Considering a Niche Movie Theater

shutterspeedfilms

shutterspeedfilms

Well-known member
I'm currently toying with the idea of opening a niche movie theater in the downtown area of my city. Something very small and low-fi at first--multimedia projector showing DVDs. Maybe serve small food items. Not crazy about the idea of serving alcohol. Market to college students, professionals, and families. Would like to have a lobby for studying, film discussions, and events. And one screening room. Have alot of ideas to go along with it. Just want to be sure it can be financially successful (not big bucks, mind you... just a livable income).

Anyone else consider this? If so, what are some things I may need to keep in mind?
 
I think its really hard to know if you could do OK with your idea without knowing particulars, but the particulars would take several pages and would give up your strategy to a public forum. So you need to do it for yourself and then un the numbers from the results of your research... basically a bussiness plan.

Numbers you need to know...

- how many theatres in your city fill the niche market already, (not forgetting the univerisity and college film societys, who basically do what your talking about accept with the finacial parachute of a large school behind them)?

- What type of permits and and how much licencing will your municipality require?

- How much will the public viewing licence cost you to show these DVD's? You can't just open your DVD collection and start showing. I'm guessing any film exhibition costs to run at least a couple hundred per day.


My feeling is something like this could work in the right location in the right city if you sold booze (which licencing is a huge pain and can't be done casually) and had huge profit margins on the food. It still would require the niche customers that would love a place to discuss and revel in their love of film, who also have the disposable income to become regular customers... you need more than college students.

Good Luck and for the record I would love an establishment like that near my house, but I probably wouldn't travel much farther than a mile or two if I were to be a regular.
 
Take a look at Moxie Cinema in Springfield, MO. It was a hell of a lot of hard work (documented on the site), but they converted an old bank building to a theater, won the local chamber of commerce business of the year award, and just last month moved to a bigger, two-screen location (which they again built out completely on their own).
 
I've been thinking it'd be super cool to open such a theater and show very good Indie films that never got a shot at theatrical distribution. You should definitely search out all existing or previously existing examples of what your thinking of and see how they're doing it. If you think you'll be trying for a loan of some sort then as mentioned, you'll need numbers, so that kind of research is mandatory. I'm guessing that any of these theaters are run by people who would be happy to pass over some data as long as you're not planning on opening up in their city.

We have a similar kind of theater here in Buffalo:

http://www.screeningroom.net/

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I tried doing this a long time ago, and the hurdle we ran into was that the filmmakers and distributors would charge an outlandish amount to show their films (and these were for underground indy art films that barely anyone had heard of). There was no chance of breaking even, never mind making any sort of profit.
 
pmark23 said:
I tried doing this a long time ago, and the hurdle we ran into was that the filmmakers and distributors would charge an outlandish amount to show their films (and these were for underground indy art films that barely anyone had heard of). There was no chance of breaking even, never mind making any sort of profit.
Click to expand...


Wow. Really? That's whack. I'd avoid dealing with distributors and seek out the gems that got ignored, offering only a percentage of profits directly to filmmakers. I have to think a filmmaker would jump at the chance especially since they'd have nothing to lose. I'm not sure how one would find these "gems" though.

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If yu have the money and the time, I think it'd be fun.
If you try to do this as a money maker or worse, as a living, I think your in for early baldness and an ulcer.
 
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