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So whats the buzz on this. Who passed and who booked?
The previews seem to have everyone screaming and cheering!

We booked.
They've always been great drive-in shows for us.

Past this point, I don't know. We may run out of film before we run out of September (our normal "end-of-season").

How was the drive-in bsns this season?

We had a good season, though no record was set. I don't know anyone who beat last year's grosses.

At this point last season, we were still running "Pirates" and "Cars". I think "Invincible" was running around now, too. We don't have anything of that calibre right now, and September looks pretty bleak.

The studios "front loaded" the season with 3 of the major releases before school had let out for the Summer. That didn't help any.

Still, on average, we had a pretty good year.

Yep, I booked Halloween. Looks like that will be as good as it gets for a while.

Both my drive-in accounts (one 2-screener; one single) had a good summer, although no records were set for them either. Out here in the midwest, we have had a long stretch of extremely hot, dry weather, which hasn't helped. 104 in the day doesn't encourage folks to want to sit in their cars to watch a movie.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, helvetica">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by slapintheface:
How was the drive-in bsns this season?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


That answer will depend on how the weather treated each individual drive-in in different regions of the country. Drive-ins are much more dependent on weather than the average hardtop.

A rainy night over the weekend can reduce admissions by 70%. String a few rainy weekends together, and the drive-in can have a difficult time meeting operating expenses for the month, plus get stuck with excess inventory that might be perishable such as hamburger buns or hot dog rolls. A drive-in operator has to keep a very close eye on the weather forecast for every upcoming weekend.

All that being said, we had a fabulous summer in Western New York, with lots of sunshine and very little wet weather. I can only recall one weekend where rain was a factor between Memorial Day and Labor Day, which coincided with the opening weekend of HARRY POTTER 5.

Other than that one wet weekend, our summer business was great, if not spectacular. We are up almost 17% at the boxoffice, compared to 2006 up to the same point in the season. With a strong Labor Day weekend lineup ahead and nice weather in the forecast, that will probably go up another point or two.

After Labor Day, business for most drive-ins goes in the toilet. Weather goes downhill, kids are back in school, and the studios starve us with no decent new product to play. We try to hang on through most of October and can sometimes make it into mid November, but most seasonal drive-ins will close shortly after Labor Day.

Rick Cohen
Transit Drive-in Theatre
Lockport, New York

[This message has been edited by Transit Drive in (edited August 29, 2007).]