 

reconnecting with a lost audience. Once 

you engage with these conversations 

around diversity, around inclusivity, you 

can apply the lessons in a number of 

different scenarios, including the current 

Covid recovery. 

As we talk about diversity and inclusion, 

about Hispanic Heritage Month, and the 

importance of diverse audiences, we need 

to remember we also provide an escape 

for people. What NATO has done through 

CinemaSafe, what every one of our theater 

chains has done, we’ve all spent a great 

deal of time in our planning, upgrading 

our systems and processes to make 

sure that people understand the safety 

procedures. Keeping in mind the health 

and safety of not only our customers but 

our associates. There isn’t a case that can 

be traced to any theater at this point in 

time. It’s important for us to get things 

started again. 

And there’s a bigger picture here: 

There’s an underserved community out 

there that is struggling economically 

without an outlet for out-of-home 

entertainment. Our communities, all of 

our consumers out there, are looking for 

a place to smile, have a healthy laugh, or 

a healthy cry. We provide that. I think it’s 

incumbent on government officials, on 

our film and distribution partners, and 

it’s incumbent on us in exhibition, to 

ensure that we work together. We need 

to make sure that this incredible art 

form continues to serve all communities, 

including diverse ones, so we can stay in 

business and continue to cater to them. 

We have a lot of work to do, and hopefully 

we can get started tackling it in a short 

period of time. 


23

Industry INDUSTRY INSIDERS 

A FLAVORFUL 

FAREWELL 

Daniel Borschke Says Goodbye 

to the National Association of 

Concessionaires 

BY REBECCA PAHLE 

“When I took this position, I 

remember telling someone: ‘They’re 

actually paying me to do this. I get to go to 

the movies and eat popcorn and candy. I 

would do it on my own!’” 

So began, in 2011, Daniel Borschke’s 

journey as executive vice president of the 

National Association of Concessionaires—a 

journey that ends this month, as he caps off 

a four-decade career in trade associations 

with a well-deserved retirement. 

Although an avid fan of moviegoing 

since childhood—his family would go 

to the movies once a week—Borschke 

began his career in quite a different field. 

Throughout high school and college, “I was 

a mail clerk for the Milk Foundation, which 

is a trade association for milk and cheese 

producers nationwide,” he says. One 

master’s degree in communications later, 

and his bosses asked if he’d be interested in 

applying for a job. “Here I am out of school, 

without a job opportunity. I said, ‘Sure.’” 

The position he ended up applying 

for was CEO. At age 24, just out of college, 

Borschke found himself at the head of 

a $3 million operation, in charge of 24 

employees. It’s a job he held for nearly 

25 years, until the Milk Foundation was 

merged with another group. (Incidentally, 

Borschke is lactose intolerant, a fact he 

would bring up in a later job interview 

when asked how he could represent a 

group without being part of it himself.) 

From there came a short stint as 

executive director of the American Lamb 

Board, a role that had him working with 

“salt of the earth” ranchers and making a 

weekly commute from Chicago to Denver. 

(“You know you’re getting into a routine 

when the flight attendant knows you as 

you get on and get off the plane every 

week.”) It was the latter part of the job 

that had Borschke looking elsewhere 

after a year; the hunt landed him at the 

National Association for Retail Marketing 

Services, where he served as president 

and CEO until 2011. 

Then came a move back to Chicago 

and his most recent role, heading the 

NAC and its annual expo. (Replaced 

this year, by necessity, with the “NAC 

ReTreat Week,” which despite being 

online still managed to host a wine 

tasting.) The NAC, like Borschke’s career, 

has undergone some major shifts over 

the years. Founded in 1944, it initially 

represented popcorn growers, eventually 

expanding its purview to include popcorn 

machinery manufacturers, movie theater 

concessionaires, and—now—concessions 

product and service providers across a 

variety of businesses, including movie 

theaters, sports arenas, and colleges 

and universities. 

A veteran of trade associations, 

Borschke looks at heading the NAC with 

special fondness—and not just because of 

all the food he gets to eat. “[The member 

companies of] all those other associations 

always had proprietary information,” 

he says. “They were competitors. They 

never wanted to talk about their own 

information, because they didn’t want 

to share it with anyone.” Working in the 

concessions industry, however, has been 

“an absolute treat,” because the companies 

involved “are willing to share. They’re 

willing to help.” Borschke touts that spirit 

of open communication as one of the 

key draws of the NAC, allowing as it does 

members from different fields—whether 

cinemas, convention centers, or sports 

venues—to seek out inspiration from each 

other. NAC member companies “show 

a warmth that just isn’t there in other 

groups, by any stretch of the imagination.” 

That spirit of comradery has proved 

essential in 2020. Through much of the 

year, the NAC has hosted weekly calls, 

allowing its members to share ideas, news, 

and—hey, it’s 2020—concerns about 

the future of their respective industries. 

“Especially now,” says Borschke, “it’s 

comforting to know that everyone is out to 

help each other under the circumstances. 

I had to wait all these years, but I finally 

found an association that’s heartwarming 

and works together.” 

High levels of “involvement and 

engagement” from NAC members has 

been fundamental to the cross-pollination 

of ideas that’s thrived during Borschke’s 

tenure. “The committees were always 

very, very engaged in the activities of the 

organization,” he says. Unfortunately, 

that level of participation has gone down, 

Borschke explains, as individual members 

have had more work piled on them and 

thus have less time for active participation 

in the NAC. “Some of the theater people 

are now representing prisons and 

vending,” too, says Borschke. It’s a change 

that was in the air already but has been 

accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic and 

the industry-wide belt-tightening it led to. 

This could, Borschke fears, have a longterm 

impact on the NAC. 


“From a management standpoint, it’s 

in many ways much more efficient to 

be able to get things done without a 

committee,” he says. But, in losing insight 

from concessionaires who no longer have 

time for active involvement in the NAC 

like their predecessors did, “You lose the 

flavor. You lose the influence.” And you 

lose the boots-on-the-ground knowledge 

of the concessions industry that NAC 

members possess. “Frankly, we aren’t 

the professional concessionaires,” says 

Borschke of NAC management. “These 

people are, from a sales as well as an 

operational standpoint. They know what 

is selling. They know what is hot in the 

theater industry. We’re going to lose that, 

because they just don’t have the time for 

input. That’s the major change I’ve seen 

over the [last] nine years.” 

Borschke had planned to retire from 

the NAC after this year’s trade show, 

the group’s 76th, which now has not 

happened. In making a clean break, he 

leaves the NAC at a time of unprecedented 

upheaval for the theater industry—but 

not one without opportunities. Increasing 

automation, from high-tech machines in 

theater kitchens to Coca-Cola Freestyle 

machines, has already made concessions 

much less “hands-on, more digital, more 

remote”—which in the current Covid 

landscape is a positive thing, though it 

leads to longer-term questions about the 

role of flesh-and-blood employees. 

“It’s comforting to know 

that everyone is out to 

help each other under the 

circumstances. I had to 

wait all these years, but I 

finally found an association 

that’s heartwarming and 

works together.” 

IN APPRECIATION 

In celebration of Daniel Borschke’s tenure as the NAC’s executive 

vice president, we’ve asked colleagues in the industry to share some 

words of thanks and appreciation. 

“Dan’s leadership has been 

invaluable to the NAC over the 

past 10 years. He has worked with 

the NAC executive committee to 

effectively guide and grow the 

organization and has helped 

us to emphasize and improve 

upon the National Association 

of Concessionaires’ educational 

programs. Dan has helped us to 

improve upon our government 

relations endeavors as well. Dan’s 

work on these initiatives and others 

has made NAC a better, stronger 

organization, bringing more value 

to NAC’s membership. While we will 

miss Dan, we wish him the best in 

retirement.” 

Adam Gottlieb 

President, NAC 

President, The Adalar Group 

“Dan Borschke came to NAC 10 

years ago a bit ‘cheesy,’ but we 

have found him to be the salt of 

the earth. Dan’s leadership and 

guidance have been appreciated 

by countless individuals. He leaves 

his NAC office with a legacy of 

brilliance and talent all allocated 

superbly among his board of 

directors, associates, and the 

membership.” 

Larry Etter 

Director of Education, NAC 

Former President, NAC 

Senior Vice President, Malco 

Theatres 

“Dan’s immediate grasp of the 

concessions industry and our 

association was fantastic. We 

were so appreciative of his past 

association experience. He 

has served our NAC members 

and supported our volunteer 

leadership with professionalism 

and an eye toward growth and 

collaboration. The support team 

he has developed is leaving a 

great legacy and solid future. Dan 

and his family truly became a part 

of the NAC family over their years 

of involvement. Many thanks Dan, 

and may you and Julie enjoy the 

next great chapter.” 

Ron Krueger 


President, COO, VSS-Southern 

Theatres, LLC 

“Dan, it has been a pleasure 

working together, whether it be 

as president of NAC or from an 

industry supplier perspective. I 

truly want to thank you for the 

passion, commitment, enthusiasm, 

and creativity—especially during 

these past eight trying months— 

which you exhibit day in and day 

out to keep the out-of-home food 

and beverage industry together, 

engaged, and informed. We will 

all miss your spirited approach to 

managing this association and wish 

you and your family all the best in 

this next chapter of your life!” 

Jeff Scudillo 


Vice President, Sales, Promotion 

in Motion 

“Dan, congratulations on your 

NAC and 48 years of association 

management retirement! Though 

there are many accomplishments 

leading NAC over the past 10 

years, your government relations 

leadership is a bright spot. 

Identifying the most critical topics 

and informing members through 

Expo seminars and updates has 

resulted in a more proactive NAC 

on strategic topics. Moreover, 

you helped to create a unique 

and critical forum for various 

trade associations to share their 

POVs on issues important to 

NAC membership. Thank you for 

continuing to remain involved in 

this important work. Enjoy your 

new professional direction, and 

we all look forward to seeing 

Julie and you in person at a trade 

event soon.” 

Don Lear 

Director, Foodservice, Oberto 

Specialty Meats 


25

Industry INDUSTRY INSIDERS 

Looking at the exhibition industry 

as a whole, Borschke sees potential in 

thinking of theaters not just as theaters 

but as more general-use event spaces, thus 

making the industry less subject to the 

“whims and impatience of studios.” He 

points to Malco Theatres, which has made 

an arrangement with the University of 

Memphis to host classes, during which the 

concession stand will be open for business, 

selling snacks and beverages (including 

all-important coffee) to college students. 

It’s practices like those—and like private 

theater rentals, which have been adopted 

by cinemas worldwide since the Covid-19 

shutdown—that Borschke looks to for 

the future of the concessions industry. 

Concessions providers are increasingly 

“looking at other places” beyond theaters 

to sell their products—and theaters 

need to be there to meet them, acting as 

classrooms, churches, restaurants, and 

bars in addition to screening venues. 

In leaving the NAC, Borschke looks 

ahead to the future—but he also looks to 

“Even though I’d been in 

the association business for 

40 years, [leading the NAC] 

really was a great way to 

finish off my career.” 

the past, when veterans gave a newcomer 

to the concessions industry a warm 

welcome. Ron Krueger of Southern 

Theatres, for example, “was one of the 

first people who interviewed me for 

this job,” says Borschke. “Ron obviously 

comes from a family business in this 

industry. Those are the kinds of people 

that I’m going to miss the most.” Though 

he won’t be attending trade shows or 

involving himself in NAC business 

post-retirement, “because it wouldn’t 

be fair for the other people who are still 

working with the NAC,” he won’t stop 

going to the movies—or eating his fair 

share of concessions while he’s there. 

“Even though I’d been in the association 

business for 40 years,” leading the NAC 

“really was a great way to finish off my 

career. I hate to think that I’m leaving the 

association industry during a pandemic, 

but I think if I have to leave, this is 

probably the best way to do it.” 


Contact Us 


27

INDUSTRY A CENTURY IN EXHIBITION 

‘ 

0 

s 

82020 marks the 100th anniversary of 

A CENTURY 

IN EXHIBITION 

The 1980s: Megabucks, 

MTV, and Megaplexes 

BY VASSILIKI MALOUCHOU 

the founding of Boxoffice Pro. Though 

the publication you hold in your hands 

has had different owners, headquarters, 

and even names—it was founded in 

Kansas City by 18-year-old Ben Shlyen 

as The Reel Journal, then called Boxoffice 

in 1933, and more recently Boxoffice 

Pro—it has always remained committed 

to theatrical exhibition. 

From the 1920s to the 2020s, Boxoffice 

Pro has always had one goal: to provide 

knowledge and insight to those who bring 

movies to the public. Radio, TV, home 

video, and streaming have all been perceived 

as threats to the theatrical exhibition 

industry over the years, but movie 

theaters are still here—and so are we. 

We at Boxoffice Pro are devotees 

of the exhibition industry, so we couldn’t 

resist the excuse of a centennial to 

explore our archives. What we found was 

not just the story of a magazine, but the 

story of an industry—the debates, the 

innovations, the concerns, and above 

all the beloved movies. We’ll share 

our findings in our year-long series, 

A Century in Exhibition. 


The experimental revolution 

that swept the 1960s and 1970s 

was all but dead and buried in the ’80s. 

Summarizing the new decade, Peter 

Biskind, author of Down and Dirty 

Pictures, writes, “When the Ronald Reagan 

tsunami swept everything before it, the 

market replaced Mao, The Wall Street 

Journal trumped The Little Red Book, and 

supply-side economics supplanted the 

power of the people.” The corporatization 

of Reagan’s America, as well as its return 

to conservatism, left Hollywood with little 

interest in small, realistic, auteur-driven 

films. Instead, it went all-in on megabuck 

movies produced by mega-corporations to 

be shown in megaplexes. 

The Return of the Studios 

Riding the blockbuster wave started 

by Jaws and Star Wars in the previous 

decade, Hollywood in the 1980s turned all 

its efforts to the production of expensive 

sci-fi, action, and horror blockbusters 

like Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. What 

Jaws had taught the industry was not only 

the power of pricey special effects but 

also that of huge marketing campaigns. 

Skyrocketing marketing budgets 

significantly inflated the price of films 

in the 1980s. The MPAA’s president, Jack 

Valenti, revealed in November 1980 that 

in that year the average film made by the 

major studios that made up the MPAA 

cost $10 million before advertising and 

prints, double the 1975 figure. Prints and 

advertising added another whopping $6 

million. According to Valenti, box office 

grosses needed to reach about $40 million 

for the studio to simply break even. 

To guarantee maximum returns, 

Hollywood’s high-concept blockbusters 

became more and more homogenized. 

Unlike their embrace of little-known actors 

or even nonactors in the’60s and ’70s, the 

studios increasingly relied on a small 

number of very popular actors with a star 

factor strong enough to make people show 

up at the box office. Boxoffice Pro even 

began publishing “box office attraction” 

lists, ranking the most popular stars and 

the most promising new actors based on 

monthly surveys. Studios also invested 

heavily in sequels to minimize risks. 

Associate editor Jimmy Summers wrote 

somewhat ironically about the trend in the 

summer of 1983, when films like Return 

of the Jedi, Rocky III, Superman III, and 

Psycho II hit the screens. The “summer of 

sequels appears to be the season in which 

the actors do exactly what their public 

wants them to do,” he wrote. 

Higher production and marketing 

costs proved a problem for exhibitors, 

which were forced to raise their ticket 

prices sometimes to as high as $6 or $7, 

doubling 1970s prices. Between 1979 and 

1980, when the average ticket price was 


29


$2.69, the MPAA reported a 6.9 percent 

increase in the average ticket price. 

Exhibitors found themselves squeezed 

between higher print costs, larger 

margins for studios, and the fear of losing 

their patrons. Boxoffice Pro editor 

Alexander Auerbach, who took over from 

magazine founder Ben Shlyen as editor 

in 1979, urged the industry to control 

its costs and pointed out the studios’ 

hypocrisy in an editorial published in 

June 1982. “If the major studios cannot 

turn out a steady flow of films for less 

than $10 million each, how do they 

propose to make them for cable-only 

distribution for $3 million or less?” he 

wondered. 

Big Business Entertainment 

The financial changes of the 1980s made 

it harder and harder for small studios and 

exhibitors to survive. Instead, vertically 

integrated media conglomerates, well 

equipped to finance and distribute these 

movies, ushered in the era of big-business 

entertainment. Acquisitions of studios 

by nonmedia conglomerates had started 

in the 1960s, but the 1980s was a time of 

unprecedented media cross-ownership, 

vertical integration, and the increasing 

importance of financial instruments 

like equity, shareholder value, and 

other financial assets during a period of 

unprecedented deregulation. 

In 1982, Coca-Cola, a longtime 

partner of theaters, entered the industry 

aggressively when it bought Columbia 

Pictures for a reported $750 million. It 

marked the first takeover of a major 

Hollywood studio by a conglomerate 

since Kinney National Services acquired 

Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, Gulf & Western 

bought Paramount, and Transamerica 

took control of UA in the late 1960s. In 

1983, Columbia, HBO, and CBS joined 

forces to create Tri-Star (later TriStar), a 

new studio that would produce films for 

theatrical exhibition and cable TV. A year 

later, Tri-Star bought the Loews theater 

chain, raising antitrust concerns in regard 

to a potential violation of the Paramount 

Decrees. In 1987, Japanese electronics 

giant Sony moved into theatrical 

distribution to enhance its video sales with 

the creation of AIP Distribution. Two years 

later, in September 1989, Sony Corporation 

of America purchased Columbia Pictures 

and Tri-Star from Coca-Cola and renamed 

itself Sony Pictures Entertainment. 

Sony’s acquisitions opened the way for 

foreign ownership of studios, amplifying 

American anxieties about a “foreign 

invasion.” The Qintex Group of Australia 

had bought MGM/UA earlier in 1989, 

topping the bid of Australian publisher 

Rupert Murdoch, who had acquired 50 

percent of 20th Century Fox in 1985. But 

what the Sony acquisition ultimately 

Acquisitions of studios by 

nonmedia conglomerates 

had started in the 1960s, 

but the 1980s was a time 

of unprecedented media 

cross-ownership, vertical 

integration, and the 

increasing importance of 

financial instruments ... 


showed was the advantages it gave to 

Sony, which was now the sole company 

controlling its films’ content, distribution 

channels, and the hardware with which 

people could watch movies at home (VCR, 

laser disks, etc.). 

Exhibition did not escape the M&A 

trend, despite the Paramount Decrees. 

Sony held the historic chain Loews, which 

was briefly renamed Sony Cinemas before 

switching back to its original name. Warner 

Communications and Gulf & Western 

formed Cineamerica Theaters, a corporate 

entity that took over Gulf & Western’s 

Mann Theaters, Festival Enterprises, and 

Trans-Lux circuits. Finally, MCA, the 

parent company of Universal, purchased a 

49 percent stake in Cineplex Odeon in 1986. 

While most acquisitions were not the 

subject of commentary by the editorial 

team, Boxoffice Pro’s new editor, Harley 

W. Lond (who took over in 1984 and 

implemented a significant overhaul that 

put more editorial emphasis on “vital 

analysis and interpretation” rather than 

straight news), deplored the trend. In 

an August 1989 editorial, he wrote, “The 

conglomeration fever in our industry 

has now moved from the acquisition of 

exhibition outlets to the acquisition of 

production outlets, and this does not augur 

well for us. Just recently, George Lucas 

bemoaned the rash corporate takeover 

by stating that such actions ‘damage the 

creative energies of the entertainment 

industry’ by creating companies with 

enormous debts, thus tying up resources 

that should be made available instead for 

risk-taking on new films, filmmakers, and 

new ideas.” 

The survival of smaller and 

independent theaters who struggled to 

stay afloat was at stake. Boxoffice Pro 

dedicated a lot of space to independent 

distribution and exhibitors, publishing 

regular strategy columns and profiles of 

distributors and cinemas. A few indies 

managed to thrive, most notably New 

Line Cinema with the hit A Nightmare 

on Elm Street and Miramax with Sex, Lies, 

and Videotape, as well as exhibitors like 

Carmike Cinemas, Pacific Theaters, and 

the Laemmle chain. But as Dan Harkins, 

president of Arizona’s Harkins Theaters, 

put it in December 1987, independents 

were still “facing extinction” because 

of conglomerate buy ups. Independent 

exhibitors were at the forefront of the 

fight against integration, often pushing 

for resolutions through NATO. In 

fact, Boxoffice Pro reported that in 

August 1987, Dan Harkins, as well as 

other exhibitors from Texas and Indiana, 

appeared in front of New York’s District 

Court to prevent Tri-Star from having 

the right to book its films into its Loews 

cinemas. Despite their efforts, the court 

granted Tri-Star its request. 

Home Entertainment, VCR Wars, 

and MTV 

Vertical concentration was not the only 

challenge facing the exhibition industry 

in the 1980s. Editor Alexander Auerbach 

had summed up the threat of home 

entertainment in a March 1981 editorial. 

“Exhibition and the studios, which once 

feared the advent of television, now 

ponder on the impact of cable TV, 

pay-TV, the videodisc, and videotape, 

direct broadcast from satellite to home 

and other technological advances. All 

of this new gadgetry can be regarded as 

either an opportunity or a threat, but 

in either case, it cannot be ignored,” he 

argued. As had happened since the advent 

of TV in the ’50s, theaters were competing 

for the scarce time, attention, and cash 

of a moviegoing audience that now had 

a seemingly never-ending bounty of 

home alternatives. 

One significant threat in home 

entertainment was the rapid quality 

improvements in TV screens and surround 

systems at home. Echoing the race to 

large formats in the ’50s, as readers of 

this column might remember, Tony 

Francis, president of Theater Products 

International and regular Boxoffice Pro 

contributor, lamented in May 1981 that 

“the picture only offers size.” He feared 

that although the quality of TV pictures 

was inferior to film, it would soon surpass 


31


it. Francis urged exhibitors to get ready 

for the competition and reminded readers 

that only 15 percent of American theaters 

offered stereophonic sound in 1981, while 

consumers were getting more and more 

accustomed to it—and therefore expecting 

it—at home via their radios, tape players, 

and headphones. In September of that 

year, Ioan Allen, Dolby’s vice president 

of marketing, warned in Boxoffice Pro 

that as much as 90 percent of theaters 

were subpar in sound and/or projection 

compared to home equipment. Innovations 

in HDTV technologies made the threat 

even more imminent. It is interesting to 

note that Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope 

Studios was actually involved in HDTV 

demos, as he believed that the next logical 

step would be to distribute films made on 

tape via satellite to theaters. 

The videotape craze was an additional 

challenge to exhibitors, especially 

after the mid-1980s. Introduced in the 

American market in the ’70s, Sony’s 

Betamax and JVC’s VHS were fiercely 

competing to dominate the videocassette 

and videocassette-recorder industry. 

Boxoffice Pro published a study by 

the Electronic Industries Association’s 

Consumer Electronics Group in 1985 

showing that sales of VCRs had jumped 

over 72 percent year-over-year. The jump 

was preceded by the Supreme Court’s Sony 

Betamax Decision in March 1984, which 

ruled that home-videotaping practices 

were not in violation of copyright laws. 

In an unprecedented move, BOXOFFICE 

PRO extended its coverage to video 

with its “Boxoffice Video Supplement,” 

starting in 1985, in an effort to inform 

exhibitors of the trends and potential 

uses of this new format. Soon, cassette 

and VCR sales outpaced domestic box 

office grosses. According to a report in 

the Video Supplement in 1987, income 

from videocassette sales rose 30 percent 

compared to 1986 and, at $7.46 billion, 

nearly doubled the $4.2 billion total box 

office take for that same year. 

On top of home-entertainment quality 

improvements and the VCR menace, the 

’80s saw the explosion of cable TV. It was 

no coincidence that all major media and 

exhibitor conglomerates rushed to acquire 

premium channels. For instance, in 1983 

MCA, Paramount, and Warner agreed 

to become partners to buy the Movie 

Channel, a satellite-delivered motion 

picture pay-TV service with over 2 million 

subscribers at that time. Four years later, 

the late Sumner Redstone, owner of 

National Amusements—which operated 

400 movie centers—bought a controlling 

interest in Viacom, which owned MTV 

and Showtime. For exhibitors, the danger 

was not just a relentless competition for 

audiences. As Perry Lowe, chairman of 

the board of the National Association of 

Concessionaires, explained in a 1981 piece, 

because of inflation and the different cost 

structures of the industry, “theater owners 

would have to raise prices faster than cable 

operators, and the result will be a further 

widening gap between the value of seeing 

a movie at home on cable TV versus going 

out to a movie theater.” 

Overall, however, the response of 

exhibitors toward these new threats was 

not quite as anxiety ridden as it had been 

in previous decades. Exhibition had 

survived despite countless doom-andgloom 

predictions in the past. This time 

around, many Boxoffice Pro writers 

and contributors were quick to point out 

how ancillary markets could incentivize 

filmmaking and present new opportunities 

for returns. Jack Valenti noted in 1982 that 

while some 40 percent of television homes 

were equipped with cable, 18 million 

subscribed to pay TV or cable movie 

channels, and 4 million video recorders 

were in the nation’s living rooms, the 

year had still recorded an all-time-high 

box office record. The reason behind this, 

he argued, was simple: People who love 

movies love them in every medium. 

Industry experts reassured exhibitors 

by stressing the opportunity for an 

aggressive promotion provided by pay 

TV and cable. One such example was 

“Movieweek,” a half-hour program on 

MSN Information Channel that used an 


“Home video is actually a 

blessing to exhibitors, because 

it’s tapped into the people 

who are not contributing to 

Hollywood film production.” 

—Dan Harkins, 1985 

MTV-like model to put movie marketing 

(including trailers and interviews) 

into thousands of homes. Video was 

also presented as a medium to attract 

audiences who did not go to the movies 

at all. “Home video is actually a blessing 

to exhibitors, because it’s tapped into 

the people who are not contributing to 

Hollywood film production,” explained 

Dan Harkins in October 1985. A 

businessman in the videocassette field 

went even further in a 1981 article: 

“[Exhibitors] possess a knowledge that no 

other group of businessmen have in this 

country. They know motion pictures and 

how to sell them. It follows that they are 

the best-prepared group to become video 

cassette and disc retailers.” Auerbach 

agreed in a 1984 editorial, stating that “the 

rental business is a bit different from the 

usual snack bar activity, but hardly an 

overwhelming challenge to the theater 

employee.” Indeed, a few small theaters 

presented in the magazine, like Fred 

Kaysbier’s theater in Ogallala, Nebraska, 

or the Village Theater in Knoxville, Iowa, 

turned to video sales. 

The Window Issue 

What also concerned exhibitors was the 

matter of theatrical exclusivity windows. 

Talks about windows went back to the 

birth of TV, but the ’80s was the decade 

that saw the issue become much more 

prevalent in the magazine’s coverage. The 

editorial line was clear. “Exhibition must 

battle to preserve its place as the first-run 

outlet for product from Hollywood,” wrote 

Auerbach in November 1980, following 

an unofficial NATO convention in New 

Orleans dedicated to the topic. Auerbach 

was especially concerned by the evershrinking 

window between theatrical 

releases and cassette releases, noting that 

some videocassettes were released while 

films were still in theaters. That was not 

only true for smaller films but for bigger 

box office successes like Purple Rain, 

which became available on tape only six 

months after its initial theatrical release. 

“What became of the unwritten rule 

of a one-year window (now ostensibly 

six months but, in reality, four-orless 

months) on film to videotape 

transfers?” asked editor Harley W. 

Lond in December 1984. He noted that 

distributors, benefiting from word of 

mouth from theatrical releases, were 

eager to shorten the windows further. 

Subsequent-run theaters were hit the 

hardest. Auerbach wrote, in May 1984, 

that “a reasonable ‘window’ between 

theatrical and cassette release would at 

least help the first-run houses, although 

sub-run theaters would still have a 

tougher row to hoe.” The observation was 

echoed by George Kerasotes, president of 

Kerasotes Theaters, who in 1981 declared, 


33


“I don’t think there’ll be subsequent-run 

theaters—neighborhood houses that run 

pictures for a long time—because that 

market is rapidly being absorbed by cable 

TV people, cassettes, disks, whatever is 

coming out.” 

Movie Palaces and Megaplexes 

In the aforementioned editorial, Harley 

W. Lond urged exhibitors to unite and 

put pressure on their suppliers while 

also increasing their investments 

in state-of-the-art technology to 

provide “a form of entertainment that 

can’t be matched anywhere else.” He 

underlined a widespread criticism of 

the exhibition industry. Despite all the 

novel technological threats to be found 

in the home video market, the biggest 

threat for some exhibitors was exhibitors 

themselves. “Badly maintained theaters 

with poor acoustics, dim screens, scruffy 

decor, and butchered prints will do more 

to keep potential ticket buyers away than 

any of the electronic marvels now on the 

market,” reported Boxoffice Pro after a 

1981 NATO convention in Las Vegas. The 

shopping center multiplex model was 

already starting to feel lackluster and 

antiquated. “The multiplex has become 

the Japanese car of the movie theaters— 

compact, efficient, and often lacking in 

individual style,” wrote Tom Matthews, 

managing editor, in 1989. 

The movies needed to bring their magic 

back. Jack Valenti put it simply in 1986: 

“Theater box office and the magic of the 

movies in the marketplace are irretrievably 

linked together. One goes down as the 

other diminishes. One goes up as the 

other shines.” A new type of theater was 

to bring back the magic: the megaplex. 

Giant modern theater complexes began 

overtaking smaller multiplexes after the 

mid-’80s, with Kinepolis Brussels opening 

the world’s first megaplex with 25 screens 

in Belgium in 1988. 

The path toward the megaplex era 

is well documented in Boxoffice Pro. 

That history cannot be told without the 

Canadian Cineplex Odeon Group and its 

president and founder, Garth Drabinsky. 

Drabinsky and Nathan A. Taylor founded 

Cineplex Odeon in 1979. By the end of 

the decade, according to the magazine’s 

new Giants of Exhibition list, it had 

become North America’s fourth-largest 

circuit, with more than 1,500 screens in 

the U.S. and Canada. Megaplexes were 

often located in malls—epitomized by 

the 1,000-seat Cineplex Beverly Center in 

Los Angeles—but a new trend of standalone 

buildings with multiple amenities 

was becoming more and more prevalent. 

For example, Cineplex Odeon’s flagship 

location in Universal City, located next 

to Universal Studios and its theme 

park, was built in 1987 with 18 screens 

“Badly maintained theaters 

with poor acoustics, dim 

screens, scruffy decor, and 

butchered prints will do 

more to keep potential ticket 

buyers away than any of the 

electronic marvels now on 

the market.” 


and 6,000 seats for $16.5 million. In a 

speech at a NATO convention in 1988, 

Drabinksy highlighted the rationale 

behind the megaplex. He stressed “the 

urgent necessity of formulating the 

most felicitous motion picture viewing 

ambiance that the present technology and 

the most creative architectural designs 

will permit.” 

The megaplexes were meant to offer a 

luxurious experience to moviegoers. They 

were often inspired by the movie palaces of 

yore, and those classic theaters’ visionary 

architects—like Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel, 

Thomas Lamb, and the Rapps—were 

often referenced in megaplex profiles. 

“Lobbies and auditoriums are leaning more 

towards palatial furnishings rather than 

the shopping centers crackerbox floor 

plans of yesteryear,” wrote Dan Harkins in 

1987. This state of mind perhaps explains 

why so many pages of Boxoffice Pro 

in the ’80s were dedicated to profiles of 

restored movie palaces. The megaplexes 

were also designed to optimize the patron’s 

viewing and comfort, which meant that 

Dolby Stereo surround systems and the 

Lucasfilm THX sound system were a must. 

To help exhibitors navigate the countless 

innovations and new terms, the magazine’s 

Modern Theater section ramped up its 

coverage on sound, at a rate comparable to 

the 1920s when sound was first introduced. 

The whole idea behind megaplexes 

and the fight against home entertainment 

was to make moviegoing an “experience.” 

Concessions became an integral part of 

that strategy, as many theaters expanded 

their menus to offer more specialty 

concessions, like beer and wine, larger 

sizes (32-oz. sodas were dwarfed by 45 and 

60-oz. cups), and combos. Merchandising 

tie-ins started booming. The Star Wars 

licensing and merchandising success 

made exhibitors jump on the bandwagon, 

and many started selling licensed T-shirts, 

posters, records, videocassettes, toys, and 

other paraphernalia at the concessions 

stand. Exhibitors hoped to increase their 

profits and translate the “buzz” of satisfied 

moviegoers into impulse buys once the 

movie was over. This was especially 

the case with children’s movies. As one 

exhibitor put it in 1988, “We’ve sold a lot 

of Roger Rabbit pins at our theaters. But 

we tried to merchandise Rambo and just 

didn’t have any luck.” Inspired by the 

fast-food industry, Coca-Cola, which had 

bought Columbia Pictures in 1982, was a 

pioneer in that strategy and put in place 

multiple promotional tie-ins on reusable 

cups and popcorn buckets. “The more hot 

properties developed for the screen, the 

better. All the promotion and all the hype 

on only one hot picture a year will cause 

the theater industry to go painfully soft,” 

explained Herbert Arnold, V.P. of Coca- 

Cola USA in a 1980 interview. 


35


Pioneering the Computer Age 

In 1989, Coca-Cola introduced its selfserve, 

walk-through concession stand, 

which was manufactured by Cretors, the 

inventor of the popcorn machine. Coca- 

Cola was bringing to concessions one of 

the most important developments in the 

exhibition industry: automation. While 

articles on automation had occasionally 

been featured in Boxoffice Pro 

since the 1950s, modern automation 

as we know it today took off in the 

’80s. “There’s nothing romantic about 

a ticket machine. [...] But automation 

has hit the box office, and theaters 

that don’t modernize their operations 

will suffer,” warned Auerbach in June 

1981. To help exhibitors understand 

the new technological tools at their 

disposal, a “Computers” special section 

was introduced in the Modern Theater 

section in the 1980s, discussing benefits, 

usage, costs, and products associated 

with computers. 

Automated ticketing systems, such as 

Omniterm, Dataticket, and Movie/Master, 

were often advertised and explained in 

the magazine. The ability to print tickets 

faster and provide all the information 

necessary to the moviegoer on the ticket 

while also keeping track of sales was a 

tremendous innovation for exhibitors. 

These systems also allowed customers to 

reserve tickets earlier by phone and to pay 

with major credit cards. More and more 

software products, such as Theatron All in 

One, became integrated with concession 

sales, programming, bookkeeping, and 

even booth and auditorium management. 

The ’80s also saw the development 

of online databases meant to manage 

releases and marketing material. Two 

of the database services profiled in 

Boxoffice Pro were Baseline, which 

gave access to weekend box office reports 

and information on upcoming movies, 

and Cinemascore, which provided 

demographic data on opening-night 

audiences. In December 1988, the 

magazine decided to extend its services 

to the digital space with Boxoffice OnLine, 

a computer service meant to provide 

exhibitors with vital information—like 

teasers, trailers, and changing release 

dates—more quickly than it could be 

delivered in print. 

Computers also became an integral 

part of an effort to systematically use data 

to understand consumer behavior and 

tastes. One contributor summed up the 

need for more research on the moviegoer’s 

motivations to watch a movie within such a 

fragmented media landscape. “Today’s film 

patrons don’t go to the movies, they go to a 

movie,” he wrote, arguing that predictions 

and data were more necessary than ever. 

Software like Entertainment Data and 

Market Relay Systems was developed to 

predict which films would be hits, thus 

helping exhibitors guide scheduling. To 

quote Tom Matthews, managing editor 

in September 1989, with more money at 

stake than ever before for both studios and 

exhibitors, “the motion picture industry 

[had] become a numbers game.” 

By the end of the decade, the industry 

was optimistic. At the NATO/ShoWest 

1989 Convention, NATO president William 

Kartozian cited a 20-year upward trend in 

both screens and revenues—the former 

increasing from 13,000 to 24,000 venues, 

an 80 percent increase, and the latter 

rising from $1.2 billion in annual grosses to 

$4.4 billion, a 27 percent increase. In this 

context, the trends adopted in the ’80s— 

from IP-based event films to moviegoing 

as an experience, vertical integration, and 

automation—were to become the bedrock 

of the industry for subsequent decades. 


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THEATER 

“I think about the filmmaker who had a vision and a passion and 

brought a story to life that was meant to be on a big screen.” 

Holding Down the Fort, p. 40 


39

THEATER ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE 

HOLDING 

DOWN 

THE FORT 

Shelli Taylor Joins Alamo 

Drafthouse as New CEO 


“That’s important 

to us, to expand our 

footprint. If we’re 

going to [support] 

filmmakers and 

studios and maximize 

the life of a film, that 

footprint matters. We 

want as many people 

to have access to the 

movies as possible.” 

The world was a very different place 

when Shelli Taylor began the series 

of conversations with Alamo Drafthouse 

that would land her in the exhibition 

industry, even if it was just 10 months ago, 

in late December 2019. 

Only one month later, cinemas in 

China would close due to the Covid-19 

pandemic. In February, northern Italy 

followed. Within weeks, the bulk of the 

world’s theaters—including those in the 

United States—had stopped in-person 

operations. And on April 30, 2020, Shelli 

Taylor was announced as the new CEO of 

cinema chain Alamo Drafthouse. 

“The goal of the role was very 

different” when she first signed on, says 

Taylor, with classic understatement. 

Covid-19 crystallized her number one 

responsibility—nothing less than keeping 

her company afloat through a frightening 

pandemic and confronting its ripple 

effects on the exhibition industry: closures, 

wobbly theatrical exclusivity windows, 

and a film slate that can’t seem to stay put. 

When Covid hit the U.S., “I decided to 

leap anyway,” says Taylor—inspired by 

the community spirit, customer service, 

and “incredible presentation” that first 

drew her in as an Alamo fan when she 

moved to Austin, Texas, and began taking 

her then-13-year-old son to the movies 

there. Conversations with Alamo cofounder 

and now-former CEO Tim League 

(still involved with Alamo and its sister 

companies, Mondo and Fantastic Fest, 

as executive chairman) took her from an 

appreciative fan to a full-on enthusiast, 

someone who “fell in love with this 

entrepreneurial, scrappy, just really cool 

team that’s following their passions and 

created an incredible business out of it. I 

was just like, ‘How can I pass that up?’” 

In looking for a new CEO, League said, 

in a statement at the time of Taylor’s 

hiring, he wanted someone “with a strong 

voice and battle-tested leadership skills.” 

In Taylor, Alamo found someone who had 

honed those skills outside the exhibition 

industry. Before being hired by Alamo, she 

served as president and CEO of Austinbased 

United PF Partners, a conglomerate 

of Planet Fitness franchisees. In 2010 she 

started a brief tenure as V.P. of Disney 

English China, working to deliver Englishlanguage 

experiences, products, and 

services to children ages 2 to 12. But her 

longest pre-Alamo role was at Starbucks, 

where Taylor was instrumental in the 


Alamo Drafthouse’s 

South Lamar theater 


41


company’s expansion in China from the 

late ’90s through the first decade of the 

21st century. 

Joining Alamo as its new CEO would 

be like “my early days of Starbucks. I 

wanted that again,” she says. The timing, 

admittedly, was “crazy, [but] I’m still glad I 

did it. My first few weeks were shell shock. 

The team was amazing, really welcoming 

and supportive, even if I was meeting all of 

them via Zoom or Google Hangouts.” 

During her time with Starbucks, 

Taylor developed an understanding 

of what she calls scaling snowflakes: 

building an infrastructure that allows 

for company growth while holding on to 

the “specialness and community touch” 

that existed when the company was 

smaller. “How do you allow each Alamo to 

be a snowflake—but scale? In some ways, 

people might argue Starbucks has not 

done that, because now it’s everywhere. 

It’s ubiquitous. But Starbucks has [done 

so],” she argues, in terms of the culture 

they’ve created and “how they take care 

of their people and how they connect with 

their community.” 

Taylor’s hiring fits in nicely with the 

growth story of Alamo. Founded in 1997, 

“My first few weeks were 

shell shock. The team was 

amazing, really welcoming 

and supportive, even 

if I was meeting all of 

them via Zoom or Google 

Hangouts.” 

the dine-in chain made a name for itself 

with innovative, offbeat programming, 

mixing mainstream Hollywood titles 

with indie/art house fare and repertory 

selections, often from horror, sci-fi, and 

other genres with strong cult followings. In 

the years since, it’s grown to 41 locations, 

some operating under a franchise model. 

In 2016, Alamo opened its first New York 

location in Downtown Brooklyn. In 2019, it 

came to Los Angeles. Additional locations, 

as of September 2019, were planned for 

Lower Manhattan and Orlando, Florida. 

As Alamo grew from a one-screen 

theater in an Austin warehouse to the 

13th largest exhibitor in North America 

(as of February 2020), it developed its 

own company culture. Taylor wants 

to “amplify” and direct that culture, in 

part by building diversity within the 

organization. At the same time, she says, 

“It’s no secret that we’ve had some internal 

problems with sexual harassment and 

such”—specifically, allegations that arose 

in 2016 and 2017 (against the editor-inchief 

of an Alamo-backed publication and 

a co-founder of Alamo’s genre film festival, 

Fantastic Fest) and others that resurfaced 

earlier this year. 


“I think growth overtook [Alamo],” 

Taylor says. “The structure that needed 

to be in place to take a culture that was 

already pretty darn great and amplify 

it” was not there. Moving forward, the 

questions to ask are, “How do we prevent 

any more bad actors getting in the door? 

And if they do, how do you eliminate 

them as quickly as possible?” To that 

end, Alamo has revamped its reporting 

procedure, introducing a “Speak Up” 

platform designed to improve the 

process of tracking, reporting, reviewing, 

and analyzing workplace allegations. 

Further updates aimed at improving 

Alamo’s culture include workplace health 

surveys, interactive training, a new 

learning management system to improve 

internal communication, and a concern 

resolution process. 

Taylor is confident that Alamo’s growth 

will continue in the wake of the pandemic, 

even if it comes partially as a result of 

industry consolidation. “I hate saying this, 

because it’s horrific, but there are going to 

be—unfortunately—a lot of theaters that 

don’t make it. … [That’s] not the way that 

we want to win. I’d prefer to win through 

competition and all of us doing our best. 

But we’ll be the beneficiary of that, as well. 

Right now, it’s just survival,” she says. 

As of the first week of October, Alamo 

stood between 5 and 20 percent of prior 

year sales, with private cinema rentals 

serving as a “bright spot” in a period when 

the industry is hampered by a lack of new 

studio releases. Alamo may play a lot of 

independent and art house titles, but, 

Taylor says, “We won’t survive off indies.” 

Tentpoles remain a necessary way to draw 

people back into cinemas. The way things 

stand now, “basically, you can break even 

before rent, but not with rent. We’re open 

because we want to be there for the films, 

and we want to be there for our guests. But 

it continues to cost us quite a bit of money 

to remain open.” 

Still, Taylor looks to the post-Covid 

future, noting that the past few months 

have given the Alamo team new insights 

into things like “how to be more effective 

and efficient within our theaters and 

improve [our] unit economics.” A robust, 

consistent film slate, when it does arrive, 

will open up new opportunities for the 

chain, including for franchisees. “That’s 

important to us, to expand our footprint. 

If we’re going to [support] filmmakers and 

studios and maximize the life of a film, 

Left and top: Alamo 

Drafthouse’s Mueller 

theater and its Barrel O’ 

Fun event space in Austin, 

Texas. 

Above and p. 41: Alamo’s 

Austin South Lamar 

location wants you to 

come play with them, 

Danny. 

that footprint matters. We want as many 

people to have access to the movies as 

possible.” 

That phrase—the life or life cycle of 

a film—is one that Taylor comes back 

to several times. As a newcomer to 

exhibition, she is not, she says, married 

to the tradition of three-month theatrical 

exclusivity that’s long been the standard 

in our industry: “I don’t have an emotional 

attachment to the model.” Before her 

tenure at Alamo began, the chain screened 

Netflix titles, including Alfonso Cuarón’s 

Roma. After their theaters shut down 

in March, Alamo joined many other 

exhibitors in switching to the virtualtheatrical 

model, under the brand “Alamoat-Home.” 

In May, they launched their 

own VOD platform, Alamo on Demand, 


43


“What does incredible 

presentation look like? 

And how do we have 

great theaters, so when 

filmmakers are making 

movies that absolutely 

should be out on the big 

screen … we can create that 

experience for our guests?” 

Above: Alamo 

Drafthouse’s Mueller 

theater, Austin, Texas 

which, like the cinema proper, mixes 

mainstream titles with more niche 

offerings. In August, several Alamo 

locations were open in time to screen Bill 

& Ted Face the Music, which distributor 

United Artists shifted from an exclusive 

theatrical release to day-and-date several 

months into the Covid-19 pandemic. 

(Alamo SVP Steve Bunnell noted in an 

August press release that the chain was 

“the first theater company to show Bill & 

Ted Face the Music,” inviting audiences 

to free screenings early in the week of its 

official bow.) 

Going to the movies is about 

community, Taylor says. It’s a core part 

of Alamo’s brand and something that’s 

“never going to go out of style,” even if 

the culture of moviegoing has taken a 

big—and, Taylor believes, temporary—hit. 

“I think about the filmmaker who had a 

vision and a passion and brought a story 

to life that was meant to be on a big screen. 

That was meant to have 200 people sitting 

together, experiencing that experience, 

leaving the theater talking about it—being 

impacted,” she says. “I can’t imagine going 

through that and developing that and 

putting my life into it and then not having 

that opportunity.” 

But there are opportunities, too, 

outside the relatively brief period in 

a film’s life when it plays in theaters. 

Alamo wants to be involved in those 

other stages, all the way from “help[ing] 

emerging filmmakers have a voice” to 

streaming. “People, from my perspective, 

are entrenched in what they need to win, 

versus what the ecosystem needs. … And 

from an Alamo perspective, that’s the 

conversation that we want to engage in. 

What does incredible presentation look 

like? And how do we have great theaters, 

so when filmmakers are making movies 

that absolutely should be out on the big 

screen … we can create that experience 

for our guests? We believe that there are a 

lot of films that deserve that.” At the same 

time, shortened widows will provide an 

“opportunity for more diversity of titles 

within the theater.” 

What shortened windows won’t do, 

she says, is stop people from going to 

the cinema once Covid passes, tentpoles 

return, and the industry returns to a 

new normal. “We’re not going to be 

cocooning. We’re going to be like, ‘Get 

us out!’ So now is not the time for us to 

be squabbling. Now’s the time for us to 

say, ‘We’re all struggling’”—exhibitors, 

studios, filmmakers, and vendor partners 

alike. “The community is struggling. What 

are we going to do to survive? And then 

what do we do to make the best possible 

experience to [reach] moviegoers wherever 

they’re watching a movie?” 


Theater FOOD & BEVERAGE 

HOW COVID-19 

IS CHANGING 

CINEMA 

CONCESSIONS 

Concessions Will Play a 

Crucial Role in Cinemas’ 

Recovery. It Also Introduces 

New Challenges. 

BY DANIEL LORIA 

As cinemas around the world 

struggle with a dearth of new 

studio releases during the Covid-19 

reopening phase, exhibitors have relied 

on concessions sales to mitigate the 

financial impact of the pandemic. As a 

result, operators are quickly adapting 

to changing consumer habits in the 

coronavirus era—a disruption that has 

upended both long-standing practices and 

new trends in cinema food and beverage. 

“Prior to Covid we were experiencing 

expanded menus, self-serve options, and 

a focus on environmentally friendly, 

reduced packaging with a move away 

from plastics,” says Shelly Olesen, vice 

president of sales and marketing at C. 

Cretors & Company. “In this upside-down 

world, post-Covid, many menus have been 

drawn back to core concession items,” she 

says. Olesen cites popcorn, beverages 

(alcohol, in particular), candy, hot dogs, 

nachos, and pretzels as being among the 

most successful concessions during the 

Covid recovery. 

A pioneer in the popcorn business, the 

family-owned company has dealt with 

other global crises since its founding 

in 1885. During its time in business, 

Cretors has outlasted the financial toll 

of two world wars, countless natural 

disasters, and an assortment of historydefining 

events—including the last global 

pandemic to shutter U.S. cinemas, the 1918 

flu pandemic. Throughout the course of 

history, Cretors has kept its position in the 

concessions business by sticking to what’s 

always gotten them through the twists and 

turns of global events: popcorn sales. “It 

was popcorn and soda that helped keep 

the cinema doors open during the Great 

Depression, and we are pretty certain it 

will be these champion items that do it 

again,” says Olesen. 

Popcorn and soda alone will certainly 

not be enough to save cinemas from the 

most serious crisis the industry has faced 

since its beginnings. Until a vaccine 

comes along, however, the tried-and-true 

combo is exhibitors’ best bet, as the sector 

faces additional months of uncertainty 

ahead. This back-to-basics approach in 

embracing classic staples is indicative 

of a sector-wide retraction in food and 

beverage sales, according to Larry Etter, 

senior vice president at Malco Theatres 

and director of education at the National 

Association of Concessionaires. “We have 

reduced the number of menu items offered 

to accomplish the specific goal of moving 


patrons in and out of the lobbies as fast as 

possible,” he says, referring to the strict 

social distancing guidelines imposed 

to alleviate congestion in common 

areas. Etter finds that business pivot 

ironic: “That was our intended goal for 

years, and for the sake of competitive 

advantages we got away from doing what 

we do best to instead focus on things that 

look cool and innovative. What I’m hearing 

from nearly everyone is that per capita 

sales are up roughly 20 to 25 percent with 

smaller menus and reduced options.” 

Reduced concessions menus have also 

emerged out of more practical concerns, 

says Beau Bartoni, vice president of sales 

and marketing at Packaging Concepts 

Inc. “Theaters are reopening with limited 

concessions for both ease of managing 

their inventory and to serve products that 

can be delivered safely. In some regions, 

concessions are prepackaged, and certain 

items are not able to be served due to local 

guidelines.” 

Joe Macaluso, vice president of sales, 

U.S. and Canada, at Gold Medal products, 

agrees. “More locations are turning 

to grab-and-go products or seeking 

packaging solutions to replace the typical 

open-air bags or tubs,” he says. That 

development helped fast-track several 

new Gold Medal products that had been 

planned before the pandemic, the virus 

acting as a catalyst for the company to 

prioritize their introduction to the market. 

Gold Medal, for example, launched a 

series of ready-to-eat gourmet popcorn 

available in two prepackaged sizes and five 

flavors. They also launched a touchless 

butter dispenser, a self-service device that 

operates using photo-eye technology, after 

releasing a ReadyServe popcorn dispenser 

in 2019. “These products were already 

planned, but their demand increased due 

to Covid-19 … that trend was already 

emerging prior to the concerns 

surrounding the virus.” 

It’s an observation that has been 

frequently repeated in financial reporting 

about consumer habits during Covid-19: 

Rather than introducing entirely new 

products and technologies, the pandemic 

has accelerated the pace of change of 

preexisting trends. Among them has been a 

shift to a largely cashless experience at the 

cinema, with the advent of digital ticketing 

and cinema apps allowing audiences to 

reserve—and pay for—a night out at the 

movies directly on their phones. 

As cinemas began to shutter in mid- 

March, several operators relied on curbside 

concessions sales through their digital 

apps as a way to channel sorely needed 

income. The practice helped accelerate the 

adoption of mobile concessions ordering 

and led concessions marketing supplier 

RCM Media to introduce its own line of 

customized digital apps for movie theaters. 

“Being able to order ahead, skip the 

line, and have contact-free check-in is a 

much more streamlined process than the 

traditional way of going to the movies,” says 

Rick Vegaz, RCM’s vice president of digital 

marketing and technology. “This way, 

theaters can focus on providing the best 

customer experience and less on day-to-day 

transactions. Using one of our 360 cinema 

apps, customers can order concessions to 

be delivered to their seats to help improve 

the flow of people in the lobby.” 

Digital orders can also help exhibitors 

untap data associated with individual 

consumers’ preferences when it comes 

to movie snacks. This enables 

exhibitors to retarget specific 

audience segments to promote 

particular items or special promotions— 

as they already do with ticket purchases. 

Packaging Concepts’ Bartoni says that out 

of all the innovations that have stemmed 

from Covid-19, he believes this will be the 

most lasting. “Digital concession sales will 

only continue to grow,” he says. 

Etter agrees, citing preordering 

technology as a long-lasting trend to 

emerge from this crisis: “I think cashless 

facilities will be the new norm.” On the 

other hand, however, the Malco Theatres 

executive is concerned about the recovery 

of specialty concessions items, such as 

premium vessels, toppers, and movie tie-in 

popcorn tins. These products, often sold as 

collectibles at an upcharge, rely on a steady 

stream of tentpole titles from major studios. 

Products need to be licensed, designed, and 

ordered well in advance of an announced 

release date before even being offered to 

moviegoers. With the studio release slate 

up in the air, and talk of nearly every major 

title on the schedule being rescheduled 

for months or forgoing theaters entirely, 

concessions marketing vendors like RCM 

Media and Golden Link are especially 

vulnerable to the whims of major studios. 

“This has been a problem for all of us 

in this wonderful industry,” says RCM 

president and co-founder Jim McGinness. 

“We plan and produce our promotional 


47

Theater FOOD & BEVERAGE 

“I believe the slowdown 

of promotions will not be 

long lasting, and as soon 

as cinemas are confident 

that the big titles will stop 

moving, cinemas will start 

committing to promotions 

once again.” —Jeff Waaland, 

Golden Link 

concession items months in advance of 

the movie’s release, and when the movie 

circumvents theaters or is pushed back 

indefinitely, it changes everything.” 

That isn’t to imply consumer interest 

has abated; sales of specialty popcorn 

vessels remain in high demand according 

to Jodi Pine, RCM Media’s executive vice 

president of sales and marketing. She 

points to smaller concessions menus as 

one of the main drivers for that demand 

but admits “it’s been difficult to create 

concession programs and promotions to 

support our theater partners as studios 

keep changing their release dates.” 

“Our business is tied primarily to large 

titles. With the constant changes and 

films pushing back or some going straight 

to VOD, most cinemas have become very 

conservative in terms of activating and 

planning film promotions for the rest 

of the year—and even into next year’s 

first-quarter titles,” echoes Jeff Waaland, 

president of Golden Link. Despite these 

recent struggles, Waaland is confident 

it is only a bump in the road. “I believe 

the slowdown of promotions will not 

be long lasting, and as soon as cinemas 

are confident that the big titles will stop 

moving, cinemas will start committing to 

promotions once again.” 

It’s crucial to keep in mind, despite 

how endless the Covid-19 recovery seems, 

that the solutions of today might not 

be relevant tomorrow. While vendors 

like Cretors have quickly adapted to 

offering additional products such as 

hand-sanitizing stations and mobile floor 

standing shields to help cinemas better 

serve customers through the pandemic, 

their core business remains tied to 

delivering dependable equipment that can 

be used for years to come. 

When asked if cinemas should consider 

any future changes to the design of their 

concession stands, Larry Etter answers with 

a categorical reply: Do not change a thing. 

“If an architect starts drawing new 

sanitary instruments, spacing, lighting, 

and restrooms—how long will it take to 

complete construction of that project? 

Twenty-four months? Longer? By the 

time all of the implementation of virusprotection 

conditions are built, we will be 

back to 2019-type operations,” he says. “In 

constructing new facilities, we need to 

have a vision of what 2023 will look like; 

hopefully it won’t be too much like today.” 


THE FEATURES YOU NEED. 

THE OPTIONS YOU WANT. 

THE COMPANY YOU TRUST. 

When it comes to concessions, 

it comes from Cretors. 

Only Cretors combines five generations of industry leadership with more than 

130 years of forward-thinking innovations. Backed by our industrial manufacturing 

R&D for global snack food giants, we bring revolutionary products to the 

concessions marketplace, time and again. Whether it’s an industry-changing 

safety feature, a long-sought-after option or a customizable machine made 

for the way you sell anywhere in the world, there’s no limit to our ingenuity. 

Made in America, loved world-round! 

Contact Shelly Olesen at 847.616.6901 or visit www.cretors.com 


49

THEATER FOOD & BEVERAGE 

THE PERFECT 


As cinemas reopen, high-margin 

concessions like alcohol are gaining renewed 

appreciation. Could wine emerge as one of 

cinema’s post-pandemic F&B trends? 

PAIRING 

BY DANIEL LORIA AND KEVIN LALLY 


51


When Sideways opened in 

four theaters on October 22, 

2004, no one expected the 

film to linger much beyond 

that year’s awards season. The movie did 

very well in its opening weekend, grossing 

a little over $200,000 and scoring the 

highest per-screen average in the market. 

And it had legs. Word of mouth helped 

expand the film to become a hit for Fox 

Searchlight, crossing over from art house 

theaters to multiplex screens nationwide 

in what proved to be a 30-week theatrical 

run. An Academy Award for Best Adapted 

Screenplay and Golden Globe for Best 

Picture, Comedy or Musical, punctuated a 

successful $71.5 million run. The film’s true 

cultural impact, however, would be felt well 

beyond cinema screens for years to come. 

Fifteen years on, the wine world is still 

recovering from what has been called the 

“Sideways Effect,” when consumers took 

note of the protagonist’s strong affinity 

for pinot noir and even stronger aversion 

to merlot. News reports went on to 

document a dramatic uptick in the sales 

and production of pinot noir grapes in the 

United States, while merlot suffered under 

the weight of Paul Giamatti’s infamous 

line in the film: “I am not drinking any 

fucking merlot!” 

“I was working at [Michelin-starred] 

The Modern in New York City at the 

time—everyone wanted pinot noir and no 

one wanted merlot,” recalls Jessica Bell, 

who left a career in investment banking to 

become a sommelier during that period. 

“This movie had just pushed this craze … [it] 

turned the entire wine market on its head.” 

All these years later, it’s striking that 

a film that grossed under $100 million 

would have such a lasting effect on 

consumer choices. It also revealed an 

important potential for cinema professionals 

across the country: Wine drinkers 

like going to the movies, yet the movies 

were hardly a venue for wine drinkers at 

the time. 

Alcohol service has rapidly expanded 

its footprint at U.S. cinemas over the last 

two decades, going from a niche offering 

to a full-blown trend. “Our first true bar 

opened in 2002 as part of a casual-dine 

concept on Long Island, New York,” says 

Patrick Micalizzi, V.P. of food and beverage 

at National Amusements’ Showcase 

Cinemas. “Eighteen years later, a majority 

of our cinemas offer liquor, beer, and 

wine service in our restaurants, dine-in 

operations, and walk-up lobby bars. The 

demand for adult beverages at the movies 

continues to climb.” 

Larry Etter, SVP at Malco Theatres 

and director of education of the National 

Association of Concessionaires, says 

alcohol service has become more than a 

trend, calling it “almost obligatory” when 

it comes to new builds and renovations. 

“The new era of cinema now must include 

food and beverage offerings, hence, bigger 

menus and adult beverages.” 

As Etter notes, expanded menus and 

alcohol service have emerged as two of the 

biggest trends at U.S. cinemas over the last 

decade. These have presented both new 

opportunities and challenges as cinema 

concessionaires add alcohol service, says 

Rob Novak, V.P. of concessions and F&B at 

Right: A successful 

alcohol program 

requires more than 

a wine list. Marcus 

Theatres’ Take Five 

Lounge gives patrons 

a comfortable place to 

enjoy a drink before or 

after a movie. 

Left, below: 

HaloVino, a reusable 

narrow-rimmed wine 

glass designed for 

entertainment venues 

“Wine has to be delivered 

in a way that feels and 

tastes like wine. So many 

food-service operators 

offer wine in a flimsy, widerimmed 

cup and wonder 

why wine sales are so low.” 

—HaloVino’s Jessica Bell 


Marcus Theatres. “The cinema experience 

is vastly different than it was 10 years 

ago. In addition to traditional popcorn 

and soda, guests can now order wine and 

a cheeseburger,” he says. “But serving 

wine has a few challenges. Wine drinkers 

are accustomed to receiving their brand 

of choice in a glass with a stem. The cup 

holders in a theater, however, are not 

designed for stemware. Wine served in a 

more theater-friendly plastic cup has been 

the resolution, and guests are now starting 

to get more comfortable with that approach, 

but it was a bit of an adjustment.” 

That specific challenge is what inspired 

Jessica Bell to create HaloVino, a reusable 

narrow-rimmed wine glass designed to 

enhance the wine experience at entertainment 

venues. “You go to an art show 

or an opening night at a gallery, and wine 

is always part of the experience,” she says. 

“Wine has to be delivered in a way that feels 

and tastes like wine. So many food-service 

operators offer wine in a flimsy, widerimmed 

cup and wonder why wine sales 

are so low. You could put the best wine in 

that cup, and it won’t feel or taste like wine 

to most wine drinkers. I liken wine drinkers’ 

reaction to getting wine in a cheap 

plastic cup to that of a beer drinker getting 

warm, flat beer. They may still drink it, but 

they won’t enjoy the experience.” 

That cinema was, until recently, a 

largely unexplored wine market within 

the arts sector meant that trial and error 

by exhibitors was to be expected. As many 

cinemas have already discovered, simply 

putting alcoholic beverages on a menu 

isn’t enough. Whenever an adult beverage 

is incorporated into a cinema’s overall F&B 

strategy—whether that entails pouring 

a craft beer on tap or offering a special 

cocktail with a movie tie-in—it goes from 

being a menu item to being part of the 

moviegoing experience. When executed 

successfully, it becomes part of your 

cinema’s unique moviegoing experience. 

Lounges and bar areas play an 

important role in wine’s consumer appeal 

at the cinema. A glass of wine can serve 

as a pre-date drink before a couple enters 

an auditorium or be part of a post-movie 

conversation. “Movie theaters are a social 

place, and our lounges and bars should 

feel the same,” Novak advises. “We create a 

variety of specialty drinks that oftentimes 

align with movies. Large-screen TVs showcase 

sports and create community among 

guests and associates; oversized bar games 

such as giant Scrabble get guests mingling 

and talking; and our bartenders help 

create a fun, relaxed environment as part 

of your visit.” 

One time-consuming task that comes 

with introducing wine service is securing 

a liquor license. “Every municipality 

has a different structure and protocol 

for obtaining a permit to sell,” says Etter. 

“Some communities welcome the new 

upgrades in wine service; others fight to 

keep alcohol out of a ‘family’ venue.” 

Once a liquor license is obtained, 

exhibitors must then tackle challenges like 

incorporating a bar area or lounge space, 

securing storage for bottles, and boosting 

staffing and training. “Serving alcohol 

carries a greater level of responsibility and 

requires additional training and staffing,” 

notes Novak. “Establishing stringent 

protocols surrounding carding and 

further enforcing them through voluntary 

third-party ‘checks’ ensures we continue 

to uphold the policies.” 

“It’s an entirely new business added to 

the cinema-management process,” agrees 

Etter. “Let’s not forget that an open bottle 

of wine has a very short shelf life. When 


53


5 EASY 

STEPS TO 

INCORPORATE 

WINE SERVICE 

INTO YOUR 

CINEMA 

By Larry Etter, SVP Malco 

Theatres & Director of 

Education at National 

Association of Concessionaires 

1. 

Develop a pricing structure 

and pro forma. 

selling by the glass, it has to be sold within 

48 hours. Beer, spirits, soda syrup, candy— 

none of these have the limited time to 

serve like wine.” 

Many districts in the United States 

require a full menu and kitchen space 

when granting a liquor license, which 

means that wine’s growth in cinemas 

has been in parallel to the rise of dine-in 

cinemas and expanded concessions in 

the United States. Marcus Theatres first 

introduced alcohol service in May 2007, 

with the opening of the Majestic Cinema 

of Brookfield in Wisconsin. The location 

offered several in-theater dining concepts 

and an expanded menu, opening the door 

to cocktails, beer, and wine in the circuit. 

“As a result, more than three-quarters of 

our properties now serve alcohol, and 

offerings have grown. For example, we 

now feature 12 to 20 different beers on tap 

and nearly a dozen types of bottled wine,” 

says Novak. 

Curating a wine list can become the 

key difference maker in ensuring wine’s 

success at a cinema. At Marcus Theatres, 

Novak says the circuit’s wine selections are 

directly tied to its overall F&B strategy. 

“We conduct an evaluation of the 

alcoholic beverages we serve on an annual 

basis, and wine selection is part of this 

overall process,” he says. “We meet with 

major wine distributors to learn about 

current trends and consult with our 

third-party marketing firm during the 

menu redesign period. We apply those 

learnings and ensure that we have a wide 

variety of offerings at various price points. 

Together these are the drivers for making 

necessary adjustments to the wine selection 

on our menu.” 

Janet Michels, former director of 

purchasing at Studio Movie Grill, the 

country’s leading dine-in-focused circuit, 

says her company’s wine selection process 

is “a collaboration of our beverage manager, 

operations team, and our owner. We typically 

feature wines that are familiar to the 

guests. Our guests tend to purchase wines 

based on names they are familiar with and 

that they perhaps drink at home.” Studio 

Movie Grill also offers its own signature 

branded wines, developed about five years 

ago with a California winemaker. “We have 

a chardonnay, a cabernet, and one white 

table wine, called Betty’s Blend, which is 

named after our owner’s wife,” Michels says. 

Like Studio Movie Grill, popular 

independent Brooklyn dine-in theater 

Nitehawk Cinema has cultivated its own 

branded wine, in collaboration with 

Brooklyn Winery. “We started our partnership 

with them a few years ago, at first 

by having their Finger Lakes Riesling on 

our menu,” says Nitehawk Prospect Park 

beverage director Nick Dodge. “We really 

enjoy working with local craft producers 

and have been lucky to be operating 

2. 

Get in touch with the local 

wine distribution company 

and discuss your priorities, 

price points, variety, the 

attributes and profiles of 

the wines. Decide what your 

intentions are, the signature 

you’re putting into your wine 

service. Ask what winemakers 

can do to support the 

integration. 

3. 

Create a promotional program 

that emphasizes the integrity 

and uniqueness of the 

offerings. 

4. 

Offer wine tastings and 

promotional activities that 

engage the patrons in your 

community. 

5. 

Analyze the results. 


in New York during a huge growth of 

amazing New York–made beverages. We 

are pretty spoiled to be surrounded by 

so many talented producers, so we had a 

good working relationship with Brooklyn 

Winery and are big fans of everything they 

have been doing there. We were at the 

winery for a tasting of new vintages a few 

years ago, and the idea came up of working 

with them on our own proprietary blend.” 

The process took nearly a year. In the 

interim, the Nitehawk began working with 

the winery’s graphic designer to make its 

own label for the wine. “It was branded 

with our name and logo on the bottle. 

The first blend we made we simply called 

Nitehawk Cinema x Brooklyn Winery Red 

Blend no. 1,” says Dodge. “Because this was 

a special blend and not something they 

regularly produced, we were able to sell 

it only as long as supplies lasted. It was a 

popular wine choice for our customers and 

really well received. We were completely 

sold out after a few months. 

“Although we are sold out of our 

Nitehawk Winery blend, we still have an 

amazing selection of wines at our theaters, 

sales of which account for around 

20 percent of our alcoholic beverage 

sales,” notes Dodge. “In particular in the 

last few years, we have been focusing on 

smaller producers that utilize sustainable, 

natural, and organic practices. One 

of the things about Nitehawk that we 

like to think sets us apart from much 

of our competitors is the quality of the 

products that we serve, and I think our 

wine program is a great example of that. 

We have a small but curated list that 

focuses on quality and value. We have 

some old-world classics like a Provençal 

rosé, Italian prosecco, and a German 

Riesling, and some modern innovators 

like a biodynamic Argentinian pinot 

noir, a natural-fermentation Alvarelhão 

from Lodi [California], and even a few 

skin-contact or orange wines. We have 

been really thrilled at our customer 

response, and wine sales have been 

growing over the last few years, more 

than any other beverage category.” 

For dine-in cinemas like the Nitehawk 

and Studio Movie Grill, wine pairing is 

part of the experience of enjoying dinner 

at the movies. “We always make sure that 

we have a wine on our menu that pairs well 

with each food category,” says Michels. “In 

fact, we will send [moviegoers] a dedicated 

email with pairings for both wine and 

spirits.” Among her personal favorite 

pairings are “edamame with K-J Avant 

Chardonnay, sriracha chicken sliders with 

Freakshow Cabernet, and any pizza with 

Caymus Conundrum Red!” 

“Making sure that we have the right 

breadth and depth of wine choices becomes 

an important part of efficiently managing 

inventory,” adds Novak. “We’ve found that 

our guests who enjoy wine are passionate 

about what they drink. They care about a 

brand or type of wine more so than a 

recommendation for a wine and snack 

Left: “We always make 

sure that we have a 

wine on our menu that 

pairs well with each 

food category.” —Janet 

Michels, director of 

purchasing, Studio 

Movie Grill 

Above: New York’s 

Nitehawk Cinema 

partnered with Brooklyn 

Winery to create its own 

branded series of wines. 


55


pairing. As such, we place our focus on the 

variety of wine offerings versus pairings. 

“We do not have one varietal of wine that 

works for all of our theater guests,” Novak 

says, “so we have made the decision to 

offer a combination of brands and varietals 

from Gallo, Terlato, Jackson Family, and 

more. From an entry-level wine to a more 

sophisticated taste, we have offerings and 

price points that meet the needs of our 

various guests. The wines we serve range 

from common to exclusive, and the price 

points are arranged by tiers. A 6-ounce 

size, entry-level wine starts at $7, whereas 

a 9-ounce size that is more refined is 

approximately $15. In addition, we offer 

canned wine through our concession stand 

at select theaters, and full bottles of wine 

are available for sharing at bar locations.” 

As anyone who has glanced at the deep 

end of a wine list at an upscale restaurant 

can attest, pricing can be an intimidating 

barrier to entry for patrons. Larry Etter 

suggests studying a location’s market 

and demographics when building a wine 

list, “getting as much intel from the wine 

distributors as possible to offer the highest 

value—not just the least expensive wines. 

My opinion is no theater should offer 

cheap wine—we are competing with the 

neighborhood restaurants and bars; we 

have to be equal to or better than them. We 

need to offer high-quality vintages at fair 

prices. Theater patrons are willing to pay 

between $10 and $15 per glass—a 5-ounce 

pour gives you five portions per bottle. You 

can get high-quality wines in that medium 

price range.” 

Pricing has been an important component 

of Studio Movie Grill’s wine strategy. 

“Our best-selling wine is our house wine 

at $7 a glass, which is very competitively 

priced on the menu, though we do sell 

quite a number of wines in the $10 range,” 

says Michels. “Also highly popular is our 25 

percent-off bottles of wine on Friday and 

Saturday nights.” 

Sharing a bottle is common at dine-ins 

like Studio Movie Grill. At Showcase 

Cinemas, bottles are offered at dine-in 

locations, but sales are mostly driven by 

the glass. “Our lobby bars do exceptionally 

well with wines by the glass, as movies are 

a social event,” says National Amusements’ 

Micalizzi, who reports that wine sales 

at the circuit perform well against beer 

and spirits and account for more than 

30 percent of the greater category. “Our 

customers have many options for a meal 

as part of their moviegoing experience, but 

the social aspect and comfort of our lobby 

bars and lounges make it quite inviting for 

guests to sip on a glass and converse with 

their friends and family. Certain genres 

of film attract an audience that is likely 

to enjoy a glass of wine, and being able to 

offer that to them at many of our locations 

enhances their overall experience.” 

As opposed to concessions staples like 

soda, popcorn, and candy, wine’s success 

at cinemas relies largely on its demographics, 

according to Etter. “We have a theater 

where 75 percent of all alcohol sales come 

from wine. Other locations have different 

demographics [where] wine is lower than 

30 percent of the total sales mix,” he says. 

“As a general observation, wine equates 

to about 35 percent of the sales mix in 

[Malco’s] adult-beverage sales. Wine has 

been accountable for an average 8 percent 

increase in per capita sales.” 

Wine is one of the many enhancements 

to moviegoing that has grown in recent 

years, as cinemas elevate the standard 

of the theatrical experience as an out-ofhome 

entertainment. Recliner seating, 

premium large format, and expanded 

menus have all contributed to this effort. 

Wine, as its own category, shows plenty 

of potential for continued growth in the 

coming years. 

“Wine at the movies is here to stay,” 

says Micalizzi. “I think it will continue 

to perform and grow at a nice pace. Wine 

knowledge and our guests’ passion for 

wine both out-of-home and in-home are 

continuing to push the category forward. 

The opportunity to expand our wine 

offerings through our menus and innovate 

with wine-based cocktails and seasonal 

sangrias allows us to keep the category 

fresh and entice new audiences.” 

Left: Showcase 

Cinema de Lux Cross 

Country in Yonkers, 

New York, offers a 

dedicated lounge area 

for patrons in its lobby. 


TASTING NOTES 

We asked sommelier Jessica 

Bell to create wine pairings for 

concession stand classics. 

Popcorn & Sauvignon Blanc 

Most people would default to a buttery 

chardonnay, but a crisp sauvignon blanc 

is the perfect foil for buttered popcorn. 

Rather than creating similar flavors when 

pairing wine with food, I think you should 

pick complementary flavors—almost like 

you’re adding an extra ingredient. With 

popcorn, a buttery chardonnay just adds 

more of the same flavor; you have to watch 

out for palate fatigue. I’m always looking 

for something that wakes up the palate, 

something that motivates you to take the 

next bite. Whenever you have a big plate 

of food with one dominant flavor, you 

get tired of it pretty quickly. Wine works 

the same way; it’s about creating unique 

experiences within that one tasting. With 

sauvignon blanc, you’ve got this crisp, 

citrusy wine that acts as a foil for all that 

oil and butter. 

Chocolate & Shiraz 

An Aussie Shiraz is going to balance well 

with chocolate, not because it has a lot of 

sugar in it, but because it has a perception 

of sweetness due to the ripe fruit. 

Chocolate Raisins & Zinfandel 

The zinfandel grape naturally “raisinates” 

a bit on the vine. The raisin flavors make 

it a softer, sweeter red that will go nicely 

with the chocolate. The sweeter the food, 

the sweeter the wine you should seek. 

Mint Chocolate & Port 

Mint chocolate is virtually impossible to 

pair with wine, to be honest. If I had to 

have a wine, I would go with a port. Port 

is an occasion-driven pairing, so imagine 

lingering at the table after dinner, having 

chocolates with someone special. Mint 

and peanuts are probably two of the 

hardest [flavors] to pair with wine. 

Gummy Bears & Moscato 

Moscato is one of the sweeter wines available. 

It has some nice fruit flavors—peach 

and pear notes, even some tropical fruits— 

so it goes really nicely with gummy bears. 

Sour Gummies & Riesling 

Riesling is also sweet, but it’s high acid; it 

has a very crisp edge. Riesling can sometimes 

taste something like SweeTarts, so it 

goes really well with Sour Gummies. 

Nachos & Rosé 

I just love drinking rosé with Mexican 

food. You really don’t want a warm, red 

wine with your nachos, especially if they 

include jalapeños—spicy foods and red 

wine don’t typically go well together. But a 

little bit of red fruit is a great complement; 

that’s why rosé is a good match. 

Hot Dog & Pinot Noir 

No one eats a hot dog without any 

condiments, right? So I’m thinking of 

flavors like mustard, ketchup, relish, and 

onions. Pinot noir has a good amount of 

fruit; it has high acid and low tannin, so 

it’s not going to conflict with all of those 

condiments. Sweetness and acidity have 

the same kind of pairing guidelines. In this 

case, the higher the acid in the food, the 

higher the acid you want in your wine. 

Pretzel & Chardonnay 

Chardonnay can go with anything. A 

pretzel is neutral but salty and sometimes 

comes with condiments, like mustard or 

cheese. Chardonnay typically isn’t very 

aromatic or intense; it’s a more muted 

wine. That’s why I think it would go nicely 

with a pretzel. 

Pizza & Merlot 

Merlot has medium acid, medium tannin, 

and medium body, which, I know, sounds 

mediocre, but it means it’s really well 

balanced. Merlots are typically described 

as “smooth”—it’s simple and easy to like, 

without having to prove anything. The 

same goes for pizza. Who doesn’t like 

pizza? That’s why pizza and merlot is a 

classic Tuesday-night special. 

Chicken Tenders & Tempranillo 

I lived in Spain for two years and worked 

for a Spanish winery, so I had to find a 

place for my true love. Spanish tempranillo 

is light bodied and easy drinking, but it 

can take on many different types of foods. 

Tempranillo’s fruit has a bit of an earthy 

undertone, so it pairs really well with 

chicken fingers. 

Burger & Malbec 

Malbecs usually have dark fruit notes. 

They’re lush with a good amount of 

alcohol and can really stand up nicely to a 

big burger. Argentina makes fantastic beef 

and they’re known for their malbecs. It’s 

always good to take the lead from a classic 

regional pairing. 

Winter 2020 57

Theater ICTA WINNERS 

INTERNATIONAL 

EXCELLENCE 

Celebrating This Year’s ICTA 

EMEA Award Winners 


The movie theater industry is a 

global one, with theater operators 

able to gain insight and inspiration from 

the stories of their international brethren. 

To that end, Boxoffice Pro is proud to 

feature profiles of this year’s ICTA EMEA 

Award winners, granted every year by 

the International Cinema Technology 

Association’s European branch to cinema 

operators displaying innovation and 

leadership in their approach to technology. 

Excellence in design, too, is evident with 

this year’s trio of winners, who display a 

range of styles from old-school glamour to 

sleek modernity. 

2020’s honorees fall into three 

categories: Classic Cinema, New Build 

Cinema, and Cinema Refurbishment, all 

in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) 

region. In a joint statement, the ICTA’s 

international directors Till Cussmann, 

Oliver Pasch, and Jan Runge said that 

this year’s three cinemas “in different 

ways illustrate how innovation and 

continued diversification of the big screen 

experience help attract audiences and 

continue to set the cinema experience 

apart from home entertainment.” They 

added that, given the challenging 

situation theaters worldwide find 

themselves in, “we hope that the awards 

in a small and symbolic way support our 

operator partners’ efforts to reengage with 

audiences. Huge congratulations to the 

outstanding teams of Pathé Netherlands, 

Muvi Cinemas, and Cineplexx Group.” 

Excellence in design 

is evident with this 

year’s trio of winners, 

who display a range 

of styles from oldschool 

glamour to 

sleek modernity. 



59


CLASSIC CINEMA 

OF THE YEAR 

Pathé Tuschinski 

Amsterdam, Netherlands 

Founded by Abraham Tuschinski as a 

site for people at all levels of Amsterdam 

society to experience the luxury of 

moviegoing, the Pathé Tuschinski 

celebrates its 100th anniversary next 

year. Due to Covid-19, the exact nature 

of the celebratory events are TBD—but 

regardless, the Pathé Tuschinski will be 

going into its 100th year with a makeover. 

The main challenge in renovating 

a century-old cinema, says Pathé 

Netherlands spokeswoman Imke van 

Schaaijk, is balancing the old and the new, 

providing “contemporary technology and 

convenience” to the modern customer 

while adhering to local government 

regulations that bar the modification of 

“anything that is part of the building as 

designed and built 100 years ago.” 

The Pathé Tuschinski’s aesthetic—a mix 

of Art Deco, Jugendstil, and Amsterdamse 

school styles, designed by Hijman Louis 

de Jong—has been restored in the second 

of its six auditoriums. Originally a cabaret 

hall, it was burned down in World War II; 

now, new wall paintings echo its earlier 

design. Screen One—De Grote Zaal, or the 

Grand Auditorium—still has its original 


Art Deco and Jugendstil design. Additional 

renovations include new seating in five 

auditoriums, as well as new screens. The 

theater’s common area now boasts the 

brand-new Bar Abraham, serving cocktails 

based on classic films. 

Says van Schaaijk, “We aim to make 

the grandeur and heritage of this theater 

accessible to all Dutch movie lovers by 

screening a mix of today’s blockbusters, 

the best Dutch movies, the most beautiful 

art house movies,” and special-event 

screenings, like performances of the 

Metropolitan Opera. Since being allowed 

“We aim to make the 

grandeur and heritage of 

this theater accessible to 

all Dutch movie lovers.” 

—Imke van Schaaijk, 

Pathé Netherlands 

to reopen at limited capacity on June 1, 

the theater has mixed older titles (like the 

extended editions of the Lord of the Rings 

trilogy), new Hollywood and European 

releases (Tenet, the French-Belgian drama 

Été 85, and an Italian Pinocchio adaptation 

have done very well at the theater, says van 

Schaaijk), popular TV finales, concert films, 

and—for the first time—titles from Netflix 

and Apple TV+. 


61


NEW BUILD CINEMA 

OF THE YEAR 

Muvi Cinemas, U-Walk 

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia 

Muvi Cinemas was one of the first 

chains to enter Saudi Arabia following 

that country’s lifting of a decades-long 

restriction on public theaters. Since 

opening its first location in August 2019, 

the chain has expanded its reach to 

include a grand total of 10 cinemas in 

the country—including 2020’s New Build 

Cinema of the Year honoree, the U-Walk. 

Located in Riyadh, the U-Walk opened 

on March 4, just over a week before cinemas 

in the country were ordered to shut down 

due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Visitors 

were able to enjoy Saudi Arabia’s first Dolby 

Cinema as well as the first Samsung Onyx 

LED screen in the Middle East and North 

Africa (MENA) region. All other screens are 

powered by Barco laser projectors. 

“Luxury” is the watchword at U-Walk, 

with visitors able to avail themselves of 

four Muvi Suites, a VIP experience offering 

fully reclining seats, dedicated butler 

service, and a full food menu. Muvi Suites 

guests also have their own dedicated 

lounge and a private entrance with valet 

parking. Those who want something a 

little beyond the traditional screening 

experience can also choose to see a movie 


“Based on a theme of 

urban downtown, with 

an aim to create a 

dynamic, modern, and 

innovative experience.” 

—Adon Quinn, Muvi 

Cinemas 

in U-Walk’s ScreenX auditorium. 

The design of the theater, writes Muvi 

COO Adon Quinn, “is based on a theme of 

urban downtown, with an aim to create 

a dynamic, modern, and innovative 

experience. The internal spaces have been 

characterized by an industrial material 

palette, which includes timber, exposed 

steelwork, brickwork, graffiti artwork, and 

concrete flooring.” The Muvi Suites area 

boasts marble floors, wool carpets, timber 

paneling, and custom art. 

The U-Walk welcomed audiences 

back once again starting June 21. Postshutdown 

programming included Saudi 

Pro League soccer games (with select 

games selling out seven of the theater’s 13 

screens, at 50% capacity), local language 

content, Hollywood blockbusters, and 

even pre-screening karaoke. Cinemas in 

Saudi Arabia have time for a lot of movies, 

notes Quinn, with some screenings 

beginning as late as 3:00 a.m., even on 

weekdays. 


63


BEST CINEMA 

REFURBISHMENT 

Cineplexx, Millennium City 

Vienna, Austria 

Originally opened in 2001 as part of UCI 

Cinemas, Vienna’s Millennium City has 

for nearly 20 years been a gem of the 

Austrian movie scene, selling more than 1 

million tickets a year to its 21 auditoriums. 

Acquired by Cineplexx in 2019, the 

cinema underwent a major makeover, 

decreasing the number of screens to 13 in 

favor of a more technologically advanced 

cinema experience. 

That experience begins in the lobby, 

where a wave-shaped LED screen adorns 

the ceiling, decorating the theater with 

a steady flow of popcorn. (Or, season 

permitting, snowflakes and Christmas 

trees.) In the theaters themselves, 

moviegoers have a range of advanced 

technology at their disposal, including 

Dolby Cinema and Dolby Atmos sound, 

Barco’s Flagship Laser projection, RealD’s 

Ultimate Screen, and MX4D motion 

seating. In terms of design, Millennium 

City was built to be open and welcoming, 

says co-owner Christof Papousek. “It must 

be a light and safe place for all people, no 

matter where they come from.” 

The majority of the renovation to 

Cineplexx Millennium City was completed 


efore March 14, when Cineplexx 

suspended operations due to the Covid-19 

pandemic. The rest was completed during 

closure, preparing Cineplexx Millennium 

City for a grand return on August 4. 

The total investment, says Papousek, 

exceeded 10 million euros total, a share 

of it contributed by the real estate owners, 

whose invaluable partnership during 

the renovation process made the whole 

project possible. 

“It was a huge effort to maintain the 

operation,” says Papousek, but it was 

“important in order to keep the cinema 

“It must be a light 

and safe place for 

all people, no matter 

where they come 

from.” —Christof 

Papousek, Cineplexx 

in the guests’ minds.” Since reopening, 

the cinema has mixed Hollywood titles 

with local and German films, European 

indies, and titles from Eastern European 

countries. With theaters in some markets 

across Europe undergoing a second 

shutdown, Papousek argues that now is 

the time to celebrate theatrical beacons 

of hope like Millennium City. “They will 

be the stars for our lives once public life 

comes slightly back to normal.” 


65

A CENTURY OF 

INNOVATION 

AN ABRIDGED 

TIMELINE OF THE LAST 

100 YEARS OF CINEMA 

PRESENTATION 

PRESENTED BY 

When Boxoffice Pro was founded 

in 1920, cinema had already evolved 

from an obscure technology into a fullfledged 

entertainment industry. Silent 

pictures had matured as an art form 

throughout the first two decades of the 

20th century, creating national hubs for 

production, distribution, and exhibition 

in countries like France, Germany, the 

Soviet Union, and the United States. 

As production technology improved, 

audiences grew, paving the way for a 

booming film and exhibition industry. 

While this timeline is by no means 

exhaustive, it highlights some of the 

notable technological innovations in 

motion picture presentation over the 

last 100 years of our history. 


67

THEATER A CENTURY OF INNOVATION 

Left: A Vitaphone 

projection setup at a 

1926 demonstration. 

Engineer E.B. Craft is 

holding a soundtrack 

disc 

Below: Moviegoers 

outside the theater for 

the premiere of Warner 

Bros.’ Don Juan. 

1923 

Lee de Forest unveils Phonofilm, 

an optical sound-on-film format 

that converts sound into light 

waves and reproduces them on 

a photographic strip running 

alongside a reel of 35 mm film. 

More than 200 short films are 

made in Phonofilm, but de Forest 

never seriously interests 

Hollywood in his invention. 

1927 

Warner Bros. releases The 

Jazz Singer, the first American 

feature film to use sound 

technology to reproduce 

dialogue. The Jazz Singer only 

featured sound in selected 

scenes, and the studio would 

go on to debut its first “alltalkie” 

feature, The Lights of 

New York, in 1928. 

1927 

Abel Gance’s Napoleon 

includes a sequence meant 

to be exhibited on a triptych 

screen, employing multiple 

projectors. The title is the 

first major film to pioneer the 

panoramic screen concept and 

inspires later innovations in 

wide-screen formats. 

1926 

Warner Bros.’ Don Juan 

becomes the first film to use 

VitaPhone synchronized-sound 

technology. Although it does 

not feature spoken dialogue, 

the film does include a musical 

score and sound effects. 

1927 

Western Electric introduces 

its sound-on-film technology, 

subsequently adopted by Fox 

Film Corporation and the 

“Big Five” leading production 

companies of the era: MGM, 

Universal, First National, 

Paramount, and Producers 

Distributing Corporation. 


1929 

After a series of mergers, German 

firm Tobis-Klangfilm ramps 

up production of its sound 

technology—scooping up most 

of Europe’s most influential 

markets in the process. 

Tobis-Klangfilm’s Tri-Ergon 

format emerges as the biggest 

competitor of the Western 

Electric sound system embraced 

by Hollywood, setting off a global 

competition in the growing 

global sound cinema market. 

1933 

Warner Bros. releases 42nd 

Street, a commercial hit that 

inspires a wave of studio 

musicals. 42nd Street is the 

culmination of some of its 

era’s most advanced film 

technologies, including 

musical numbers with 

synchronized sound and 

intricately choreographed 

sequences using crane and 

dolly shots. 

1940 

Disney’s Fantasia becomes the 

first commercial feature film 

to be released in stereo sound. 

During the title’s roadshow 

release, the technology, called 

Fantasound, proves expensive 

and time consuming to install. 

It would take over a decade 

to be widely adopted by the 

industry. 

1929 

Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail, 

released in both sound and 

silent formats, is a breakout 

box office hit in the United 

Kingdom. 

1939 

The commercial and critical 

success of MGM’s The Wizard 

of Oz paves a golden-brick road 

for the future adoption of color 

film in Hollywood. 


69


1952 

Competition from television 

helps drive color films and 

wide-screen formats in 

Hollywood. Cinerama, which 

employs the use of three 

projectors to create a triptych 

presentation on a panoramic 

screen, becomes a pioneer in 

premium large-format (PLF) 

exhibition. 

1953 

Wide-screen format 

CinemaScope is introduced 

with the release of 20th Century 

Fox’s The Robe. Competing 

technologies, including Hong 

Kong’s ShawScope and Japan’s 

TohoScope, would also emerge 

in major foreign markets 

through the second half of 

the ’50s. 

1955 

The Todd-AO nonanamorphic 

wide-screen 

format makes its debut 

with RKO’s musical 

Oklahoma! 

1953 

The stereoscopic 3-D craze kicks 

off with the release of high-profile 

titles from Hollywood studios. 

3-D is employed across diverse 

genres by nearly every major 

studio in Hollywood, including 

Columbia (Man in the Dark, 

Fort Ti), Warner Bros. (House of 

Wax), Fox (Inferno), MGM (Kiss 

Me Kate), and Universal (It Came 

from Outer Space). 

1954 

VistaVision joins the widescreen 

wars with the release of 

Paramount’s White Christmas. 

The format’s influence would 

linger for decades and would 

then be retooled to aid in 

the special effects–laden 

production of the original Star 

Wars trilogy. 


1956 

Panavision begins introducing 

an array of wide-screen 

formats. Non-anamorphic 

formats like Super Panavision 

70 and Ultra Panavision 70 

help further the footprint and 

appeal of wide-screen cinema 

in the ensuing years. 

1958 

Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo 

becomes the first American 

feature film to use computer 

animation. Experimental 

animator John Whitney 

produced spiral animations for 

the opening credits by rigging 

up a computerized animation 

stand using a WWII antiaircraftgun 

system. 

1959 

Columbia’s The Tingler 

introduces an early experiment 

in the field of immersive seating 

with Percepto, wherein seats in 

select theaters were equipped 

with a small electronic motor 

that would activate at specific 

moments in the film. It would 

take nearly 50 years for the 

concept to be embraced by 

mainstream cinema chains. 

1960 

With early experiments 

in motion seating and 

stereoscopic 3-D already under 

way, scented screenings hit the 

big screen through the use of 

gimmick-driven technologies 

like Smell-O-Vision and 

AromaRama. Neither format 

takes off with audiences. 

1965 

Dolby Laboratories 

(Dolby) is founded in 

London by Ray Dolby 

(above). One year later, 

the company introduces 

A-type noise reduction for 

music recording. 


71


1971 

A Clockwork Orange 

becomes the first film 

to use Dolby noise 

reduction. 

1975 

Dolby introduces Dolby 

Stereo, a highly practical 

35 mm stereo optical 

release print format 

with the release of Ken 

Russell’s Lisztomania, 

the first feature film for 

general release with this 

technology. 

1976 

The first batch of films using 

Steadicam cameras hits U.S. 

cinemas. Titles like Bound 

for Glory, Marathon Man, 

and Rocky are among the 

first notable films to use the 

motion-stabilizing technology 

in select sequences, allowing 

greater tracking and 

movement within the frame. 

1977 

Dolby receives acclaim 

with the release of Star 

Wars and Close Encounters 

of the Third Kind, both in 

Dolby Stereo. 

1979 

Dolby Laboratories 

receives the Academy 

of Motion Picture Arts 

and Sciences’ Scientific 

and Engineering Award 

for “improved film 

sound recording and 

reproduction system.” 

In the same year, Dolby 

applies noise-reduction 

techniques to the 

magnetic soundtracks 

on 70 mm film, allowing 

Apocalypse Now to reap 

the full benefits of 5.1 

surround sound. 


1982 

TRON, featuring an extended 

sequence using only computer 

graphics imaging (CGI), as well 

as several scenes that mix CGI 

with live-action performances, 

becomes a box office hit. The 

title’s success encourages the 

future adoption of CGI by 

major studio productions. 

1992 

Batman Returns, the first 

film released in Dolby 

Digital, premieres in 10 

U.S. theaters. 

1999 

Star Wars: Episode I — The 

Phantom Menace becomes 

the first studio feature film 

to be projected digitally to 

a moviegoing audience, 

signaling the start of an 

industry-wide shift to digital 

projection technology. 

1989 

Ray Dolby and Ioan Allen 

are awarded Oscars for 

“continuing contributions 

to motion picture sound 

through the research and 

development programs of 

Dolby Laboratories.” 

1995 

Pixar’s Toy Story, released 

by Disney, becomes the first 

fully CGI-animated full-length 

feature film. The title is a box 

office success, changing the 

course of animated film. 


73


2001 

The number of cinemas 

equipped with Dolby 

Digital totals more than 

30,000, surpassing all other 

formats in North America 

alone and worldwide. 

2005 

3-D returns to the cinema 

as Disney’s Chicken Little 

introduces digital 3-D into the 

market and opens the door to a 

slew of titles—and competing 

technologies—to movie 

theaters worldwide. 

2009 

Immersive seating technology 

moves beyond its humble 

origins as an exhibition 

gimmick, with studio support 

from titles such as Universal’s 

Fast & Furious helping redefine 

the role and potential of 

motion seating at the movies. 

2002 

Universal’s Apollo 13 (1995) 

is the first studio title to be 

digitally remastered and 

rereleased in Imax, renewing 

consumer demand for premium 

large-format Hollywood films. 

2009 

20th Century Fox releases 

James Cameron’s Avatar. 

Featuring cutting-edge digital 

cinema technology—including 

digital 3-D—the film breaks 

box office records worldwide 

and cements the future 

dominance of digital cinema. 


2010 

Dolby Surround 7.1 is 

unveiled with the release 

of Disney/Pixar’s Toy 

Story 3, advancing cinema 

audio with eight discrete 

channels to establish four 

surround zones within an 

auditorium. 

2012 

Dolby launches Dolby Atmos, 

a new audio technology that 

changes the experience of 

sound in entertainment, with 

the debut of Disney/Pixar’s 

Brave. This new platform 

introduces two important 

concepts to cinema sound: 

audio objects and overhead 

speakers. 

2014 

Digital cinema projection 

experiences its first major 

evolution with the advent of 

laser projectors. 

2014 

Panoramic screens make 

a comeback in the digitalcinema 

era. 20th Century 

Fox’s The Maze Runner is the 

first title from a major studio 

to use a three-screen digital 

panoramic setup. Competing 

formats emerge to stake a 

claim in the increasingly 

competitive premium largeformat 

market, with Dolby 

Atmos object-based audio as 

the preferred choice. 

2015 

Dolby launches Dolby 

Cinema, a premium 

moviegoing offering 

combining Dolby Vision 

with Dolby Atmos and 

a thoughtfully designed 

auditorium for an 

unparalleled cinematic 

experience. Dolby Vision 

technology offers a dual 

4K laser high dynamic 

range (HDR) projector 

system boasting a picture 

twice as bright with 500 

times the contrast ratio, 

blacker blacks, and an 

unsurpassed color palette. 

This move fortifies the 

growing PLF market for 

the exhibition industry. 

Tomorrowland is the first 

film to use both Dolby 

Vision and Dolby Atmos. 


75


DOLBY 

INNOVATIONS 

TODAY 

Dolby Cinema 

260+ 

Dolby Cinema locations open 

across the globe, with over 

200 additional locations 

committed. 

330+ 

theatrical titles mastered in 

Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos 

have been released in Dolby 

Cinema with participation 

from every major studio. 

Dolby Atmos 

6100+ 

Dolby Atmos screens installed 

or committed in 90+ countries. 

2016 

Dolby and Wanda 

Cinema Line announce 

a partnership to bring 

the first Dolby Cinema 

locations to China. 

2018 

Dolby and Odeon Cinemas 

Group announce a 

partnership to bring Dolby 

Cinema to the U.K. Dolby 

is also chosen as exclusive 

partner to debut Bradley 

Cooper’s directorial debut, 

A Star is Born, at Dolby 

Cinema locations. 

1,850+ 

1,700+ features released or 

committed in Dolby Atmos. 

2017 

Dolby and Les Cinémas 

Gaumont Pathé announce 

a partnership to launch 

Dolby Cinema locations 

in France and the 

Netherlands. Dolby opens 

the 100th Dolby Cinema 

location in the world. 

2020 

Dolby announces 

partnerships with 

Megabox, AMC Theatres, 

and muvi Cinemas to 

expand Dolby Cinema into 

Korea and the Kingdom of 

Saudi Arabia. 


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Promising Young Woman 80 | Nomadland 84 | Coming Attractions 90 | Booking Guide 97 

ON SCREEN 

Nomadland 

In Theaters on December 4 

Story on Page 84 


79

ON SCREEN FILMMAKER INTERVIEW 

PROMISING 

YOUNG 

WOMEN 







Carey Mulligan has an eye 

out for trouble in Promising 

Young Woman 

“Every week I go to a club. I act like 

I’m too drunk to stand. And every 

week a ‘nice guy’ comes over to see if I’m 

OK.” So speaks Cassie of Promising Young 

Woman, the debut feature of writer-director 

Emerald Fennell. Years ago, Cassie 

dropped out of med school following 

the assault of a friend; now her weekend 

hobby is showing an endless parade of 

dudes how very, very wrong they are in 

taking a “drunk” woman home and trying 

to get into her pants. But there’s a twist: 

the arrival into her life of ex-classmate 

Ryan (Bo Burnham) brings the possibility 

for healing, along with unresolved feelings 

about the event that left her traumatized. 

A new mission emerges. 

Candy-colored and unabashedly girly 

in its aesthetic, Promising Young Woman 

offers a welcome take on the revenge 

thriller, switching out the raw violence 

common to the genre for a more nuanced 

interrogation of the pervasive culture 

of sexual harassment. In advance of the 

film’s December 25 release from Focus 

Features, Fennell took the time to speak 

about her debut feature—starting with an 

unabashed love-fest for her lead actress. 

Congratulations on the film. I’ll see 

Carey Mulligan in just about anything. 

So I was excited for this, and it didn’t 

disappoint. 

Oh, she’s amazing. 

I read somewhere that you thought 

there was no way in hell you’d get her 

for this film. 

Oh God, no, of course not! She’s Carey 

Mulligan! She’s incredibly selective about 

what she does and who she works with, 

so I really didn’t think I stood much of a 

chance. Luckily, I somehow managed to 

persuade her. And I’m so, so glad, because 

I really do think she’s the backbone of all 

of this. She grounds the characters in such 

truth. It’s a heightened movie, and it’s a 

heightened experience, and it needed that. 

That’s one of the things I like about 

the film: its groundedness. You see 

Cassie wrestling with her trauma and 

trying to get better, as opposed to 

just going on a killing spree. 

The revenge movie is a genre that I 

absolutely love, but I think it’s also ripe for 

subversion. Also, I don’t know any women 

who resort to violence, really. It’s very 

rare. And so I wanted to write a revenge 

movie that was honest about the process 

of grieving and the process of trauma. And 

also honest about how a woman might 

teach lessons or frighten people. What she 

does is still very dangerous to herself, and 

I think possibly that might even be part of 

why she does it. It struck me that I’d never 

seen a movie like this with a character who 

felt like she might do something that a real 

woman might do. 

So many revenge movies are escapist, 

in a way. Men get away with awful 

things all the time in the real world, 

and in revenge movies, they get 

brutally murdered for it. 

It’s escapist, and it’s cathartic. And it’s 

effective. But it’s not honest or real. This 

movie was about taking those things that 

are so appealing to us as audience members—so 

neat and tidy—and pulling them 

apart and looking at them. For me—the 

same as in “Killing Eve”—if you’re going 

to have violence in a movie, you need to be 

honest about what violence looks like and 

what it is. You have an obligation to show it 

in a way that feels real. We’re so immune to 

violence. When you show what it looks like, 

really, it’s much more uncomfortable than 

the almost titillating violence that I think 

we’re used to on TV and in film. [Fennell 

was the show runner and head writer for 

season two of the acclaimed BBC show 

“Killing Eve.”] There’s a scene in “Killing 

Eve” when Eve kills for the first time with 

an ax. It’s kind of horrific. I just didn’t want 

it to be a moment that was like, “OK, gun, 

fine.” Imagine actually killing someone 

with an ax as a woman who’d never killed 

someone before. It’s always looking at 

these things that we’re used to and saying, 

“OK, what actually would you feel like?” I 

don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say 

that when there is violence in this film, it 

is troubling. As it should be. 

Some of the things that Cassie does 

are uncomfortable to watch. You’re 

like, “No, no, what are you doing?” 

The power that women have is to frighten. 

That’s what she does. She is frightening. I 

didn’t want to shy away from that, from 

the fact that some of the decisions she 

makes aren’t nice or good. Because she’s 

so angry. But it was important to me 

nevertheless that things aren’t quite what 

they seem, that she’s very particular and 

careful about the smoke and mirrors that 

she puts in place. 


81

ON SCREEN FILMMAKER INTERVIEW 

Far right: Carey Mulligan 

and Bo Burnham groove to 

the musical stylings of Paris 

Hilton in Promising Young 

Woman. 

Below: Director of 

photography Benjamin 

Kracun (far left) and writerdirector 

Emerald Fennell 

(center) with actors Sam 

Richardson and Carey 

Mulligan 

Bottom: Writer-director 

Emerald Fennell consults with 

(l–r) Carey Mulligan, Laverne 

Cox, and Bo Burnham. 

The rape culture scenarios this movie 

confronts—I don’t want to say they’re 

in the “gray zone,” because they are 

absolutely wrong, but they’re these 

situations where a lot of people 

still look at them and say, “Well, no, 

that wasn’t really rape. She was just 

drunk.” 

This conversation has been going on for a 

really long time. It’s still something that is 

completely pervasive everywhere. It was 

really important to me, making this film, to 

first say, “Where have I contributed to this 

culture? What jokes have I laughed at? What 

movie scenes have I laughed at? How have 

I not supported friends in ways that they 

may have needed supporting?” If you’re 

going to make a film about this kind of stuff, 

you have to really look at yourself first. 

Every single person in this film thinks 

they’re right. Even the really bad people 

who did the really bad thing [to Cassie’s 

best friend]. The thing that was important 

to me was that nobody is arguing that 

the bad thing [didn’t happen]. They just 

interpreted it very, very differently. They 

say it was consensual and fun. And isn’t 

that always the case? It’s something I was 

really interested in: So rarely do people say, 

“No, that didn’t happen!” They say, “Oh, no, 

it did happen, but not like she said it did.” 

And that’s very important. When writing 

it I had to make sure that none of the bad 

things that happen in this film we haven’t 

laughed at in comedy movies of the last 

15 years. Jokes about girls being drunk or 

taking dogs home. 

The truth of it is that you also have to 

be open-minded and forgiving, as well. 

Our culture changes, and we change with 

it. That’s how everything gets better. This 

film is about people who refuse to admit 

and refuse to change. Cassie comes along, 

and she has two hands open. One has 

forgiveness and one has punishment. And 

she always offers both at the beginning. 

Every conversation she has with people, 

she’s offering forgiveness if they acknowledge 

and apologize. 

Are you having these conversations 

with your actors? 

Totally. Everyone who really wanted to 

be a part of this movie was very open 

and honest. And I think everyone who’s 

seen it, and everyone who’s read it, was 

like “Oh, God. Oh, shit. This is so much 

a part of the culture.” We all had really 

proper, nuanced discussions about it. But 

the thing for me with everyone was: You 

are not a bad person. You woke up this 

morning knowing in your heart you are a 

good person. And somebody has turned 

up and is telling you you’re not. So what 

do you do? What would any of us do in 

that situation? It could be about anything. 

It’s being confronted with a truth that 

you’re not willing to recognize. And that 

is true just as much for Cassie. Because 

when she’s confronted by something she’s 

done, you can see the horror. She’s not 

immune to it. 

Was there a particular event that 

led you to write this film? Or was it a 

culmination of all these discussions 

that have been taking place over the 

last handful of years? 


It wasn’t inspired by [the last few years], 

really, because I started writing it before. 

It’s something that my friends and I had 

been discussing since we were at college 

ourselves. The curtain’s been opened, 

and the light’s shining on how pervasive 

this culture is. It’s something I’ve been 

very, very interested in for a long time. 

Particularly this idea of one specific part of 

our culture, which is the use of alcohol and 

drugs in seduction, which remains still a 

huge part of the way that people operate. 

People who would never think themselves 

bad people. I was wanting to make a film 

that would be compelling in its own right, 

but also underneath would want people to 

examine something deeper. 

It’s definitely a discussion-sparker. 

I assume it’s done that at screenings 

so far? 

Yeah, it has. Also, from a filmmaking point 

of view, it’s been really interesting seeing 

how people interpret different facets of 

it: the set design, the music choices, the 

casting, the costume design. All this is 

stuff that we really, really put such great, 

great care in. What’s so nice is people have 

really responded to this stuff as well. And 

that’s nice, because it’s the stuff of making 

things that’s so pleasurable, as well as 

obviously writing the script and telling 

the story. 

I’ll be honest: When I watched 

the trailer, a lot of those design 

elements—the colors, the music, the 

girly aesthetic of it—made me think it 

would be a different film than it was. 

I liked what I saw! But it was a lot 

more nuanced than what I expected 

it would be. 

The whole idea of the movie was to beckon 

people in. Beckon and beckon them into 

a sort of fun, schlocky [atmosphere]. 

And then lock them in! And not let them 

out. That’s the experience I want when 

I go to the movies—to be surprised and 

challenged in every way. 

For me, what I was trying to do was 

to have that sense of things dawning on 

us at different times. It’s seeing people 

suddenly realize that they’re listening to 

Paris Hilton [her song “Stars are Blind” is 

featured in a scene] or recognizing [a] 

Britney Spears [song], slowed down. The 

clothes seem so enticing and feminine. 

But actually, they are hiding something 

incendiary and frightening. [Cassie is] 

actually using them as a clever disguise. I 

wanted it to be surprising. For my personal 

taste, I like things that are ultra, ultra, 

ultra-feminine, but also kind of uncanny. 

Also a bit odd or too much. 

What are some of your favorite 

movies that have surprised you in 

that way? 

Most recently, Get Out and Parasite, for 

their sense of “I really don’t know where 

this journey is going, but I’m loving it.” 

Films like American Psycho and To Die 

For. Macabre humor that looks beautiful. 

Anything by Paul Thomas Anderson. 

Trojan horse cinema. 

That’s it. A Trojan unicorn. That’s the best, 

all of it! The kind of woman that Cassie 

is projecting is the ultimate Trojan horse. 

She uses her blondness and her whiteness 

and her sweetness to a very clever respect, 

which makes her very dangerous. I’m 

interested in the ways that women can be 

dangerous. 


83

On Screen FILMMAKER INTERVIEW 


O N T H E 

R O A D 

AGAIN 

Chloé Zhao Takes to the Great Outdoors with Nomadland BY REBECCA PAHLE 


85


Covid-19 has turned the film world 

topsy-turvy, but awards season 

rumbles on—with Oscar hopefuls filling 

the schedules of festivals that have had to 

adjust to a worldwide pandemic. Near the 

top of the list in terms of awards buzz is 

Searchlight Pictures’ release Nomadland, 

in theaters December 4. The film’s 

director, Chloé Zhao—an indie favorite 

whose 2017 drama The Rider received four 

nominations at the 2018 Independent 

Spirit Awards—has already been tapped 

by Disney to direct their 2021 MCU 

installment The Eternals. For the moment, 

though, she remains firmly associated 

with smaller, more intimate stories about 

people yearning for meaning and purpose 

in the American West. 

Born in Beijing, Zhao subsequently 

moved to L.A., New York, and London— 

but, “I think it’s when I hit my late 20s 

[that] I felt something was missing. And 

that got me to go west to South Dakota, 

from New York,” she recalled in a press 

conference at the New York Film Festival, 

where Nomadland was a Centerpiece 

Selection. “It’s this feeling of, ‘Why are 

we here? What’s the meaning of it all?’ I 

“It’s this feeling of, ‘Why 

are we here? What’s the 

meaning of it all?’ I didn’t 

really think about that 

when I was younger.” 


didn’t really think about that when I was 

younger.” The enormity and age of the 

landscapes impressed upon Zhao a sense 

of the profound: “You look up [and] see 

that lightning storm coming, [and] you 

understand where the Lakotas’ thunder 

god, the Great Spirit, [might have] 

come from. That’s something I didn’t 

understand when I was growing up. It 

made me who I am as a filmmaker today.” 

In Nomadland, Zhao and her small 

crew roved around much of America to tell 

the story of Fern (Frances McDormand), 

a modern-day nomad who takes to van 

living after the Great Recession leaves 

her jobless and her small town wiped 

from the map—it literally loses its ZIP 

Code. The odd recognizable face peppers 

the cast—McDormand and co-star David 

Strathairn mix seamlessly with the real-life 

van dwellers playing themselves. Producer 

Peter Spears (Call Me by Your Name), upon 

reading the nonfiction book Nomadland is 

based on (by Jessica Bruder, who co-wrote 

the script with Zhao), initially envisioned 

the movie as something more like a biopic, 

with McDormand playing Linda May, one of 

the main subjects of Bruder’s book. “About 

that time, Frances was at the Toronto Film 

Festival with Three Billboards. And she sort 

of slipped away from press responsibilities. 

She saw The Rider. And she texted me. ‘I 

think I may have just seen the person who’s 

going to be perfect for this movie.’” It was 

Zhao who had the “spark,” recalls Spears, 

that Nomadland “would not necessarily be 

just this idea of turning Linda May’s life into 

a cinematic treatment, but that she want[ed] 

to explore something even deeper and larger, 

and the landscape of that.” 

Fern, traveling through vistas that cry 

out for the big screen, finds new friends 

Star Frances 

McDormand (left), 

with director Chloé 

Zhao (right, top), and 

Zhao and director of 

photography Joshua 

James Richards (right) 

on the Nomadland set 


87


Left: Chloé Zhao (top), 

and with Frances 

McDormand (below), 

masked up for the Los 

Angeles premiere of 

Nomadland. Many of 

the film’s real-life stars 

(and their vans) were 

in attendance at the 

drive-in screening. 

Right: Frances 

McDormand’s Fern 

takes in the majesty 

of the American 

countryside in 

Nomadland. 

and mentors in the tight-knit community 

of American nomads—people like Linda 

May, Bob Wells, and Charlene Swankie, 

all playing themselves. The casting fits 

perfectly within the filmography of Zhao, 

who in her previous two features worked 

primarily with nonprofessional actors; 

all the same, the successful integration 

of nonactors with their A-list leading 

lady required some threading the needle 

from McDormand, also a producer on the 

film. “The most important thing” Frances 

could do in working with nonprofessional 

actors, Zhao says, “is truly be present 

and be able to listen to them and guide 

them in a way [that isn’t] necessarily, ‘Hey, 

you should act this way. Let me tell you 

about what I’ve learned [about] acting.’ 

No. She’s pulling [her scene partner] in 

with her ability to engage and her facial 

expressions. She’s being sympathetic. 

She knows what I want in the scene. She 

knows where her character should be. So 

she’s really reacting.” 

The crew, too, integrated themselves 

into the van-dwelling community— 

“Sharing our lives and eating together and 

staying together,” says Spears. “Frances 


“She’s being sympathetic. 

She knows what I want in 

the scene. She knows where 

her character should be. 

So she’s really reacting.” 

—Chloé Zhao 

would also stay sometimes in her van, 

and Chloé as well. Camping with the 

folks we were working with. We really 

were embedded amongst them.” The 

tables turned sometime later, when 

Nomadland had its Los Angeles premiere 

at the Telluride Film Festival. A typical 

stop on the film festival calendar for 

award hopefuls, Telluride canceled its 

2020 film festival but hosted a special 

“Telluride from Los Angeles” screening for 

Nomadland, with several of its subjects/ 

stars in attendance. “I think they were 

very moved by the experience,” says 

Spears. “They came up onstage and spoke 

afterwards to the people there.” Getting 

the theatrical experience from their cars, 

the festivalgoers honked their horns and 

flashed their lights in a show of support 

for the film and its co-stars, who “spoke 

very eloquently about their experiences 

both in the movie and [outside] of the 

movie. It’s an experience all of us there 

won’t ever forget.” 


89

On Screen PAGE COMING TITLE ATTRACTIONS 

COMING 

ATTRACTIONS 

All release dates subject to change. Dates are accurate as of October 30. 

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN 

December 25 / Focus Features 

Everyone said Cassie (Carey Mulligan) was a 

promising young woman—until a mysterious 

event abruptly derailed her future. But nothing 

in Cassie’s life is what it appears to be: She’s 

wickedly smart, tantalizingly cunning, and 

she’s living a secret double life by night. Now, 

an unexpected encounter is about to give 

Cassie a chance to right the wrongs of the past. 

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, 

Alison Brie, Connie Britton 

Director: Emerald Fennell 

Genre: Suspense, Thriller 

Rating: TBD 

Running Time: 113 min. 

Watch trailer 

90 

Winter 2020

NOMADLAND 

December 4 / Searchlight Studios 

Following the economic collapse of a company 

town in rural Nevada, Fern (Frances McDormand) 

packs her van and sets off on the road to explore a 

life outside conventional society as a modern-day 

nomad. The third feature film from director Chloé 

Zhao, Nomadland features real nomads Linda May, 

Charlene Swankie, and Bob Wells as Fern’s mentors 

and comrades in her exploration through the vast 

landscape of the American West. 

Cast: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, 

Linda May, Charlene Swankie, Bob Wells 

Director: Chloé Zhao 

Genre: Drama 

Rating: R 


THE FATHER 

December 18 / Sony Pictures Classics 

Anthony is 80, mischievous, living defiantly alone, 

and rejecting the caretakers that his daughter, Anne, 

encouragingly introduces. Yet help is also becoming 

a necessity for Anne; she can’t make daily visits 

anymore, and Anthony’s grip on reality is unraveling. 

As his memory ebbs and flows, how much of his own 

identity and past can Anthony cling to? How does 

Anne cope as she grieves the loss of her father, while 

he still lives and breathes before her? 

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman 

Director: Florian Zeller 

Genre: Drama 

Rating: TBD 


THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS 

December 25 / Sony Pictures Classics 

In the secret forests of northwest Italy, a dwindling 

group of joyful old men and their faithful dogs hunt 

for the world’s most expensive ingredient: the white 

Alba truffle. This real-life fairy tale celebrates human 

passion in a community struggling to protect its 

fragile land and a way of life forgotten in time. 

Cast: Carlo Gonella, Aurelio Conterno, Angelo Gagliardi 

Directors: Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw 

Genre: Documentary 

Rating: PG-13 



91

On Screen COMING ATTRACTIONS 

NEWS OF THE WORLD 

December 25 / Universal 

Five years after the end of the Civil War, Captain 

Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks) crosses paths 

with Johanna (Helena Zengel), a 10-year-old 

taken in by the Kiowa tribe six years earlier and 

raised as one of their own. Johanna, hostile to a 

world she’s never experienced, is being returned 

to her biological aunt and uncle against her will. 

Kidd agrees to deliver the child where the law 

says she belongs. As they travel hundreds of miles 

into the unforgiving wilderness, the two will 

face tremendous challenges of both human and 

natural forces as they search for a place that either 

can call home. 

Cast: Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel 

Director: Paul Greengrass 

Genre: Drama, Western 

Rating: TBD 

Running Time: TBD 

WONDER WOMAN 1984 

December 25 / Warner Bros. 

Fast forward to the 1980s as Wonder Woman’s (Gal 

Gadot) next big screen adventure finds her facing an 

all-new foe: the Cheetah (Kristen Wiig). 

Cast: Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig, Chris Pine, Pedro Pascal 

Director: Patty Jenkins 

Genre: Action 

Rating: PG-13 


Watch trailer 


MONSTER HUNTER 

December 30 / Sony 

Behind our world, there is another: a world of dangerous 

and powerful monsters that rule their domain 

with deadly ferocity. When Lt. Artemis (Milla Jovovich) 

and her loyal soldiers are transported from our 

world to the new world, the unflappable lieutenant 

receives the shock of her life. In her desperate battle 

for survival against enormous enemies with incredible 

powers and unstoppable, terrifying attacks, Artemis 

will team up with a mysterious man (Tony Jaa) who 

has found a way to fight back. 

Cast: Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Meagan Good, 

Diego Bonet, Josh Helman, Jin Au-Yeung, Ron Perlman 

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson 

Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy 

Rating: TBD 


Watch trailer 

Winter 2020 93

On Screen COMING ATTRACTIONS 

Watch trailer 

PETER RABBIT 2: 

THE RUNAWAY 

January 15 / Sony 

In Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, the lovable 

rogue is back. Bea, Thomas, and the rabbits have 

created a makeshift family, but despite his best 

efforts, Peter can’t seem to shake his mischievous 

reputation. Adventuring out of the garden, Peter 

finds himself in a world where his mischief is 

appreciated, but when his family risks everything 

to come looking for him, Peter must figure out 

what kind of bunny he wants to be. 

Cast: Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, Elizabeth Debicki, 

Margot Robbie, James Corden, David Oyelowo 

Director: Will Gluck 

Genre: Family, Action-Adventure 

Rating: TBD 


THE 355 

January 15 / Universal 

When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, 

wild card CIA agent Mason “Mace” Brown (Jessica 

Chastain) will need to join forces with rival badass 

German agent Marie (Diane Kruger), former MI6 

ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah 

(Lupita Nyong’o), and skilled Colombian psychologist 

Graciela (Penelope Cruz) on a lethal, breakneck mission 

to retrieve it, while also staying one step ahead 

of a mysterious woman, Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan), 

who is tracking their every move. 

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong’o, 

Penelope Cruz, Bingbing Fan 

Director: Simon Kinberg 

Genre: Action-Adventure 

Rating: PG-13 



Big screen. 

Bigger cause. 

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital® is 

leading the way the world understands, 

treats and defeats childhood cancer and 

other life-threatening diseases. But, we 

couldn’t do it without you. By donating 

pre-show advertising to screen the annual 

St. Jude Thanks and Giving® movie trailer, 

you support our lifesaving mission: Finding 

cures. Saving children.® The generosity of 

you and your patrons helps ensure that 

families never receive a bill from St. Jude 

for treatment, travel, housing or food— 

because all a family should worry about is 

helping their child live. 

St. Jude patient 

Luigi 

Art inspired by St. Jude patient Jaden 

For more information, please email 

chance.weaver@stjude.org or visit stjude.org/theaters 

©2020 ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (PRNS1692)


On Screen BOOKING GUIDE 

BOOKING 

GUIDE 

Release calendar for theatrical 

distribution in North America 

Release dates are accurate as of November 9. For the latest 

schedule, visit www.boxofficepro.com/release-calendar. 

20TH CENTURY STUDIOS 

310-369-1000 

212-556-2400 

THE KING’S MAN 

Fri, 2/12/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton 

Director: Matthew Vaughn 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT 

JAMIE 

Fri, 2/26/21 WIDE 

Stars: Max Harwood, 

Sarah Lancashire 

Director: Jonathan Butterell 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra/Mus 

BOB'S BURGERS 

Fri, 4/9/21 LTD 

Stars: H. Jon Benjamin, Kristen Schaal 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

WEST SIDE STORY 

Fri, 12/10/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler 

Director: Steven Spielberg 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Mus 

AMAZON STUDIOS 

I'M YOUR WOMAN 

Fri, 12/4/20 LTD 

Stars: Rachel Brosnahan, Marsha 

Stephanie Blake 

Director: Julia Hart 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra 

ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI 

Fri, 12/25/20 LTD 

Stars: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree 

Director: Regina King 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra/Bio 

BLEECKER STREET 

WILD MOUNTAIN THYME 

Fri, 12/11/20 LTD 

Stars: Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan 

Director: John Patrick Shanley 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Dra/Rom 

DISNEY 

818-560-1000 

Ask for Distribution 

RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON 

Fri, 3/12/21 WIDE 

Stars: Awkwafina, Cassie Steele 

Directors: Paul Briggs, Dean Wellins 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

Specs: 3-D 

BLACK WIDOW 

Fri, 5/7/21 WIDE 

Stars: Scarlett Johansson, 

David Harbour 

Director: Cate Shortland 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Adv 

Specs: 3-D 

CRUELLA 

Fri, 5/28/21 WIDE 

Stars: Emma Stone, Emma 

Thompson 

Director: Craig Gillespie 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

LUCA 

Fri, 6/18/21 WIDE 

Director: Enrico Casarosa 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

RON'S GONE WRONG 

Fri, 4/23/21 WIDE 

Directors: Alessandro Carloni, J.P. Vine 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

DEEP WATER 

Fri, 8/13/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ana de Armas, Ben Affleck 

Directors: Adrian Lyne 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Thr 

UNTITLED 20TH CENTURY 2021 1 

Fri, 9/10/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

THE LAST DUEL 

Fri, 10/15/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

UNTITLED 20TH CENTURY 2021 2 

Fri, 12/3/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

The King's Man 

Fri, 2/12/21 WIDE 


97


THE NIGHT 

Fri, 1/29/21 LTD 

Stars: Shahab Hosseini, Niousha 

Jafarian 

Director: Kourosh Ahari 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

LITTLE FISH 

Fri, 2/5/21 LTD 

Stars: Olivia Cooke, Jack O'Connell 

Director: Chad Hartigan 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF/Rom 

BLITHE SPIRIT 

Fri, 2/19/21 LTD 

Stars: Isla Fisher, Dan Stevens 

Director: Edward Hall 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

Half Brothers 

Fri, 12/4/20 WIDE 

SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF 

THE TEN RINGS 


Stars: Simu Liu, Awkwafina 

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Adv/Fan 

JUNGLE CRUISE 

Fri, 7/30/21 WIDE 

Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt 

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra 

Rating: NR 


Specs: Dolby Vis/Atmos 

THE BEATLES: GET BACK 

Fri, 8/27/21 WIDE 

Director: Peter Jackson 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Doc 

ETERNALS 

Fri, 11/5/21 WIDE 

Stars: Richard Madden, 

Angelina Jolie 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Adv/SF 

UNTITLED DISNEY ANIMATION 2021 

Fri, 11/24/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

UNTITLED DISNEY LIVE ACTION 2021 

Fri, 12/17/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE 

MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS 

Fri, 3/25/22 WIDE 

Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch 

Director: Sam Raimi 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF/Fan/Adv 

FOCUS FEATURES 

HALF BROTHERS 

Fri, 12/4/20 WIDE 

Stars: Luis Gerard Méndez, 

Connor Del Rio 

Director: Luke Greenfield 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Com 

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN 

Fri, 12/25/20 WIDE 

Stars: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham 

Director: Emerald Fennell 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com/Dra 

THE KILLING OF TWO LOVERS 

Fri, 2/23/21 LTD 

Stars: Clayne Crawford, Sepideh 

Moafi 

Director: Robert Machoian 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Thr 

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO 

Fri, 4/23/21 LTD 

Stars: Anya Taylor-Joy, Thomasin 

Harcourt McKenzie 

Director: Edgar Wright 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor/Thr 


BLUE BAYOU 

Fri, 6/25/21 WIDE 

Stars: Justin Chon, Alicia Vikander 

Director: Justin Chon 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

IFC FILMS 

BOOKINGS@IFCFILMS.COM 

DEAR SANTA 

Fri, 12/4/20 LTD 

Director: Dana Nachman 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Doc 

FAREWELL AMOR 

Fri, 12/11/20 LTD 

Stars: Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, 

Zainab Jah 

Director: Ekwa Msangi 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

HUNTER HUNTER 

Fri, 12/18/20 LTD 

Stars: Camille Sullivan, Devon Sawa 

Director: Shawn Linden 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

MLK/FBI 

Fri, 1/15/21 LTD 

Director: Sam Pollard 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Doc 

NO MAN'S LAND 

Fri, 1/22/21 LTD 

Stars: Frank Grillo, Andie MacDowell 

Director: Conor Allyn 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Wes 

THE VIGIL 

Fri, 2/26/21 LTD 

Stars: Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig 

Director: Keith Thomas 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Hor 

LIONSGATE 

310-309-8400 

THE DEVIL’S LIGHT 


Stars: Virginia Madsen, Ben Cross 

Director: Daniel Stamm 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

CHAOS WALKING 

Fri, 1/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley 

Director: Doug Liman 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Adv/SF 

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF 

MASSIVE TALENT 

Fri, 3/19/21 WIDE 

Stars: Nicolas Cage 

Director: Tom Gormican 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Com 

THE ASSET 

Fri, 4/23/21 WIDE 

Stars: Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson 

Director: Martin Campbell 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Thr 

SPIRAL 

Fri, 5/21/21 WIDE 

Stars: Chris Rock, Samuel L. Jackson 

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 


BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA 

DEL MAR 

Fri, 7/16/21 WIDE 

Stars: Kristen Wiig, Annie Mumolo 

Director: Josh Greenbaum 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

THE HITMAN’S WIFE'S BODYGUARD 

Fri, 8/20/21 WIDE 

Stars: Ryan Reynolds, 

Samuel L. Jackson 

Director: Patrick Hughes 

Rating: NR 


AMERICAN UNDERDOG: THE KURT 

WARNER STORY 

Fri, 12/10/21 WIDE 

Directors: Jon Erwin, Andrew Erwin 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 

Fri, 5/27/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

MAGNOLIA PICTURES 

212-379-9704 

Neal Block 

nblock@magpictures.com 

COLLECTIVE 

Fri, 11/20/20 LTD 

Director: Alexander Nanau 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Doc 

ZAPPA 

Fri, 11/27/20 LTD 

Director: Alex Winter 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Doc 

CROCK OF GOLD – A FEW ROUNDS 

WITH SHANE MACGOWAN 

Fri, 12/4/20 LTD 

Director: Julien Temple 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Doc 

IP MAN: KUNG FU MASTER 

Fri, 12/11/20 LTD 

Stars: Dennis To 

Director: Li Liming 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

PARAMOUNT 

323-956-5000 

COMING 2 AMERICA 

Fri, 12/18/20 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

UNTITLED LEE DANIELS BILLIE 

HOLIDAY FILM 

Fri, 2/12/21 WIDE 

Director: Lee Daniels 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Bio/Dra 

TOM CLANCY'S WITHOUT 

REMORSE 

Fri, 2/16/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Thr 

A QUIET PLACE PART II 

Fri, 4/23/21 WIDE 

Stars: Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy 

Director: John Krasinski 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Hor 

RUMBLE 

Fri, 5/14/21 WIDE 

Stars: Will Arnett, Terry Crews 

Director: Hamish Grieve 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

INFINITE 

Fri, 5/28/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF 

MICRONAUTS 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

TOP GUN: MAVERICK 


Stars: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller 

Director: Joseph Kosinski 

Rating: NR 


Specs: Imax/Dolby Vis/Atmos 

THE TOMORROW WAR 

Fri, 7/23/21 WIDE 

Stars: Yvonne Strahovski, Chris Pratt 

Director: Chris McKay 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/SF 

PAW PATROL 

Fri, 8/20/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

JACKASS 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

MY LITTLE PONY MOVIE 

Fri, 9/24/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

Projectors Audio Servers 

Seating 

Screens Drapery 

Lighting Closed Captioned NOC 

ON YOUR TEAM 

Audiences’ expectations have never been 

higher. American Cinema Equipment is your 

support team to create the experiences you 

demand. Meeting expectations may be the 

industry standard; exceeding them is ours. 

LMS 

Technician Help 

Messaging Mail Web Music 

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1927 N. Argyle Street, Portland, OR 97217 

[ 503] 285-6765 orders@cinequip.com 

cinequip.com 


99


SNAKE EYES 

Fri, 10/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Henry Golding, Andrew Koj 

Director: Robert Schwentke 

Rating: NR 


CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG 

Fri, 11/5/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Fam 

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7 

Fri, 11/19/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Cruise 

Director: Christopher McQuarrie 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

BABYLON 

Fri, 12/25/21 WIDE 

Director: Damien Chazelle 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS 

323.882.8490 

FINDING YOU 

Fri, 1/29/21 WIDE 

Stars: Rose Reid, Jedidiah Goodacre 

Director: Brian Baugh 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Rom 

SABAN FILMS 

LOVE, WEDDINGS & OTHER 

DISASTERS 

Fri, 12/4/20 LTD 

Stars: Diane Keaton, Jeremy Irons 

Director: Dennis Dugan 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Rom/Com 

THE STAND IN 

Fri, 12/11/20 LTD 

Stars: Drew Barrymore, Michael Zegen 

Director: Jamie Babbit 

Rating: R 

Genre: Com 

SISTER OF THE GROOM 

Fri, 12/18/20 LTD 

Stars: Alicia Silverstone, 

Tom Everett Scott 

Director: Amy Miller Gross 

Rating: R 


SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES 

212-556-2400 

NOMADLAND 

Fri, 12/4/20 LTD 

Stars: Frances McDormand, Linda May 


Rating: R 

Genre: Dra 

ANTLERS 

Fri, 2/19/21 LTD 

Stars: Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons 

Director: Scott Cooper 

Rating: R 

Genre: Hor 

SONY 

212-833-8500 

MONSTER HUNTER 

Wed, 12/30/20 WIDE 

Stars: Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa 

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Fan 

PETER RABBIT 2: THE RUNAWAY 

Fri, 1/15/21 WIDE 

Stars: James Corden, Rose Byrne 

Director: Will Gluck 

Rating: PG 

Genre: Ani 

CINDERELLA 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Fan 

GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE 

Fri, 6/11/21 WIDE 

Stars: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard 

Director: Jason Reitman 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor/Com/SF 

MORBIUS 

Fri, 3/19/21 WIDE 

Stars: Jared Leto, Matt Smith 

Director: Daniel Espinosa 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/Thr/SF 

FATHERHOOD 


Stars: Kevin Hart, Melody Hurd 

Director: Paul Weitz 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

VIVO 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE 

Fri, 6/25/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson 

Director: Andy Serkis 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act/SF 


UNCHARTED 

Fri, 7/16/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg 

Rating: NR 


HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 4 


Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani/Com 

DON'T BREATH SEQUEL 

Fri, 8/13/21 WIDE 

Director: Rodo Sayagues 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

MAN FROM TORONTO 

Fri, 9/17/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR NR 


UNTITLED SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM 

HOME SEQUEL 

Fri, 12/17/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Holland 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

I Carry You With Me 

Fri, 1/8/20 LTD 

THE NIGHTINGALE 

Wed, 12/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning 

Director: Mélanie Laurent 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS 

Tom Prassis 

212-833-4981 

THE CLIMB 

Fri, 11/13/20 LTD 

Stars: Michael Covino, Kyle Marvin 

Director: Michael Covino 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra/Com 

THE LAST VERMEER 

Fri, 11/20/20 LTD 

Stars: Claes Bang, Guy Pearce 

Director: Dan Friedkin 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra 

THE FATHER 

Fri, 12/18/20 LTD 

Stars: Anthony Hopkins, 

Olivia Colman 

Director: Florian Zeller 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Dra 

THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS 

Fri, 12/25/20 LTD 

Directors: Michael Dweck, 

Gregory Kershaw 

Rating: PG-13 

I CARRY YOU WITH ME 

Fri, 1/8/20 LTD 

Stars: Armando Espitia, 

Christian Vazquez 

Director: Heidi Ewing 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra 

NINE DAYS 

Fri, 1/22/20 LTD 

Stars: Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz 

Director: Edson Oda 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra 

THE HUMAN FACTOR 

Fri, 1/22/20 LTD 

Director: Dror Moreh 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Doc 

FRENCH EXIT 

Fri, 2/12/21 LTD 

Stars: Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges 

Director: Azazel Jacobs 

Rating: R 

Genre: Dra/Com 

UNITED ARTISTS RELEASING 

310-724-5678 

Ask for Distribution 

WRATH OF MAN 

Fri, 1/15/21 WIDE 

Director: Guy Ritchie 

Rating: NR 


BREAKING NEWS IN YUBA COUNTY 

Fri, 1/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Allison Janney, Mila Kunis 

Director: Tate Taylor 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

MINIMATA 


Stars: Johnny Depp, Jun Kunimura 

Director: Andrew Levitas 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

NO TIME TO DIE 


Stars: Daniel Craig, Rami Malek 

Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga 

Rating: PG-13 


Specs: Imax 

DOG 


Stars: Channing Tatum 

Directors: Reid Carolin, 

Channing Tatum 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Com 

SAMARITAN 


Stars: Sylvester Stallone 

Director: Julius Avery 

Rating: NR 


RESPECT 

Fri, 8/13/21 WIDE 

Stars: Jennifer Hudson, 

Forest Whitaker 

Director: Liesl Tommy 

Rating: NR 


DARK HARVEST 

Fri, 9/24/21 WIDE 

Director: David Slade 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

THE ADDAMS FAMILY 2 

Fri, 10/8/21 WIDE 

Stars: Charlize Theron, Oscar Isaac 

Director: Greg Tiernan 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

GUCCI 

Fri, 11/24/21 WIDE 

Director: Ridley Scott 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra 

CYRANO 

Fri, 12/10/21 WIDE 

Stars: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett 

Director: Joe Wright 

Rating: NR 


UNIVERSAL 

818-777-1000 


101


The 355 

Fri, 1/15/21 WIDE 

FREAKY 

Fri, 11/13/20 WIDE 

Stars: Kathryn Newton, Vince Vaughn 

Director: Christopher Landon 

Rating: R 

Genre: Hor/Com 

THE CROODS: A NEW AGE 

Wed, 11/25/20 WIDE 

Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Emma Stone 

Director: Joel Crawford 

Rating: PG 

Genre: Ani 

MARRY ME 

Fri, 2/12/21 WIDE 

Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson 

Director: Kat Coiro 

Rating: NR 


NOBODY 

Fri, 2/19/21 WIDE 

Stars: Bob Odenkirk 

Director: Ilya Naishuller 

Rating: R 


F9 

Fri, 5/28/21 WIDE 

Stars: Vin Diesel, Charlize Theron 

Director: Justin Lin 

Rating: NR 


Specs: Imax/Dolby Vis/Atmos 

JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION 

Fri, 6/10/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 


UNTITLED BLUMHOUSE 

PRODUCTIONS 

Fri, 8/13/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

CANDYMAN 

Fri, 8/27/21 WIDE 

Stars: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, 

Teyonah Parris 

Director: Nia DaCosta 

Rating: R 

Genre: Hor 

ALL MY LIFE 

Fri, 12/4/20 WIDE 

Stars: Jessica Rothe, Harry Shum Jr 

Director: Marc Meyers 

Rating: PG-13 


NEWS OF THE WORLD 

Fri, 12/25/20 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Hanks 

Director: Paul Greengrass 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Dra 

THE 355 

Fri, 1/15/21 WIDE 

Stars: Jessica Chastain, 

Lupita Nyong’o 

Director: Simon Kinberg 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Thr 

UNTITLED UNIVERSAL EVENT FILM 1 


Rating: NR 

THE BOSS BABY: FAMILY BUSINESS 

Fri, 3/26/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

BIOS 

Fri, 4/16/21 WIDE 

Stars: Tom Hanks 

Director: Miguel Sapochnik 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF 

UNTITLED SPIRIT RIDING FREE FILM 

Fri, 5/14/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani 

MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU 


Stars: Steve Carell, Taraji P. Henson 

Director: Kyle Balda 

Rating: PG 

Genre: Ani 

THE FOREVER PURGE 


Director: Everardo Gout 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

OLD 

Fri, 7/23/21 WIDE 

Director: M. Night Shyamalan 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Thr 

THE BAD GUYS 

Fri, 9/17/21 WIDE 

Director: Pierre Perifel 

Rating: NR 

UNTITLED UNIVERSAL EVENT FILM 2 

Fri, 9/24/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

HALLOWEEN KILLS 

Fri, 10/15/21 WIDE 

Director: David Gordon Green 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

SING 2 

Fri, 12/22/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani/Mus 


UNTITLED JORDAN PEELE HORROR 

EVENT 

Fri, 7/22/22 WIDE 

Director: Jordan Peele 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

WARNER BROS. 

818-977-1850 

WONDER WOMAN 1984 

Fri, 12/25/20 WIDE 

Stars: Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig 

Director: Patty Jenkins 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Act/Adv/Fan 

Specs: Imax/3-D/Dolby Vis/Atmos 

MORTAL KOMBAT 

Fri, 1/15/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

THE LITTLE THINGS 

Fri, 1/29/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Thr 

TOM & JERRY 


Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Ani 

THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK 

Fri, 3/12/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra/Cri 

REMINISCENCE 

Fri, 4/16/21 WIDE 

Rating: PG-13 

GODZILLA VS KONG 

Fri, 5/21/21 WIDE 

Stars: Millie Bobby Brown, 

Eiza González 

Director: Adam Wingard 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: SF/Act 

Specs: Imax/3-D/Dolby Vis/Atmos 

THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL 

MADE ME DO IT 


Stars: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga 

Director: Michael Chaves 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 


IN THE HEIGHTS 

Fri, 6/18/21 WIDE 

Stars: Anthony Ramos, 

Corey Hawkins 

Director: Jon M. Chu 

Rating: PG-13 

Genre: Mus/Rom/Dra 

SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY 

Fri, 7/16/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Ani/Com 

THE SUICIDE SQUAD 


Stars: Margot Robbie, Taika Waititi 

Director: James Gunn 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

UNTITLED NEW LINE HORROR FILM 

2021 

Fri, 9/10/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Hor 

DUNE 

Fri, 10/1/21 WIDE 

Stars: Timothée Chalamet, 

Rebecca Ferguson 

Director: Denis Villeneuve 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF 

UNTITLED ELVIS FILM 

Fri, 11/5/21 WIDE 

Director: Baz Luhrmann 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra/Bio/Mus 

UNTITLED FANTASTIC BEASTS 3 

Fri, 11/12/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Fan/Act 

KING RICHARD 

Fri, 11/19/21 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Dra/Bio 

UNTITLED MATRIX FILM 

Fri, 12/22/21 WIDE 

Stars: Keanu Reeves 

Director: Lana Wachowski 

Rating: NR 

Genre: SF 

UNTITLED SESAME STREET 

Fri, 1/14/22 WIDE 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Fam 

THE BATMAN 


Stars: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz 

Director: Matt Reeves 

Rating: NR 

Genre: Act 

AN INDUSTRY THAT STOPPED. AND HOW IT WAS BORN AGAIN. 

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Image Credits & Acknowledgments 

Cover: Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace/Focus Features. 

p5: Photo: Bruce Talamon/Universal Pictures. 

p6: Courtesy of Cineplexx. 

p11: Image courtesy Marcus Theatres. 

p17: Photo © Ingar Johansen. 

p18: Photos: Alex Nicoletti and Variety 

– the Children’s Charity of the Delaware Valley. 

p20-23: Images courtesy Marcus Theatres. 

p39: Photo by Nick Simonite, courtesy Alamo Drafthouse. 

p40: Image courtesy Alamo Drafthouse. 

p41: Photo by Heather Kennedy/Alamo Drafthouse. 

p44: Photos by Nick Simonite, courtesy Alamo Drafthouse. 

p46: Photo by vgajic 

p47: Images courtesy Gold Medal Products 

p50: Illustration created by Culture Trip’s 

in-house illustrator Sam Peet. 

p52: Image courtesy HaloVino. 

p53: Image courtesy Marcus Theatres. 

p54: Image courtesy Malco Theatres. 

p55: Images courtesy Studio Movie Grill 

and Nitehawk Cinema. 

p56: Image courtesy Showcase Cinemas. 

p57: Image courtesy HaloVino. 

p58-61: Photos courtesy of Pathé Netherlands. 

p62-63: Photos courtesy Muvi Cinemas. 

p64-65: Photos courtesy Cineplexx. 

p67-76: Images courtesy of Fathom Events/TCM and Dolby. 

Public Domain images via Wikipedia. 

p79: Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. 

p80-81: Image courtesy Focus Features. 

p82-83: Images courtesy Merie Weismiller Wallace 

/ Focus Features. 

p84-85: Photo by Joshua James Richards. © 2020 

20th Century Studios, All Rights Reserved. 

p86-87: Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2020 

20th Century Studios, All Rights Reserved. 

p88-89: Photo by Todd Williamson/January Images 

and Searchlight Pictures. © 2020 20th Century Studios, 

All Rights Reserved. 

p90: Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace/Focus Features. 

p91: Photos courtesy of Searchlight Pictures, (Nomadland) 

Sean Gleason, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics 

(The Father), Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw. 

Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics. (The Truffle Hunters) 

p92: Photo by Bruce Talamon/Universal Pictures 

(News of the World), Photo by Clay Enos & © DC Comics. 

© 2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., All Rights Reserved. 

(Wonder Woman 1984). 

p93: Photo by Coco Van Oppens Photography; © 

CONSTANTIN FILM Produktion Services GmbH- 

Photos Coco Van Oppens. 

p94: Courtesy Sony Pictures. © 2020 CTMG, Inc., 

All Rights Reserved (Peter Rabbit 2) and Robert Viglasky/ 

Universal Pictures. © 2020 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (The 355). 

p97: Peter Mountain. © 2020 Twentieth Century Fox Film 

Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 

p98: John Golden Britt / Focus Features. 

p101: Sony Pictures Classics. 

p102: Robert Viglasky/Universal Pictures. 

© 2020 Universal Studios. All rights reserved. 


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©2020 QSC, LLC all rights reserved. QSC, Q-SYS and the QSC logo are registered trademarks in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and other countries. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.

Boxoffice Pro - Winter 2020

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