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Phone-Friendly Movie Theaters For Millennials Could Be Reality Soon (variety.com)
An anonymous reader writes: AMC Entertainment realizes Millennials' increasingly growing love for and reliance on smartphones for things, which is why it says it is open to the idea of phone-friendly movie theaters. "When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don't ruin the movie, they hear 'please cut off your left arm above the elbow,'" Adam Aron, AMC Entertainment CEO tells Variety. "You can't tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That's not how they live their life." Aron believes that AMC needs "to reshape our product in some concrete ways so that millennials go to movie theaters with the same degree of intensity as baby boomers went to movie theaters throughout their lives." AMC also realizes that if it allows people to use cellphones in theater, and text and talk to their friends, this might disturb the fellow citizen who just want to watch the god-damn movie in peace. He says the company is "going to have to figure out a way to do it that doesn't disturb today's audiences. [...] That's one possibility. What may be more likely is we take specific auditoriums and make them more texting-friendly."
Lights on, talk all you want. Lights off, shut the fuck up.
Good-bye
No, we actually we have much more disposable income than the college crowd, we just refuse to sit through Phone-Fest when the movie starts because smartphones are the digital equivilent of a security blanket for some people. Take it away for even a little while and they lose their fucking minds.
As such, we'll buy the giganto screen TV, and a house shaking sound system to match, then watch the show in the comfort of our home when it releases to Pay Per view, Netflix, Blu-Ray, whatever floats your boat.
My food, snacks, alcohol, rules and I can pause it if need be.
Greater amounts of disposable income seems to be the work around for clueless idiots and their smartphone obsessions.
They were right, you were wrong.
I work for AMC, not a decision maker, just a rank-and-file IT guy, and while I can't speak for our decision makers, IMHO you've exactly nailed it.
If we catered to people who would rather get a nearly-as-good home theatre experience, we'd already be sucking wind as a company.
Instead, we're doing great, on track to become the biggest movie exhibitor in the world later this year, by trying to make the guest experience as good as we can for the largely-young, cellphone-addicted demographic that want a social experience at the theatre and who actually do want to come OUT to see movies.
So, instead of lowering prices or trying to cram ever-more-asses in ever-smaller-seats, we're taking OUT huge numbers of seats in order to put in more-comfortable recliners, adding bars to meet your friends, adding dine-in options to auditoriums, trying to push the envelope with A/V / 3D as much as we can to make the viewing experience better than you can get at home, putting butt-thumping transducers in those aforementioned recliners, and, yes, thinking of offering separate auditoriums for those who can't turn their phones off so as to segregate them from those who'd rather not be distracted.
Let's be honest, for us cranky old folks who just want to watch and have the kids get off our yard, the movie theatre was NEVER a great place to watch a movie distraction-free.
Though I'm an old guy who's happy to turn the damn cell phone off for a couple hours, I'm proud of my company for trying to adapt to the times, rather than lobbying Congress to outlaw phones in theatres and convince people to keep buying our buggy whips.