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In Australia we get told we have to run shows a certain amount of times before 6pm and after 6pm. Do you have to do that in USA or any other country?? We have to run King Kong 4 times, even tho it means the first evening show is 5.10pm and the last one will finish after midnight. We live in a dairy area and people won't be finished milking by 5.10 and staying up to midnight is too late for them. We told the distributor we wanted to run it one evening show at a prime time of 7pm..but no.. why don't thse people see sence and why do they think they know our audience better than we do. Ugh. its soo maddening. And we can't cheat because we know they buy our local paper and checkl our ads

It's not really an exact science... more a matter of established history.

If you're trying to be competitive, the studios will probably expect you to run a reasonably comparable schedule to the theatres you're booking against.

On the other hand, a friend of mine has a theatre that's run a single evening show since 1947, with few exceptions. He's booking about 85% first run in his market, and competing against a small twin that runs almost from noon 'til midnight.

Yes, there can be exceptions. In a few cases, that owner had to agree to run two evening shows a day during the first week or two... but it was established that this would not change his expected norm.

As far as I can recall offhand, master licenses don't cover this in any detail, so a theatre can probably do whatever they establish as customary for them unless otherwise negotiated when a film is booked.

[This message has been edited by rodeojack (edited December 09, 2005).]