Tag Archives: Odeon

Daily Cinema Roundup -Thursday 8 May - “the best industry you could want to be in”

May 7, 2009

- Things are returning to semi-normal in Mexico, with fear of an H1N1 pandemic abetting and cinemas outside of the capital are re-opening, we are told by THR.com. “All employees must wear protective masks and those handling food are required to wear rubber gloves and wash their hands frequently. After each screening, theaters will be scrubbed down with detergent or a bleach solution. Additionally, audiences will find antibacterial gel at the entrance of each theater.” An unintended side-effect of the mustn’t-call-it-swineflu is that cinemas will smell fresher than ever before;

- If yesterday’s item about r$5.5m golden parachutes-for-failures at Carmike left a bad taste in your mouth, here is a story of a better run family cinema operation in the US deep South, Malco Theatres, from the California Chronicle. “Jimmy Tashie points out that Malco has survived ” depressions, recessions, wars and even home theaters.” He says he looks forward to seeing how technological developments will further influence film operations. “Where can we go from here? Well, 3-D and digital cinema for one,” he said. “At present, Malco is branching out and showing live feed from the New York Metropolitan Opera, concerts, sporting events and even teleconferencing.” Malco is also actively supporting independent film organizations like the On Location: Memphis International Film Fest, the Indie Memphis Film Festival and the Oxford Film Festival in Mississippi, as well as providing a cast-and-crew screening to the undeservedly straight-to-DVD political thriller “Nothing but the Truth“;

- Staying with US exhibitors in the South, Regal Cinemas has appointed former CFO Amy Miles to take over as CEO from the chain’s founder Mike Campbell, while SVP finance David Ownby is new CFO and Gregg Dunn stays on as President/COO, according to THR.com. “Campbell described his new role as one focusing on corporate strategy. “This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for several years,” Campbell said. “I informed our board a couple years ago about what I was thinking about doing, and they are glad I’ll still be engaged.” Miles said she was pleased to be handed the corporate reins “in such an exciting time for Regal and the theater exhibition industry.” ” It is Ms Mile’s quote that is today’s deadline banner and we fully endorse her view - this is the best industry to be in, and not just because the box office is doing well;

- Some digital signage news from the UK and US. Odeon has been using signage from Connectvision (pictured right) to drive concession sales in Liverpool and Belfast, according to Digital Signage Today. ““By using dual-purpose tills we have more flexibility at the point-of-sale. If the need arises we can use the concessions areas for both concession and ticket sales. Connectvision allows us to use the bank of screens to maximum effect when promoting popcorn, drinks, confectionery and other concessions, as well as topical special offers linked to films at the cinema,” said Alison Burns, retail manager U.K., Odeon U.K.” Meanwhile in the US Santikos Theatres uses Allure Global Solutions‘ signage (top), according to Digital Signage Expo. “A large screen displaying animated beauty shots of beverages pouring over ice and other imagery which promotes brand awareness and appetite appeal are a part of the overall solution for Santikos Theatres. Allure Global has seen sales lift for digital promoted products in the area of 7-9% for their digital menu boards in a theatre environment. Also, internal proprietary research with a beverage company and a theatre chain has shown that the incidence of a beverage purchase is 10% greater after viewing its digital imagery on a screen, than from its static counterpart.” Will these interactive signage displays show the calorie count in New York cinemas, as recently mandated, we wonder;

- But no signage, digital or otherwise, for Doncaster’s Odeon, whose art-deco building is threatened by demolition, we learn from South Yorkshire’s The Star. “An English Heritage report turned the building down for listing because it had been too heavily altered inside and outside to be of interest in a national context, but said it made a positive contribution to the Hallgate conservation area and could be a candidate for a local list. The Friends of Doncaster Odeon (FODO) was set up to try to save the building. Spokesman Ray Nortrop said much of the information put forward by the trust echoed its own experts’ advice. The Odeon, formerly the Gaumont Palace, opened in September 1934 and was designed by the architects WE and WS Trent. ” Not every cinema is wort saving, but surely Doncastrians desefve a renovated cinema more than a casino in its place. As a commentator notes in DigitalSpy, “Now there will be no option but to use the chav infested VUE” while another one opines “Vue Doncaster - number 1 for people who want to watch films in a shoebox.” Visit this great site for some beautiful photos of what the cinema used to look like. It was also where local lad Daniel Craig saw his first Bond film;

- Projector maker Ballantyne of Omaha has reported Q1 results for 2009 and business is looking good with reveniue up almost 10 per cent, according to Reuters. “Q1 2008 net revenues increased 9.8% to $14.2 million compared to Q1 2007 net revenues of $12.9 million. The increase was principally due to recording as revenue in Q1 2008 the sale of digital projection equipment in 2007 on deferred payment terms.” That’s a five-fold growth in digital projector revenue, which “more than offset an anticipated decline in sales of traditional analog film projection systems.” More reasons to be cheerful, even though gross profit was down slightly from $2.7m to $2.3m. Warren Buffet, he of Omaha too, could worse than to invest in this company;

- There appears to be no end in sight to the stand off in India between film distributors and multiplexes. This leaves Hollywood distributors with a dilemma, as a backlog of US titles builds up that will fight even harder than usual with local films for screens this summer. From Business of Cinema. “As was reported by Businessofcinema.com last month, some studios had postponed the release of their films in India in order to show their support to the producers. Two big movies that are slated to release from Fox Star Studios and Sony Pictures Releasing of India are the Hugh Jackman starrer X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Tom Hanks starrer Angels & Demons respectively. Promotions and marketing activities of both movies had been kept on hold until yesterday’s meeting.” If the releases are delayed much longer the main beneficiaries will sadly be the pirate disk vendors, who are all to ready to step in and sate the demand;

- Which leads us to the larger question, is global day-and-date increasingly unavoidable in today’s wired world. The Guardian dwells on this question in an article headlined ‘If you can’t buy it legally, of course you’ll download it‘. Far from condoning it (OK, maybe other than for TV shows), the journalist out that “There was a time when the system worked. From the earliest days of cinema, a system of staggered worldwide releases of Hollywood movies developed. It made sense: there were only a certain number of prints and it took time to ship them across the world. Nick James, editor of the British Film Institute’s magazine Sight and Sound, told me that in the 1970s you could sometimes wait two years to see a Hollywood film in the UK.” But those days are over and global advertising creates global awareness and instant demand, which is why “It’s time for staggered releases to end. Every day they continue, more people, tired of seeing adverts and reviews of shows and movies they won’t be able to buy legitimately for months or years, call up a techie friend and say “that torrenting thing, how do you do that?“” I still remember the ShoWest a few years ago when Jack Valenti gave what inadvertently amounted to a Master Class in How To Download Films From The Net. If anyone didn’t know the way to do it before the presentation, they were fully qualified to fire up their torrent engines by the end of it.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Posted in Daily News Roundup

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RealD Scores Hat Trick in 3D Deal With UK’s Vue

By Patrick von Sychowski

February 24, 2009

Digital 3D provider RealD was bagged three of the top three UK exhibitors with the announcement that Vue will be converting 200 screens using RealD’s solution. This follows hot on the heels of #1 exhibitor Odeon/UCI’s deal for 500 screens and #2 exhibitor Cineworld’s deal to convert 30 of its 73 sites. From article in THR.com:

Vue Entertainment, the U.K.’s third-largest theater operator, is turning to 3-D technology, striking a deal with RealD to add 200 screens equipped by the 3-D specialist.

Vue and RealD said Monday that the rollout of RealD 3-D-enabled screens already has begun, with an installation at Vue’s flagship location in the British capital, Leicester Square.

“RealD 3-D is the market-leading choice for its remarkable track record of providing a superior viewing experience, something we can’t wait to bring to our many locations across the U.K.,” Vue CEO Tim Richards said. Read More »
Popularity: 47% [?]

Posted in Countries, Digital 3D

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Largest UK Cinema Chain Picks Vendors for 3D While Snubbing Third Party Integrators

By Patrick von Sychowski

February 12, 2009

logo_odeon The UK’s largest exhibitor Odeon (formed through the merger with UCI) has selected Real Image’s Qube server and projectors from NEC to extend the company’s digital cinema and (particularly) digital 3D reach.

From the Qube press release:

Odeon and UCI Cinemas Choose Qube Servers Qube XP-D servers chosen in 111 screen 3D digital cinema rollout in Europe

Qube XP-D Digital Cinema Server

Web Site

Local Page

The Qube XP-D digital cinema server has been chosen by ODEON and UCI Cinemas – Europe’s largest cinema operators – to be a part of their current 111 screen digitization plan across Europe.

Already playing Disney’s “Bolt” in digital 3D in Portugal for several weeks, Qube has recently commenced commercial digital 3D screenings across the UK with “My Bloody Valentine”.

The digitization plan of ODEON and UCI Cinemas is in response to the significant number of digital 3D productions scheduled for release from 2009, ensuring that the audiences across Europe can enjoy the latest films in state-of-the-art cinema technology.

Popularity: 66% [?]

Posted in Countries, Digital 3D, Digital Cinema, Equipment Vendors

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NYT Wakes Up To Alternative Content As Royal Opera House and Sony Reveal Plans

By Patrick von Sychowski

March 24, 2008

The New York times gets in on the non-film digital shows in cinemas (ODS? alternative content?) with the in-depth article: At Cineplexes, Sports, Opera, Maybe a Movie (with the tag line: ‘As ticket sales slow, theaters are turning to the Mets and the Met.’ - arf, arf!). Main message is, this is going mainstream for a range of events:

Simulcasts of the Metropolitan Opera over the last year helped turn the tide. National CineMedia, a competitor of Screenvision, said nearly 300,000 people attended screenings in 2007, which was the inaugural season; in 2008, simulcasts of Met performances in movie theaters are expected to draw upwards of a million people.The New York Mets could not have been happier with a simulcast last August at Ziegfeld Theater in New York, where a live organist and the team mascot led viewers in singalongs as though they were in the ballpark.“Tickets to watch the game in the theater sold out so quickly that we’re in talks to do a bunch more of them this summer,” said Dave Howard, executive vice president for business operations for the Mets.

Demonstrating amply that the winds are firmly in the alternative content sails, both Sony and London’s Royal Opera House announced that both are getting into the game. Sony smells an opportunity to become an alternative content distributor, according to the article Sony Enters Digital Contents Market in Japan:

First Sony will work with Human Design Co, distributing its musical “Metro ni Notte (Riding on the Metro)” in May. The musical was originally performed last year at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, and was a huge success. It was performed 13 times and all seats were taken on each live performance.Now in a digital format, the performance will be shown in 3 theaters in the Kanto area initially, and in more areas nationwide, targeting a larger audience than the total number at the live performances combined.

“We hope to appeal to the audience who could not see a live performance, and offer a real, vivid experience on a superior screen, and better access to the show,” says Tomihari.

The company will have to overcome the problem that digital cinema installations have been slow in Japan:

In Japan, 3 per cent, or 102, of 3,221 screens supported digital as of February. Tomihari said that this was the current target of the entertainment company.

However, Sony is also considering expanding its new business outside Japan. “The market for digital contents is larger abroad,” explains Tomihari. “As of last September, 4,869 of nearly 70,000 screens were equipped for digital contents. And this is the market we are aiming at.”

One such market, the United Kingdom, has just seen it’s most prestigious ‘content company’ (terrible term, but then this is the same industry where motion pictures are ‘properties’) announce itself in this space. Despite having been upstaged in the live digital cinema arena by New York’s Met, the Covent Garden Royal Opera house is fighting back by offering both live opera AND ballet this year. From The Telegraph’s Live opera and ballet to be shown at cinemas. For as little as £12 you will get a front row seat in any one of 60 UK cinemas:

The deal comes at the conclusion of almost five years of talks with performing unions to give singers and dancers extra payments for the recordings.

Covent Garden has signed contracts with two cinema chains in this country, Odeon, which has 106 cinemas, and Cityscreen Picturehouse, with 16.

A number of independent cinemas are also expected to sign up and separate deals have also been struck to show Covent Garden’s productions in Europe and America.

The opera house, which plans to film 14 productions a year, said the transmissions would be of the highest quality with High Definition digital technology and Surround Sound.

What is interesting here is that these will be shown both at Odeon and Picturehouse, who were previously exclusively affiliated with Glyndbourne and the Met. So the biggest change is not so much these events appearing in cinemas (that dates back to the thirties) but that the audience is now considered large enough to constitute that much needed critical mass. Roll on fat lady and the skinny ballerina!

Popularity: 42% [?]

Posted in Alternative Content

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Aussies Want UK Cinema Advertiser

By Patrick von Sychowski

January 30, 2008

CSA UK/Irish cinema screen advertiser Carlton Screen Advertising (CSA) is officially in the chopping block with the most likely buyer being Pacific Equity Partners, which bought the exhibitor Australian cinema chain Hoyts last year. Having once been the biggest and most profitable screen advertiser in the world, CSA’s decline has been as steep and fast as it has been sad. Despite the OK-ish box office year 2007, CSA (2,900 screens in 500 sites) was not able to capitalize on the small growth as it was saddled with large up-front payments to some of the UK’s largest circuits. With one of these, Cineworld, being publicly quoted, CSA’s move to switch from 6-month up-front payment to month-by-month forced it to flag this to the stock market. This in turn forced CSA’s parent ITV to announce that the screen advertiser was indeed for sale - at a rock bottom price. As Sunday Times notes:

Once worth £80m, analysts now value CSA at nothing, despite healthy cinema attendances. ITV may even have to pay someone to take it off its hands.

The business is estimated to be liable for another £200m in upfront payments to customers, chiefly Odeon and Cineworld, to satisfy onerous advertising contracts that stretch to 2012.

Those agreements mean CSA has struggled to make money despite total cinema advertising income growing 10% to £170m last year, according to Nielsen figures.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Posted in Cinema Advertising

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UK’s Vue: We Don’t Need No 35mm Projectors

By Patrick von Sychowski

October 30, 2007

UK cinema chain Vue has made history of sorts by becoming the first in the UK to open a new multiplex with no 35mm projectors, putting its faith instead in digital cinema. The company has spent no less than £5m ($10m) on equipping each of the ten cinema screens at the multiplex in Hull with digital sound, picture and 3D, opening in time for Christmas. From the Hollywood Reporter:

“We believe this development paves the way for the future of cinema by encouraging film distribution and studios into providing more films in digital format,” Vue Entertainment CEO Tim Richards said. “The installation of a 10 Terabyte computer server allows over 100 movies to be stored at any one time, providing the opportunity to offer a wide and varied choice of movies.”

Vue also plans to show alternative content covering music, sport and comedy in addition to movies at the 10-screen multiplex, Richards said.

Two further multiplexes are in Vue’s pipeline, one in Kent and one in Scotland, both with digital. Though Vue has trailed behind rival Odeon in terms of grabbing headlines for digital, the company has quietly pursued a very clear digital agenda that we are now seeing the results off. The move is also a tremendous vote of confidence in both US and UK distributors in being able to deliver titles in digital, mainly on the back of the UKFC’s DSN, in which Vue has been a significant partner in, and the ramp up of the Hollywood studios in the United States on the back of Christie/AIX deployment.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Posted in Digital Cinema, New Theatres

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Do games work on the big screen?

By Patrick von Sychowski

September 21, 2007

Less than two dozen posts and we are fearlessly tackle the Big Questions About The Future OF Cinema in this blog, such as do games have a future in the multiplex. As games get more sophisticated in terms of graphics, plot and budget, attempts are being made to transplant them to the cinema environment.

In Australia researchers at the University of New South Wales‘ department iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research (yes, it really exists) have developed technology that the claim creates ‘an immersive experience’ whereby the audiences explore a film using a joystick. This from an article in Sydney Morning Herald:

One of iCinema’s projects, Place-Hampi, plunges viewers into a 360-degree re-creation of the temple ruins in Hampi, southern India. The filmed ruins are populated with animated Hindu gods and research is under way to allow viewers to interact with the virtual characters. “What we’re doing I don’t think will replace existing formats. It is quite distinct and different from going to the movies,” Professor Shaw says.

“The future of the cinema will be a whole family of different types of interactive experiences. There will be specific sites where you’ll go to have very large-scale and very sophisticated experiences like going to a museum, or a rock concert. But we also see enormous development in terms of interactive cinema in the home.”

iDome The iCinema Centre has built a ‘lounge room friendly’ iDome (Have they checked with Steve Jobs about the use of all these iTerms? - Ed.), which is apparently a a fibreglass screen just three metres in diameter. This sounds like little more than the CAVE type of 3D simulation already widely in use.

A more traditional type of cinema testing gaming is UK’s Odeon, which has equipped its Huddersfield multiplex with on-screen gaming in partnership with Big Screen Games. Here is how Odeon’s website describes it:

In line with the major entertainment milestones such as the moving picture, colour, surround sound and digital cinema, a new innovation in cinema history has been born. Big Deal Games, in partnership with ODEON, are introducing in-cinema gaming on the big screen!

Big Screen Games is the newest entertainment phenomenon and is exclusive to ODEON - an interactive game-show with the audience as contestants! Using interactive game consoles, players compete against each other right from their seats.

You can play fun and familiar games such as bingo, trivia and memory match and win cash and prizes! Hosted by popular comedian, Vic Reeves, Big Screen Games will revolutionise the cinema experience. Hundreds of people can play against each other, individually or in teams, right there on the cinema screen - an experience unrivalled in the world of entertainment!

Bold claim, but I’m sure Odeon will wait and see how it goes before it follows up on the plans to roll out the concept to other Odeon cinemas. For now you can test it for yourself at Huddersfield Mon-Wed after 8:15 pm. I tested the touch screen concept a couple of years ago and I can’t say that it attracts me to the cinema the way the latest ‘Bourne’ film would, but then maybe I’m not the target demographic.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Posted in Analysis

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Does sport work in cinemas?

By Patrick von Sychowski

September 20, 2007

Or, more specifically, does Formula 1 work on the big screen? Time Out London decided to find out, so they tore one of their film critics, Edward Lawrenson, away from his Tarkovsky DVD collection and dispatched him to a multiplex screening a Formula 1 race.

The outlook was not good. Lawrenson himself notes, with typical British understatement, that “at the risk of indulging in wild generalisation, most arthouse film buffs are not sport fans.” So how would he take to spending a Sunday afternoon at the Odeon Covent Garden watching a live screening of the Italian Grand Prix? Surprisingly well, it turns out.

In the article Lawrenson reviews the event as if it was a film:

The opening minutes, though, are disappointing: pre-race footage of of the drivers, glamorous young women, and balding technical guys mulling about in the paddock, typical TV sports coverage that gains nothing from being on the big screen. Where’s the tension, the artistry, the foreshadowing of narrative motifs?

But then the race started, and the film became genuinely exiting. The picture was crisp, bright and smooth, far more vivid than any TV clips. But it was the noise of the cars, a cloud of mosquitoes amplified to thunderous cinema-surround levels that got me. Watching these sleek machines charge round the track to a soundtrack turned up to 11 jump-started the adrenaline levels; and it made me change my expectations. This was nothing like a film by Tarkovksy. Hot damn! This was a freakin’ Michael Bay movie. ‘Transformers’ wimps out by comparison.

So as George Lucas almost said, sound is half the picture, and apparently also the key to why alternative content works so well in cinemas. As well as Formula 1, the same Odeon cinema - where three of its four screens are equipped with digital cinema projectors courtesy of the UKFC’s Digital Screen Network - is also showing opera (categorized as ‘Musical’) and rugby.

And it’s not just the Time Out film critic who treated the F1 event like a film. See the screen-shot below from Odeon’s website advertising the event:

Listing F1 works up to a point, except on the same page under Other films in this genre Odeon lists: ‘My Nikifor’ (”Nikifor, a painter, enters the life of W?osi?ski, a quiet and private man. After discovering Nikifor has no family and no to turn to, W?osi?ski takes him in.”) and ‘We Are All Christs’ (”Polish drama examines social relations in Poland, while telling the story of three generations of a family destroyed by alcoholism.”) While these sound like the sort of films Time Out’s critic might normal go to see, I don’t think they will interest most people who go to the cinema to specifically see F1 races. But an interesting way for Odeon to try to entice any ODS audience to come back for regular film screenings.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted in Alternative Content

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