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A shy applicant asks re: managing a 7 screen theatre. How much in a small town can he expect that it will pay. We manage our own. Our senior projectionists (if they worked 40 hours) make in the
18,000.00 a year with almost no bennies. If we were to hire a manager it would be +/- 20,000.00 due to our 3 screens and small town levels of tickets sold. What do you earn or pay?

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Mike Hurley
www.bigscreenbiz.com

Every time I have broken down a manager's salary for a movie theatre, it works out to about $7,000 per screen with a floor of 18,000. But seeing as it is a small town, I'm guessing that the person will only be paid at the most $30,000. What I would suggest is that the manager ask for the minimum they need to live on while negotiating clear performance bonuses. The manager could get a percentage of the concession stand. They could be paid a bonus based on the per-capita income of the concession stand. There could be a marketing bonus for every mention the theatre gets in the local news.

A manager of a movie theatre should also get full medical, and a 401K plan.

I hope a lot of others chime in here because I don't have a lot of experience here but some snippets I have picked up.

What would the manager's duties include? If they would be responsible for General Manager things like booking, financial decisionmaking, concession pricing and menu where no one else takes ultimate responsibility for how the theate performs they should (and usually do) get more money than the standard chain type manager who runs the place but doesn't get to make any real decisions that might make or break the business. In my limited experience reading financial statements for other theaters and personal observations of local managers this General Manager would be making about 30-40 thousand probably unless there were more riches to spread around than there usually are in small towns. It is a lot of responsibility with someone else's millions of dollars invested.
However, if this is a typical chain manager who is responsible for keeping the building staffed and running and dealing with the public they seem to be less than generously compensated in my experience getting somewhere in the teens and hoping for a lot of promotional advertising money to come in from the studios or those concession bonuses to kick in. Maybe totalling 20-25,000.

I was salaried at 20k a year with commission from sales. I was in a small town but a 12 screen and i think i was way underpaid for the amount of work done. my first year I raised the percap of the theatre from $1.80 to $2.17 by then end of the year. How was this accomplished I offered free refils on large drinks (plus I managed the place a thing previous managers had no concept of)
I cleared about 33k that year. the next year percaps remained about the same and I cleared 44k (we had an increase in attendance) The last year i was there they changed the commssion structure and raised the base salary ( they figured that they were paying too much in comissions.) They forced me to quit refilling large drinks and the percap fell to around $2 Since I have left the theatre has had 4 managers in less than a year and attendance has dropped considerably. All due to the fact that money had become tight in the wake of all these bankruptcies they do not wish to spend money on building maint and it has gone downhill fast.

I was talking with a friend who is a carpenter today and we were on hiring help. He hired a 18 year old helper with very little experience and paid him 18.00 per hour. And he was billing 30.00 per hour for him. 18.00 per hour is 37,440.00 per year! If we did that with our staff we'd be broke. It was kind of depressing.

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Mike Hurley
www.bigscreenbiz.com