METRO MOVIE MARKET THRIVING
Despite national downturn, Denver-area theaters are thriving
The national film box office is faltering in 2019, but Denver audiences are still flocking to shows. The return of the Esquire Theatre as well as the arrival of an Alamo Drafthouse in Westminster, above, offer more choices of venues as the cinema experience can now include food, drinks, comfortable seats and special events such as 35mm screenings.
When Tim League looks at Denver, he sees an unusually robust collection of movie lovers, and not — as many analysts have noted — a growing gaggle of distracted, Netflix- and video game-addicted consumers who have turned away from the live theatrical experience.
“Denver’s a strong and vibrant city, and with growth comes new communities that should be served by a community movie theater,” said League, founder of the Austin, Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain.
While the Drafthouse is debuting eight new theaters in 2020, giving it well over 40 locations total, it also just opened a new location in Westminster on June 30, making for a trio of Drafthouses in Colorado (along with Littleton and Sloan’s Lake). Built from the ground up, the Westminster theater was designed to
channel a “classic, golden-era cinema marquee” and takes aesthetic cues from Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi classic, “Metropolis.”
As with every Drafthouse location, which costs an average of $10 million to design and build, it offers amenities designed to lure people off their couches: a full food and drink menu (including 32 beers on tap, mostly local), comfortable seating and a zero-tolerance policy for talking and cellphone use. The Drafthouse’s much-studied growth has created a national ripple effect, as major chains like Regal have cut their seating capacity to mimic the Drafthouse’s increased legroom while adding cocktail menus and other specialty offerings.
Is this the answer to the “box office meltdown,” which has the movie business “running scared,” as Variety reported earlier this month?
National box office receipts for the first six months of 2019 are down about 9 percent compared with the same period in 2018, according to Box Office Mojo, with $6.2 billion in domestic revenue. Even still, the lion’s share of that revenue comes from blockbusters like Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame.” The independent market has fared even worse, with speciality ticket sales dropping more than 30 percent over the same period last year, according to Variety. The average ticket price has hovered at an all-time high of about $9 over the last two years, and increasing challenges to exhibition — from smartphone screens to soon-tolaunch streaming services from Disney and its competitors — have threatened to make public moviegoing a dying art, analysts say.
However, over the past year in the Denver metro area, exhibitors have spent tens of millions of dollars on movie theater renovation and construction projects. They say it’s not just a side effect of Denver’s population growth; rather, metro Denverites are a reliable — if vexingly fickle in their tastes — moviegoing bunch, and the potential for profit remains strong.
“There really is something special about the Denver market,” said Keith Garcia, programmer for the Denver Film Society. “I’ve been programming for audiences for 20 years, but I’ve never seen the wide swath of tastes like we have in Denver. Maybe in Los Angeles, where they also run that gamut.”
Building or renovating a movie house is not the foregone conclusion it once was, when chains scrambled to add a multiplex to every new residential development, along
with expected services like a gas station or grocery store. The number of movie screens in the United States has held steady at around 40,000 since 2015, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. That’s a marked slowdown from the preceding two decades, when exhibitors were adding an average of 1,000 to 2,000 screens per year.
And yet, there are more options than ever for Mile High cinephiles. Landmark Theatres, which owns the Chez Artiste, Mayan and Greenwood Village movie houses, last month unveiled a top-to-bottom renovation of its historic Esquire Theatre following a burst pipe, with comfy, spacious new seating and upgraded concessions. (Landmark officials declined to comment on details.) That was a relief for people who feared Landmark might not have seen the value in renovating and instead would sell the real estate under the theater’s East 6th Avenue perch.
Aurora’s Movie Tavern, which was offering fullservice meals years before the Drafthouse entered the state, was snapped up in November as part of a $30 million, 22-theater deal between the Tavern chain and Milwaukee-based Marcus Theatres. The Aurora location’s refreshed offerings include a $3 kids-movie series; free, themed parties around films like “Toy Story 4”; a loyalty rewards program; and a revitalized menu. The company is also spending money to convert two of its Aurora Movie Tavern auditoriums to the Superscreen DLX format, with oversized screens and Dolby Atmos sound, a Marcus spokeswoman said. The project should be completed by the end of the summer.
The Regal Cinebarre Greenwood Plaza celebrated its grand reopening last month after a year-long closure. Formerly the Greenwood Plaza Stadium 12, the theater was renovated by Regal to cut its seating capacity by a third, adding recliners and “restaurant-style amenities like the ones offered to moviegoers at Southglenn,” according to The Denver Channel.
“We consider the area to be one of our top national exhibition markets,” Heather Peters, director of public relations at Regal, said in an email to The Denver Post.
Regal, which merged with United Artists Theatres in 2002, runs 13 theaters in Colorado and 10 in the Denver market. The Cinebarre renovation was always part of its growth strategy, Peters said, because of the strength of metro-area audiences.
“Denver is an ideal location because it offers a diverse demographic market that values the entertainment experience,” she said.
The big picture, and buzzword of the past few years, is “eventizing” the cinematic experience. Whether that means deluxe booze and food, comfy seating or gimmicks like bringing back richly textured celluloid prints — which used to be standard in the now all-digital projection realm — exhibitors are game to try nearly anything. Examples include the 70mm “roadshow” edition of Quentin Tarantino’s (partially Coloradofilmed) “Hateful Eight” movie in 2015, as well as the new, 35mm print of his latest film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which will screen in that format at several area theaters beginning July 26.
“It requires a special type of projection with a lot of dedication and time,” said Garcia, whose Sie Filmcenter will be showing the movie in 35mm. “We’re committing to showing it every day multiple times for four weeks because we still believe a 35mm film is special and important, like vinyl records. Their death was also predicted for a long time, and look where we are now.” (Note: Vinyl music sales grew by about 12 percent last year, to nearly 10 million copies.)
Still, theaters can’t rest on their 3D-IMAX receipts, Alamo Drafthouse founder League said, because competition is relentless, coming from both inside and outside the industry. There’s no guarantee that a brand new movie theater, such as the massive AMC multiplex currently being built as part of the 9th and Colorado project, will continue to fill seats.
“We constantly have to innovate,” said League, who picked Denver to test new concepts such as a Moviepass-style subscription service, which he’ll soon roll out nationally to Drafthouse locations. “Our biggest initiatives are in technology right now, as we’re reworking our data and are developing a way of ordering food and drink in advance. And we’d like to continue to build in cities where we’ve already established ourselves, so we’re still looking for new locations in the Denver market.”