Focus put on affordability at Gull lake’s Lyceum Theatre

“They just figure that for the smaller markets it may need a little bit more word of mouth.”

The Lyceum Theatre in Gull Lake is a second run cinema that uses a different strategy with an emphasis on affordability to attract movie fans. Manager Cole Girodat said the theatre uses an agent from Landmark Cinemas to do movie bookings.

“We usually get our movies about a month after they’re in the Cineplex, which is a good time for us, because it puts the bill down of what Disney and all the other movie companies are going to charge us,” he explained. “As an independent and non-profit movie theatre that’s what we’re aiming at. We want to keep our prices as low as possible and we found that getting a movie a month after the Cineplex is just the best way to do that.”

Lyceum Theatre has actually noticed that it has become easier in recent times to bring in movies one month after its release at other theatres such as Cineplex.

“I think the movie companies are seeing that we’re making profits here in the small town and approving movies for us,” he said. “Our agent does really well for us at Landmark to really push them to get us these movies too. In the past we would get movies as far back as two, three months after they’re in the big theatres, which is quite a long wait and people might not be interested in the movies anymore, but we found a month is perfect and that the bigger movie companies are more accepting lately of us getting these, because they’ve been shown that we can make a profit on these, just like the bigger theatres.”

Lyceum Theatre cannot attract movie fans who want to see a new movie as soon as it is released, but it still finds there is a different market that will bring people to the theatre. Serious fans who have already seen a new release elsewhere will actually come to Gull Lake to see the movie again and they will also attract others who do not mind to wait a little longer before seeing a movie.

“So it’s really a win-win there that we get the hardcore fans coming again the second time and the people that aren’t the big fans that don’t need to go to the big expensive theatres,” he said. “They can come to a cheap theatre a month later and they don’t mind waiting. We don’t think of ourselves as competitors to say the Swift Current theatre half-anhour away. They have their movies in much faster than us, because they have the double movie theatre.”

It can be a challenge for a small theatre to survive, but Lyceum Theatre also generates income by making the facility available for birthday party rentals and other private functions, including the use of the large screen for playing video games.

“We just want to use our theatre to its full potential,” he said. “We can’t just play movies here anymore. So we have to think of everything we can use our theatre for.”

Both Girodat and Pratt felt that people still enjoy the experience of going to a movie theatre, despite the many other options that are now available to watch movies.

“It’s changed over the years and there’s more competition for us now than there was before, but people are social,” Pratt said. “They like to go out for a date, go out for supper and a movie and that sort of thing. When you watch a movie at home, you get interrupted a million times, whether it’s by your phone or someone knocking on your door or commercials or whatever. When you come to a movie, you’re into the movie and you get engaged. I think there’s still a place for the movie theatres and will be for a good time to come.”