[Movies] What determines a movie's showtime numbers?

[kejer]

Noob question but this really bothers me.
Last weekend we had two new wide releases, Grownups 2 and Pacific Rim. Both movies have 40ish M box office. But when checking the showtime, my town's most popular theater has 10 showtimes for grownups 2 but only 4 (3D and non-3D combined) for Pacific Rim. It also very surprising that Lone Ranger (which has only 11M weekend box office) has 7 showtimes, almost double of Pacific Rim...

Is it the distribution company paying more to the theater so the movie got more showtimes? or something else like the theater management just doesn't like that particular movie?

Sorry about the bad English.

[Shinzai]

No doubt Disney paid extra to make sure its film was *everywhere* at the maximum possible number of show times. I really doubt there's much more to it than that. The cinema chains also probably base the number of show times on perceived potential box-office, prior to a film's release. Given that Jerry Bruckheimer's previous Disney effort (Pirates of the Caribbean) opened at the $90 mil mark, they probably thought they'd be raking the cash in.

[Skippy88]

My local theater has 7 screens and if it's a big movie they usually have 2 theaters of the 7 assigned to it. This week they obviously didn't consider Pacific Rim or Grown-Ups 2 big as they were only in 1 theatre each but they obviously felt Grown-Ups 2 would be the better as they were given the largest theater.
The next closest theater has about 14 screens. It's not uncommon to see a big movie get 3 or 4 theaters.

In Pacific Rim's case the movie was not "tracking" well as they gather stats on how many times a movie gets searched on the internet among other things. This leads to Studios who can usually forecast how well a movie does and thereby see how many theaters it needs to be in. However like forecasting the weather it's not an exact science as obviously Grown-ups 2 and Pacific Rim should have been in the same number of theaters while Lone Ranger should be been in less. Should be interesting and see what they do as you get Red 2 and RIPD this week and Wolverine next week.

[Dasffion]

My local theater has 7 screens and if it's a big movie they usually have 2 theaters of the 7 assigned to it. This week they obviously didn't consider Pacific Rim or Grown-Ups 2 big as they were only in 1 theatre each but they obviously felt Grown-Ups 2 would be the better as they were given the largest theater.
The next closest theater has about 14 screens. It's not uncommon to see a big movie get 3 or 4 theaters.

In Pacific Rim's case the movie was not "tracking" well as they gather stats on how many times a movie gets searched on the internet among other things. This leads to Studios who can usually forecast how well a movie does and thereby see how many theaters it needs to be in. However like forecasting the weather it's not an exact science as obviously Grown-ups 2 and Pacific Rim should have been in the same number of theaters while Lone Ranger should be been in less. Should be interesting and see what they do as you get Red 2 and RIPD this week and Wolverine next week.

Studios don't decide what movies theaters get and how many copies they get. Theaters have to lease the movies, what you say about how many they'll get is correct, it is like forecasting but it's done by representatives of the theaters, not the studios.

[kejer]

Ok now i understand how the initial screen numbers for each movie is determined.
I forgot to mention, the screen numbers I listed is for the week days of THIS week. How come after the weekend box office is known, which shows almost the same for GU2 and PR (GU2 a little higher). They still give GU2 10 screens but 4 for PR? And Lone ranger got 7 screens with 1/3 of the box office compared to the first two?

My local theater has 7 screens and if it's a big movie they usually have 2 theaters of the 7 assigned to it. This week they obviously didn't consider Pacific Rim or Grown-Ups 2 big as they were only in 1 theatre each but they obviously felt Grown-Ups 2 would be the better as they were given the largest theater.
The next closest theater has about 14 screens. It's not uncommon to see a big movie get 3 or 4 theaters.

In Pacific Rim's case the movie was not "tracking" well as they gather stats on how many times a movie gets searched on the internet among other things. This leads to Studios who can usually forecast how well a movie does and thereby see how many theaters it needs to be in. However like forecasting the weather it's not an exact science as obviously Grown-ups 2 and Pacific Rim should have been in the same number of theaters while Lone Ranger should be been in less. Should be interesting and see what they do as you get Red 2 and RIPD this week and Wolverine next week.

[Dasffion]

Because that is the number of showings that your theater thought it could get the most profit from. If you have a problem with it contact the owner of the theater, if it's a chain your're probably going to have to talk to a regional manager, not the local theater.