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Everywhere I go the studios are cutting back on print count and since we're not the biggest grossing house we couldn't get a lot of the recent pictures/ Meet The Parents and Remember The Titans were two of the most obvious. Normally we'd have gotten these pics. I called up NATO in Calif. to discuss it and they said they have had numerous complaints of exactly the same thing and it's on their board meeting this month. I'm glad it's not just me. I started thinking maybe they're trying to thin down the screens so they can introduce digital without annoying whines from little guys? What other possibilities?

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Mike Hurley
www.bigscreenbiz.com

The studios should limit the number of prints in a city or county but if you are the only game in town, I would think they would be happy to get you a print.

So why do you think they are cutting back the print buy? Is it because so many theatres are closing? Did NATO give any suggestion for it?

I'm having the same problem getting prints for some of my low grossing small town theatres as well. The studios haven't given any reason other then they need locations that will justify the cost of the print, which of course depends on how much film rental you'll pay during your engagement.

Sept and Oct are traditionally times that expected lower grossing films are released and thus are released in smaller film counts. I was given the "too low grossing" excuse by my contacts in the distribs but then they tell me that many larger theatres were also denied prints.

My problem is this. If I don't get a print on release, my booking is completely sold out for Nov and Dec. so there's no way I can even play these pics 4 or 6 weeks out. I could have given them a good 4 week run but they did not make the prints.

My friends at Dreamworks who were in a joint distrib deal tell me that they were very perturbed by Universal's low print count and think that on Meet The Parents it cost them millions.

Large: exactly true but it seems to have changed in the last months.

I don't know if they've gotten scared by all the bankruptcies or what.