By Nate Day We’ve all experienced the feeling of waiting for a movie to hit theaters—what’s going to happen to The Avengers? Is Lady Gaga actually a good actress? Can “Mary Poppins Returns” possibly live up to the first?
Unfortunately, in smaller communities such as the Vail Valley, those questions aren’t always answered.
The valley has three movie theaters: Riverwalk Theater in Edwards, Capitol Theater in Edwards and the CineBistro in Vail. Each of the theaters have four screens, meaning that at any given time, 12 movies can be playing across the valley. In contrast, larger cities play host to multiplexes with 30 screens under one roof.
While the theaters in the valley host a majority of the major motion pictures each year, they cannot host them all.
“We’re ultimately responsible for booking our own content,” said Grant Smith, owner of the Riverwalk Theater.
Smith explained that most of the content that he brings into the theater comes from the seven major Hollywood studios (NBCUniversal, Viacom, Warner Media, Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures, Fox Entertainment Group and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures), which are the studios that create the blockbusters that we all wait to see every year. Additionally, there are “mini-majors” like Lionsgate Motion Picture Group and STX Entertainment, and insurmountable independent studios.
When Smith wants to screen a film, he requests the rights, and the studio chooses whether to approve or not, allowing or restricting the screening.
“In an area outside of a major population area, some movies may not be available to us that are available to others,” said Smith. “But we also have nicer theaters that (the studios) want their films to play in.”
However, due to the limited number of screens, Smith and other owners, such as Stephen Lindstrom, owner of Capitol Theater, have to make some decisions as to what to screen, or rather, what not to.
“We pick the films that we think are best for our market,” Lindstrom explains. Lindstrom jokingly referred to the process of choosing films as “alchemy.”
Lindstrom leans toward films that are family-friendly, and that will fit into the community in Eagle. Similarly, Smith noted that family-friendly films do well at his theater, and that hosting a film must also make financial sense.
According to Smith, when a film is booked for a theater, owners must commit to a certain amount of time, meaning that if a movie isn’t garnering enough attention or profit, a theater can’t drop it and move on. For this reason, some films are only screened for a week, and they may come later than the original release date.
The process used to consist of advanced screenings for theater owners in Denver in order to aid their decisions, but now, they have to focus on what they read and hear about a film when requesting the rights.
Because of the smaller theater and the hyper-focused customer base, some films never make it to the valley, and thus far a handful of well-known films have not been screened here yet. Such films include “Love, Simon;” “Widows” and “The Hate U Give.” Similarly, arthouse …read more
Via:: Vail Daily