Patrons seeing 'The Hunger Games' at a Megaplex Theatre in Utah can get made up like Katniss or duel like a tribute. The chain's success has the attention of Hollywood studios.
"The Hunger Games"
is big enough of a draw this weekend that movie theaters don't have to
do much to sell tickets — in the opening hours, hundreds of thousands of
fans dropped nearly $20 million for admission.
But those who showed up at the Megaplex Theatre in Sandy, Utah, for the
first screenings were able to participate in their own (nonlethal)
version of the cinematic teen death match, donning sumo wrestling suits,
picking up laser guns and jousting with inflatable swords. Before
battling strangers and friends, patrons could visit Cinna's Salon and
have their eyes decorated with glitter — just like the film's heroine,
Katniss, gets dolled up by a stylist named Cinna before she's thrown
into the arena. The winner took home a backpack and lunch box donated to
the theater by the studio, Lionsgate.
All the extras weren't cheap;
the premiere party cost patrons $34, on top of an $8.75 ticket. But
these kind of aggressive marketing activities have helped to propel the
small, six-theater Megaplex chain in and around Salt Lake City into the
ranks of the nation's top-grossing outlets for teen movies in recent
years — and caught the attention of Hollywood studios.
It's not just the parties at Megaplex, owned by the Larry H. Miller
Group, that boost its opening-weekend grosses; the chain has a
multi-pronged strategy that includes renting out auditoriums to
corporations and playing one big-name movie on the majority of its
screens.
As a result, four of the top six grossing theaters for midnight
screenings nationwide were Megaplex outlets, Lionsgate said Friday.
In November, when the fourth "Twilight"
film was released, one of the cinema's branches in South Jordan, Utah,
brought in more money on opening weekend than any U.S. theater outside
of one in New York City, where ticket prices are far higher. The
location in Sandy came in fourth in the nation for both the debut of the
vampire flick and the final installment of the "Harry Potter" franchise last summer.
At Megaplex early Friday, "The Hunger Games" was playing on all of the
chain's 92 screens. The movie remained in all of those auditoriums for 3
a.m. showings as well, then was pared back to about five screens per
location for the remainder of the weekend.
It wasn't just teens showing up for the PG-13 film. Many of those who came were adults who work for companies like JetBlue,
Ameriprise and 1-800 Contacts, all of which, Megaplex says, are eager
to buy out entire auditoriums for team-building outings. Heading into
the weekend, Megaplex had sold out 96 screenings, guaranteeing more than
$100,000 worth of sales.
Celeste Casey, a 30-year-old marketing distributor for the greeting card
company Send Out Cards, rented out a 530-seat theater at midnight to
help boost her client network.
"It was insane. The local news station came in and filmed the audience
with everybody screaming and cheering," Casey said Friday morning. "When
we got out of our movie, there was a wall of people, and we could
hardly move. People were dressed up like characters with rhinestones on
their face and hair dye. I can't imagine the money and time they put
into these costumes. There were vendors selling 'Hunger Games'
themed-cakes and blankets and socks. It was so exciting."
Because of the circuit's track record, Megaplex has developed a working
relationship with a number of movie studios. When Summit Entertainment
(which recently merged with Lionsgate) released "The Twilight Saga:
Breaking Dawn — Part 1" last fall, it sent a handful of the movie's
lesser-known stars, including Ashley Greene and Peter Facinelli, to attend a mini-premiere at one of the Megaplex locations.
"Because of what they've done in the past, you pay attention when they
need more prints shipped to them or when they say, 'Boy, can you get
some of the actors here for personal appearances?'" said Richie Fay,
Summit's president of domestic distribution. "We have to encourage
people going to the movies across the country — it can't just be focused
on the coasts."
Julene Jolley, 55, is the Megaplex director of events, and she and her
team are responsible for devising tie-ins for every major movie release.
She brought in a rock climbing wall and a bull riding machine for a
"Harry Potter" film, set up an elaborate replica of the wedding scene in
the most recent "Twilight" film and tracked down a Justin Bieber look-alike for the premiere of the pop star's documentary.
"What we are trying to do is expand the moviegoing experience," she said.
Megaplex Theatres was founded in 1999 by Miller, a local car dealer who
also owned the Utah Jazz basketball team at the time. He had no
experience in Hollywood but was eager to learn, recalled Jeff Goldstein,
Warner Bros.' vice president of distribution.
"One day I got a call from this guy who said, 'You don't know me, but
I'm successful in my own world. I've never owned a movie theater, but I
love movies,'" Goldstein said. "He wanted to know about the nuts and
bolts of the business, and soaked in everything I told him like a
sponge."
Miller, a member of the Mormon Church, invested in a 2001 Mormon-themed
production called "Brigham City" that didn't crack the $1-million mark
at the box office. Three years later, he put more than $7 million into
another Mormon-themed production, "The Work and the Glory," which
grossed $3.3 million. Though the film did well enough to spawn two
sequels, Miller told the Salt Lake City Tribune in 2006 that the overall
lack of success "extinguished" his interest in film production.
The businessman also weathered some controversy after he pulled the acclaimed 2005 drama
"Brokeback Mountain" from Megaplex theaters because it centered on a
gay relationship. Gay rights groups protested the move, and Jay Leno
even made a joke at Miller's expense on "The Tonight Show." Miller
later apologized, calling the ban a "knee-jerk reaction." He died in
2009.
Also key to the success of a film at Megaplex is avoiding an R rating.
In 1986, then-Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Ezra
Taft Benson delivered a speech to the "youth of the noble birthright"
in which he explicitly cautioned: "Don't see R-rated movies or vulgar
videos or participate in any entertainment that is immoral, suggestive
or pornographic."
"That hasn't been enforced since, but many Mormons still have the 1986
speech in their mind," said Dean Duncan, a professor in the department
of theater and media arts at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
It also does not hurt when themes of the films fall in line with Mormon
teachings. The "Twilight" series, for example, argues for chastity
before marriage, and the author of the books, Stephenie Meyer,
is Mormon. The "Harry Potter" novels that inspired the movies have been
commented on favorably by religious scholar Jeffrey Roy Holland, a
Mormon senior apostle and former BYU president. The church declined to
comment for this article.
But James Marsh,
a media industry analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co., says that in an
era when movie attendance continues to decline and theater owners turn
to broadcast operas and other fare in addition to films, there may be
lessons in the Megaplex story.
"Theaters have a finite amount of content coming to them, so Megaplex is
making the best of what they're getting from the studios. There are
fewer blockbuster films, so how can they make the ones they get a bigger
event?" Marsh said.
"Other theater chains are working on improving concessions or doing film
distribution deals to get more content. Megaplex is embracing the film
and looking for that hard-core fanboy to come in and immerse themselves
in the movie. I don't hear the big guys doing that."
Cinemimi [Saturday, May 26, 2012]
