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Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
- caymanjim 6mo agoDo enough people buy tickets in advance now that this really indicates anything of value? I'm old and have never pre-purchased a movie ticket in my life. I assume a lot of people do, but the few times I've been to the movies lately, it seems people are buying tickets at the theater.
- dewey 6mo agoI don’t remember the last time I bought a ticket at the cinema. I like picking my own seats online.
- pjmlp 6mo agoIn most European countries you only get reserved seats at big multiplex cinemas, stuff like Cinestar, NOS and so on. On the European Cinema network [0], reserved seats is a long gone concept. So not always a given that seats can be reserved online for cinema, depends on ones location. [0] - https://www.europa-cinemas.org https://www.europa-cinemas.org
- sixhobbits 6mo agoI've been to several European Network cinemas and always gotten reserved seats
- pjmlp 6mo agoI can assert that none of those I usually go have reserved seats, what they do have is reserved tickets. I guess it depends then.
- arrrg 6mo agoDresden is truly blessed with cinemas and has four European Network cinemas. Three of those have assigned seating, though none do price discrimination based on where you sit. Culturally the assigned seating isn’t taken very seriously in those four cinemas, though, to the point where staff in one cinema sometimes tells visitors that they can sit somewhere else if they want to. In practice we still try to get seats where we want to sit and stick to them (front/middle, away from other people), though if people come in and sit right behind us we might change rows. With new ticketing systems and online booking being introduced I think there has been a shift towards assigned seating. I remember the first time I was in a Dresden European Network cinema (Schauburg in 2015, that’s the oldest cinema in Dresden, 1927) and there either being no assigned seating or a seat printed on the ticket that no one cared about. We also weren’t asked where we wanted to sit. That has changed with a new ticketing system and now we are always asked about where we want to sit. I think these ticketing systems come with assigned seating and that’s also a factor in assigned seating being introduced. Notably, the one cinema that doesn’t have assigned seating also doesn’t offer online booking or reservations at all. The four big multiplex cinemas in the city have assigned seating and do price discrimination based on where you sit – so it’s taken somewhat more seriously there. So, yeah, my guess would be that the role online ticketing and the respective software/service/devices those cinemas use for that do all play a role in what role assigned seating plays and those can also trigger a cultural shift from sit where you want to assigned seating. (I have vivid childhood memories of my hometown long before online booking with price discrimination sections but no assigned seating in cinemas.)
- delusional 6mo agoI don't recall having been to any cinema in denmark ever that did not do assigned seats. They won't check if nobody complains, but is is printed on the ticket.
- kuboble 6mo agoIn Switzerland it's a mix. The theater we use most frequently doesn't have assigned seats.
- dewey 6mo agoThat's not true, I frequently reserve seats at the "Yorck" cinema chain in Berlin which is part of Europa Cinemas and has seat reservation.
- magicalhippo 6mo agoHere in Oslo, Norway I only know of the local cinematheque which doesn't do reserved seats. All commercial theaters have reserved seats, even for the small screens with just a dozen or so seats. Been so as long as I can remember, so several decades. So yea, location dependent.
- hombre_fatal 6mo agoYeah, whether I go hinges on the seats available.
- SwellJoe 6mo agoI'm the same way, as I'm terrible at scheduling and often don't arrive on time for things I book in advance. So, I'll tend to show up at the theater and see whatever looks good that's coming up soon. But, I get the impression a lot of people do buy in advance these days. But, I love the idea of a theater almost entirely to myself.
- pjmlp 6mo agoSame here, gen-x, in what concerns cinema, sometimes I do reserve if it is in high demand, but that is about it.
- yieldcrv 6mo agoI haven’t bought a seat at the theater in over a decade And the online process shows you which seats are already filled and I base my decision on that when there is assigned seating. One thing peculiar is that the theatres are not often as filled as the seat map shows, makes me think that an even newer generation of the movie ticket subscribers (AMC A-List) are reserving seats and changing plans
- m463 6mo agoI'm finding that more and more, when I impulsively go to the theater and try to buy tickets at the door... I always find the only tickets available are horrible, like in the front row to the side. You want like F-6 and F-7 and get A-2 and B-2. And if I even accept this, the people in the choice seats invariably show up right when all the trailers are wrapping up. so - people buy tickets ahead of time, and it might be the only way to watch it from a reasonable seat. This probably doesn't apply to off-hours like tuesday afternoon or whatever.
- sbrother 6mo agowait... I don't think I've ever experienced assigned seats in a movie theatre. Is that a thing?
- IncreasePosts 6mo agoYes for higher end theaters like imax and the kind where everyone had a recliner chair
- jb1991 6mo agoOr just about any movie theater of any kind outside of North America.
- Lindby 6mo agoI've never been to a theater without assigned seats. Maybe it's a regional difference?
- JoshTriplett 6mo agoI exclusively buy tickets online, and whatever seats show up as empty online are empty when we show up.
- vidarh 6mo agoYeah, unless it's just me, and on a whim, which doesn't happen often, I'd always reserve online.
- JoshGlazebrook 6mo agoDo people really just show up and hope for the best anymore? The "box office" is not even really a thing anymore at most theaters. And the single person you talk to inside that is the "box office" just uses the same system you can reserve seats yourself on your own time? Pretty much every theater is reserved seating these days. Why would I risk showing up last minute on a whim and end up in a horrible seat near the front of the screen?
- MattGaiser 6mo agoMostly because unless it is a really desirable movie, hoping for the best has an expected outcome close to the best.I am a planner in most things, but for movies, it often simply does not matter.
- linsomniac 6mo agoCurious... Unless it's a really desirable movie, I typically won't go to the theater to see it. ;-)
- robinsonb5 6mo agoIn the small town where I live we have a small cinema with three screens. They always start the movie at the advertised time - no adverts, just a few trailers in the preceding 10 minutes. You can book online, but I usually just walk in and buy a ticket at the desk. The seats aren't assigned, so you can pick whichever you like. Occasionally I have a "private screening" where I'm the only one in the auditorium. The most recent example was "The Mummy". I hadn't fully thought throught the implications of watching a horror movie alone in the middle of a darkened 65-seat auditorium! There's another town a few miles away where a similar cinema has both assigned seating and 20 minutes of adverts before the movie.
- myself248 6mo agoThis is surreal. I've never pre-purchased a movie ticket in my life. I show up, buy a ticket and a box of Milk Duds, wander down the dark hall, find a seat, turn off my phone, and the lights go dark. Exactly the same as it's always been, and it works beautifully. I can't imagine a reason to mess with it.
- stingraycharles 6mo ago> I'm old and have never pre-purchased a movie ticket in my life. I’m old and have always pre-purchased tickets, even in the 90s, as that’s the way to get better seats.
- WillPostForFood 6mo agoYou sure about the 90s? Not saying it was impossible, but must have been extremely rare. Arclight was one of the first theaters to do assigned seats in 2002. AMC only started trialing in 2008, but didn't start rolling it out until 2016 in NYC.
- magicalhippo 6mo agoIn the US perhaps. Seat reservation has been the norm here in Norway since at least the 80s.
- stingraycharles 6mo agoTotally possible, was through a central phone number in The Netherlands called "BelBios" ("CallCinema"). You were guided through the different movies and showtimes, pressed the numbers, and got a booking code. You then went to the cinema, provided your booking code and paid.
- lisp2240 6mo agoI assume everyone is using something like MoviePass because it’s way cheaper than paying full price. And they don’t allow you to pre-purchase tickets.
- BikiniPrince 6mo agoQuite a bit in the early showing for good movies. Project Heil Mary has continued to sell all the good seats out and I’m bad at planning ahead for entertainment. It usually isn’t obvious because most of the movies have been atrocious in the last several years.
- kelnos 6mo agoI'm "old" (mid-40s) and cannot remember the last time I didn't pre-purchase a movie ticket. The movie theater I go to the most (Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco) rarely has anyone in line at the box office when I walk through there. That box office is usually only staffed by one person, which should tell us something about how many people need in-person service.
- sschueller 6mo agoLast time I was in a US theater the tickets where not numbered and you could sit anywhere. There was no point in pre purchasing a ticket because if you wanted a good seat you needed to show up early either way. In Switzerland the seats have always been numbered and even if the cinema is empty people wouldn't dare move into another seat. People do show up right before the film starts and try to avoid the ads. Some also hang in the lobby until the film actually starts.
- pjmlp 6mo agoMy experience in Geneva and Lausanne was certainly a bit more flexible regarding moving around the seats, unless this changed in the last 20 years.
- sschueller 6mo agoI guess I should have been more specific. I was talking about Zürich.
- dnnddidiej 6mo agoA mix. Prebuying is useful for your Barbie or Oppenheimer. Also good idea for kids birthday parties.
- fg137 6mo agoFor theaters with reserved seats, if you don't buy early, you only end up with the worst seat. That said, for "general admission" theaters, if you want to get good seats, you'd have to show up early and waste time watching all those trailers.
- redwall_hp 6mo agoI never do it in person. Alamo Season Pass -> select the reserved seats -> go sit down when you get to the theater. You have to reserve tickets for classic films or big releases because they often sell out, anyway.
- orliesaurus 6mo agoDamn, people really love going to the movies here in Austin, Texas.
- blintz 6mo agoThis is cool. Something about dropping everything to go see a movie in an empty theater is sort of tempting.
- HerbManic 6mo agoThe only film I saw in an empty theater was 'The Death of Stalin'. That was kind of odd but a decent film regardless.
- nebula8804 6mo agoOn the one hand Its fun to watch movies alone on a big screen. My area of NJ apparently could care less about movies like Knock Down The House(Biography of AOC and other house candidates), Navalny (Movie about the murdered politician opposing Putin), The Imitation Machine: Movie about Alan Turing or Last Night in Soho (A wonderful Edgar Wright thriller) On the other hand, I feel sad that no one in my region seems to care enough about these topics. Instead the latest superhero movie is next door packed to the brim and is so loud it rattles the walls to the room playing my quiet documentary with only me sitting inside watching it. :/
- lotsofpulp 6mo agoI have seen too many video projects that were supposed to be non fictional either have fictional material or a misleading slant such that I would not consider it a good use of my time.
- embedding-shape 6mo agoYeah, kind of defeats the purpose when you have to spend hours double-checking if every "fact" you just got "taught" was actually true or not afterwards...
- Forgeties79 6mo agoThere has to be some latitude given here. They can’t possibly, for instance, know exactly what was said or who interacted with who and when with any reasonable certainty. It’s usually “John met with Ted and I think Sally too, he told them to fuck off because it was a bad idea.” Now make that a scene and stay accurate. Rarely are these things documented in the moment and human memory is fickle even when we think we recall something accurately. It may seem like I’m taking y’all too literally or being nitpicky but I’m just illustrating one component. These kinds of situations happen across every “fact” of the story, which is almost always a movie based on a written account that came after, often written by someone who wasn’t even involved in the subject matter. Degrees of separation, lack of information, some or all people involved may be dead, etc.
- wodenokoto 6mo agoI remember I went to a small showing once as a kid. It was just our group and 1 lady in the theater. We got to small talk and the lady mentioned she had once been the only customer for a showing and told the projectionist that she didn’t want to be a bother and could come back and another day. The projectionist had apparently replied that it was no bother - they would roll the movie even if no one showed up!
- compounding_it 6mo agoIm assuming (though rare) it’s the same with flights. They keep the schedule for movies in case someone joins half hour late. Plenty of people visit my the cinema for all kinds of reasons other than the content (like sleeping in the AC among other things that come to your mind). Keeping the movie going rather than waiting for someone to show up and make it awkward would probably be better for customer service too.
- danillonunes 6mo agoThis makes sense if someone bought a ticket and didn't showed up, but what if none was sold? They could just stop selling after a certain time and be sure nobody will be there late.
- nebula8804 6mo agoStudio contracts: The movies are delivered digitally on encrypted hard disks and when playing there is a ton of telemetry sent back to the studios. They are watching the theaters like its 1984. Studios have contracts indicating the play will play X times no more and probably no less(else studios might hold back the good movies). AMC keeps it simple. Play the movie even if no one shows up. AMC in particular uses laser projectors now so who cares. They ain't burning out any projector bulb.
- kombookcha 6mo agoWhen I worked at a small cinema we would set up the movie to run regardless, because sometimes you would get late-showers buying tickets at the front desk and it's much more trouble to have to speed-start a movie for the projectionist than to be able to do it at the regular schedule. If you start it too late without manually remembering to forward past ads and trailers, you can also risk spilling into the next timeslot causing a pileup of delays. It's far simpler to just start the movie for an empty hall, and let customers join after it's started if they want to. I'm unsure exactly how the deals with local businesses running ads before the movies are set up, but I could imagine that you're supposed to be running the ads an agreed upon number of times, regardless of ticket sales. Sometimes in the daytime we would get retirees who would watch a movie and basically loiter around, and occasionally ask if they could catch the end of a different movie running in an empty hall. You'd sometimes let a regular crash an empty screening like this if they bought an extra snack or coffee for it or something.
- nebula8804 6mo agoI have been quite a heavy patron of AMC theaters these past few years since COVID ended. I have seen A LOT of movies play to empty theaters. I used to actually peek at many of the rooms when I left my movie and so many were downright empty. Its the norm and its probably why their stock is trading at $1.45 as of this writing. Its a dead (not dying, dead) entertainment option. When you are competing for the same 24 hrs in a day with TV, Youtube, Gaming, Streaming, TikTok, Instagram and many others the theater is bottom of the barrel for young people today. And don't tell me its because people are disrespectful or the commercials are too long. These are a problem but Alamo Drafthouse tried to tackle this and they ended up in bankruptcy. AMC would also be bankrupt today but it's saving grace was the meme stock frenzy they had a few years back. Probably bought them a few more years but that ride might be coming to an end. Currently they fill the rooms for the pop movies like old established franchises but that only comes along every couple weeks at the most and the rest of the time the place is not really busy. This is a bit different in the big cities but AMC has overextended themselves with too many locations in the rural and suburban US. ...Also this app is not displaying accurate data (I assume they are pulling from AMC's API). My local theater is listing no results and I cross checked and there are movies currently listed that have 0 seats booked so the app is counting incorrectly for at least one theater. EDIT: After I wrote this, the site auto updated with new data. Now I see some screenings but it is still inaccurate because it is still missing movies from that theater...maybe they are scraping instead of using the API? This is a simple problem if using the API (I wrote my own home cooked app): just iterate through all theater ids, find the ones with 0 bookings and display that list.
- locallost 6mo agoIt's not the ads, but they're not helping. I still like to go to theaters, but am thinking if not going anymore because I can't really take it. I don't go to AMC since not in the US, but where I go you can't even skip them because you never know how long it will be. I sat once for literally 40 minutes. It's also crazy expensive. So they need to do these things to stay afloat, but they're driving away the last people that still want to go. It's just dead in its current form, you're right about that. To make it work they need to reinvent themselves. But it's hard.
- LarsDu88 6mo agoWould be a wonderful site for people to find places to have private movie sex, but then I remembered that this is HackerNews
- bl4kers 6mo agoPretty much all theaters have cameras, no?
- ButlerianJihad 6mo agoMovie theaters are reinventing themselves in various ways, and I’m unsure if it’s working, but some of it is creative. Around here, films from Bollywood show in Telugu, Hindi, Gujarati languages. There are family films in Spanish (those aren’t bad dubs, but parallel scripts and A-list voice actors.) Want to watch a Studio Ghibli film? Here’s the timetable for dubbed; here’s a timetable for subtitles! There are live video-game tournaments. There are premieres for live operas and symphony orchestra performances that are simulcast around a region. There are Christian groups who go in to support a film, and they can turn those into fundraisers and evangelization activity. The auditoriums can be rented out for special events. Big birthday, Kindergarten graduation, Quinceañeras, etc. They will support teleconferencing and businesses can hold seminars or all-hands meetings there. I suppose that all of these schemes were harmed by the pandemic and lockdowns, but the advertising is still there, and the Hindus are still showing up on public transit.
- nebula8804 6mo agoI think you are seeing a slice of the full picture. This app is not accurately showing all empty screens. While all of those are ideas that are increasing viewership there is still so much dead weight. Whether these things offset the dead weight I dont know. All I know is AMC is trading at $1.45 today so it does not look great.
- aurareturn 6mo agoThere is always that one person who eats popcorn so loud for most of the movie and ruins the experience for me.
- ndr42 6mo agoWell, my experience is that people start eating when the lights go out but are nearly finished with the popcorn when the ads and trailers end and the movie starts.
- aurareturn 6mo agoMost people. There's always that one person near you who eats for most of the movie. Anyways, the point is that with the advent of big home TVs, streaming, I've virtually stopped going to movie theaters. The experience is always subpar every time I go due to eating noise and talking.
- cryptozeus 6mo agoMay be I am in minority but I would hate to be alone in entire theater. I enjoy some vibe and people around
- MrBuddyCasino 6mo agoYes this is what people get wrong about "home theater". Its not just the tech, its the experience of watching something with others, amplifying the emotions.
- bitwize 6mo agoMan, seeing The Avengers (2012) in a PACKED theater full of excited Marvel fans was something else. The deafening roar completely drowned out the Hulk's line "puny god".
- flomo 6mo agoIn a previous life, I would go to a lot of art movies, often matinees or monday or etc. Sometimes there was one guy who was working the box-office, the snackbar, and the projection. I was glad he had a job.
- badgersnake 6mo agoAre you American? US cinema culture seems very different to the UK (the only other place I’ve been). In the US it seems much more the norm to react to the film, in the UK generally folks sit in silence.
- falsemyrmidon 6mo ago[dead]
- jader201 6mo agoThere are times I would agree with you, and times I wouldn't. If the theater is full of people talking during the movie or lighting the place up while they’re on their phone (in either case ignoring the movie), then I’d rather be alone. It seems like more times than not, this is the case.
- RagnarD 6mo agoWhere does it get the realtime data for this?
- dawnerd 6mo agoI’ve been to a few showings by myself back in the moviepass days. It was really nice, I’d wait until a movie was basically at the very end of its run and watch whatever was playing. I can’t stand others making noise, too distracting.
- stringfood 6mo agoyou can also go on your phone if you'd like and yawn loudly and flatulate
- protocolture 6mo agoI used to frequent the brisbane regent cinema precisely because it was reliably empty. The franchise kept it running because having a really nice prestige theatre was good for their brand, but compared to their other sites it was revenue neutral at best.
- kleiba2 6mo agoWhen I lived in Germany, I had an apartment in the vicinity of three tiny arthouse theaters. I used to go there all the time by myself because you could basically walk to all three of them. Saw a lot of movies I would have never seen otherwise, most of which I don't remember at all. The theaters were never full. So it was basically just like watching a movie in your own living room. Yeah, except maybe for the handful of strangers that were there to watch with you.
- jojobas 6mo agoPros: get to watch movies alone. Cons: have to watch arthouse.
- soco 6mo agoArthouse is the only thing worth watching nowadays as the others seem to only rechew the same crud. Change my mind.
- zarzavat 6mo agoThis is the issue I have with the big screen, there's just nothing I want to watch. Meanwhile if I watch at home then there's half a century of classics that I haven't gotten around to watching yet.
- hawkice 6mo agoCud, I think, is the thing that gets rechewed.
- drcongo 6mo agoI've seen Marvel movies and I think "crud" was the better word choice.
- ragazzina 6mo agoCinemas around here have started showing old films and I have rediscovered the joy of going to the movies, whether it's Some Like It Hot or Suicide Club.
- maxglute 6mo agoOn flip side had switch gyms to be among strangers becomes turning on gym socialization really tanked my training.
- sschueller 6mo agoJust put your head phones in, no one will bother you.
- brailsafe 6mo ago> On flip side had switch gyms to be among strangers becomes turning on gym socialization really tanked my training. I think you're in the wrong "actually I prefer to be alone in social spaces" thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007438
- maxglute 6mo agoThank you!
- gsky 6mo agoi watched 2 movies all alone. one of the best experiences i have ever had since i hate being around people
- mzelling 6mo agoThis site will probably defeat its purpose. You discover an empty showing and are excited to have your own "private theater", but thanks to this site, somebody else will have the same idea and you'll both have to share your private theater.
- ButlerianJihad 6mo agoAMC will revoke or modify their API, and break this app’s functionality every 2 weeks on Thursdays at midnight
- vlovich123 6mo agoTo me this suggests that theater’s are at least partially incorrectly pricing things which explains why they are struggling.
- ap99 6mo agoBut aren't they pricing based on how much it costs to show the film? Which in turn is how much the studios and distributors pay to make/market the film? Which is in turn driven by costs... Which are basically large bets on if a piece of art will have mass appeal.
- simiones 6mo agoIt makes no sense from a classical economics perspective to keep the theater empty. Even if no one is buying at the break-even price, it can make sense to sell below cost just to recoup some of the investment - and adjust the investment in the future, of course. Now, in reality there are second-hand effects, of course - like people getting adjusted to the below-cost ticket prices and being even less incentivized to buy at the normal price.
- Lerc 6mo agoI guess it depends on who gets paid for the movie being shown, and who gets paid when a ticket is sold. If it is free to show the movie then there is no penalty to running extra sessions. If it isn't free, someone is being paid. If that is a different someone to where ticket money goes they care more about sessions than viewings.
- chrisss395 6mo agoSeems the same as a hotel - empty rooms benefit no one.
- philovivero 6mo agoI don't know about theatres, but I do know about hotel rooms. If you lower the price too much, you get a different sort of clientele. The sort of person who wrecks the place and annoys all the other patrons nearby. Then the cleanup costs a lot. Often more than the amount of revenue collected on the room. It absolutely makes more sense to keep the hotel room empty than to lower the price to keep it fully occupied.
- p0w3n3d 6mo agoI remember walking in late to a movie with my wife and noticing that there was nobody there except us. We bought the tickets on site, so the show must have started before we went in, despite no tickets having been sold.
- donohoe 6mo agoI have an alternative in this for Alamo Drafthouse. It sends me alerts as soon as new movies are listed, typically before promoted or announced online. It’s meant I can jump on re-runs etc I really care about (just saw Fight Club last week) - and get the specific seat location I prefer. (If you want alerts just contact me with your email and location - info in bio)
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- woodydesign 6mo agoLove this concept. - If it could give me a near to showtime notifications to help me decide if it's a true empty screenings. That would be great. - If it connect with my Google Calendar for schedule, it would be amazing.
- BrannonKing 6mo agoAMC should start showing Chinese and Korean dramas. That would help them a lot. I'm sure that they could work a deal with those studios that would let AMC set the ticket price. There hasn't been an American-made movie since Lord of the Rings that has compelled me to go see it in the theater. The movie studios seem to be pushing more extremes on immorality, violence, gore, etc, being completely disconnected from the average American's values. And then Disney and others make musicals with actors that can't sing -- mind-boggling. Hence, my wife and I watch Chinese dramas instead, a few episodes per week being my complete TV/Movie intake. They're paced better, develop characters, include a few kung fu moves, have nice visuals, aren't afraid of religious topics, etc.
- dgacmu 6mo agoI go to the theater rarely, but recently watched Project Hail Mary in-theater and quite recommend it. There _have_ been some great films made in the last while, among a sea of derivatives. (E.g., you may find the new Dune films too violent, but they were great. And the moral is not very subtle in them. :)
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- Rebelgecko 6mo agoAMC by me shows a surprisingly high number of Indian movies relative to the demographics. I wonder if they have some distribution deal to encourage that... I imagine they would do better with K-dramas.
- tomcam 6mo agoDelightful! Thank you.
- fg137 6mo agoMakes me wonder -- does it make any economic sense for a theater to have screenings before 2pm on a Tuesday? I get that some people can afford the leisure, but I'm almost certain the theater loses money on that
- Tangurena2 6mo agoFor the first few weeks of a film's release, all of the ticket sales goes to the studio. Pretty much the only revenue for the theatre is popcorn, candy and soda. Since most theatres have gone full digital, the "projector" won't show the film if there have been no tickets sold. That eliminated the game of buying one ticket and then sneaking in to see a few more movies.
- doctorhandshake 6mo agoWhy do you have projector in scare quotes? And what makes you think they don't screen the movie? Exhibitors have a contractual obligation to show movies a certain number of times a week, and the media players that run them show receipts to the studios ... it would be surprising if they didn't actually do that simply because nobody bought a ticket.
- bdcravens 6mo agoProbably just showing that it's not a film projector, but in actuality, it is still a projector. It may be assumed that digital movies are shown on a giant display, but that's cost prohibitive at that size; it's still a blank screen with light projected onto it.
- izzydata 6mo agoHow much extra does it cost to show an extra movie that nobody shows up to? It seems like the majority of the cost is rent of the building and salary. If employees are already working to operate the few movies that are expected to have people and the building is already being paid for then they may as well use up all their theaters just in case since the extra cost would be low.
- Balgair 6mo agoHoly shit, how are my local theaters staying in business?! Like, all the screenings are just empty!
- k2xl 6mo agoI wonder if movie theaters ever thought to have "Free" movie tickets before a certain time on certain days. They would probably make money just on the popcorn sales since most of these theaters are empty during the day.
- pimlottc 6mo agoMatinees are normally cheaper. I could see potential abuse if it was truly free
- Michael666 6mo ago[dead]
- cm2012 6mo agoGreat example of vibe coding
- m3kw9 6mo agoI can tell Super mario movie is a massive flop.
- goda90 6mo agoAren't most spring breaks over for schools in the US? So kids are less free to go see a movie targeting kids.
- jdwithit 6mo agoMaybe I'm just missing the joke, but Wikipedia says otherwise "As of May 3, 2026, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has grossed $403 million in the United States and Canada, and $495 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $897 million. Produced on a budget of $110 million, the film is currently the highest-grossing film of 2026 and the highest-grossing animated film of the year. The film also set the record for the biggest global opening at the box office in 2026, the only animated film franchise with two films opening to over $350 million globally, the fifth-biggest global opening for an animated film of all time, the second-biggest global opening for an Illumination film, the second-biggest opening for a film based on a video game, and the fourth-biggest Easter three-day opening of all time." Almost $900 million gross against a cost of $110 million seems pretty good
- dec0dedab0de 6mo agoThis is not just an awesome concept, but blazingly fast. Well done! I would love to see an article about the tech stack.
- pchristensen 6mo agoThe Fandango app has an option to check the seats at all the showings at a theater, so I assume AMC has something like that. There are ~600 AMC theaters in the US. Throw in some caching and you can maintain a fast, fairly fresh copy of their seating numbers. Clever!
- dec0dedab0de 6mo agoYeah, I assumed something similar. Still, it is refreshing to see a website work so well.
- pdmfz 6mo agoAMC seems stingy about giving access to their API. I wonder if this site scrapes data from the AMC website
- da02 6mo agoHow does AMC stay in business after all these years?
- fishywang 6mo agoA lot of years ago, while living in Beijing, I once bought ticket to a morning (9:30 or so) show in a theatre. Then came that day, it rained unexpectedly, so I ended up getting there 10min late. When I get into the theatre, I found out that it's completely dark. I asked a staff, they told me that they only sold that one ticket and since I didn't show up within 5min, they cancelled the show and returned the film. They refunded me in the end.
- dkenyser 6mo agoInterestingly some zip codes just don't seem to work, but this appears to be an issue on AMC's side as I tested the same zip codes on their "find a theater" page and got the same results. Very cool idea nonetheless.
- bookofjoe 6mo agoFWIW I just checked and AMC Theaters are not connected to the streaming network AMC+.
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- tacodestroyer 6mo agoThere is nothing better than seeing a movie in the theaters by yourself.