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I can final a film after two weeks in a small town out west with no problem. In fact the film distribs say... "that's a two week town" when talking about a first run opening day on the break picture. But try it out east and you run into passion last seen at the opera. Why is that? And it's not about the grosses. Can you get out of a film after two weeks easily? And what part of the country are you in?

70% of our on the break content plays two weeks. We are in the Houston area, so depending on the distributor we are in the West, East, or Central branch. Only reason we play longer than two weeks is if we think something newer will have soft demand.

That is very true ..
Getting out of a film after 2 weeks is very hard in the east unless its a single screen . The other big fight is the hold over gross number I have a theatre we pull ( most of the time ) on $2,500 unless it is a split. .
That drives 1 studio crazy as they want us to hold on $1,000.

We're out west and this is a rarity. A few times a year the studio has us hold a 3rd week on a really strong gross. But generally, if the gross is that strong we want to hold it anyway. For us, we're only holding if the film is making money or there is nothing else to play on that screen. I've been in a situation where we had to hold against our wishes maybe 3 times in the last 7 years (Narnia through Christmas & New Year, for example).

We have more of a problem with holdover numbers. They seem to float around, and almost never get out if the gross is over $1700, or the $1000-1200 from the previously unmentioned distributor. Basically if we make any money for the weekend, the film gets kept another week.

Single screen, rural, 450 seat theatre.