A shell of its former existence. I believe the original owners sold it to Sony. Movie studios owning movie theaters is supposed to be illegal, but no one in the US seems to care about laws anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc.
FWIW, Sony owns a lot of other companies, and so does Sony Corp. of America. It’s entirely possible that they’re dodging this one by using a company that’s not Sony Pictures.
That may be the only way movie theaters survive. If they all close down I am curious what a future without blockbuster movies looks like.
Theaters would survive if they sued the studios using the existing Paramount precedent. Studios shouldn’t be allowed to own broadcast, cable, or streaming networks. They should be selling their content on the open market.
By owning the channels, the studios don’t have any incentive to release their movies in theaters. They make more money going straight to the outlets they own. (Or by killing content for a tax write off instead of letting outlets bid on the content.)
Vertical integration should have never been allowed.
Happy and sad at the same time. I’m not in the Alamo Drafthouse footprint, but my initial feedbacks are: sweet, ordering online and having food delivered is awesome. My theater will deliver food but you still have to order at the concessions counter first. Would be awesome to order online. But at the same time, why can’t these folks just step out for a minute? My immediate negative is that it condones phone usage in a theater, which I hate normalizing. There’s no reason someone couldn’t exit the theater for a minute, or go to the exit aisle so their screen doesn’t interrupt others’ experience. Even dark mode, which I wholeheartedly support and run myself, is a distraction to others.
More negatives than positives from a moviegoer experience, IMO.
Right?
What about all the “No cell phone use while movie is playing” they tout at the beginning. I even turn off my phone at the Alamo, because I don’t want rings, vibrations, etc, from people on the list that overrides Do Not Disturb
Alamo has historically been notoriously anti-phone-use. They used to kick people out who were on their phones. I loved that about them.
Alamo used to be such a great experience. The one in my neighborhood has seats falling apart, increased prices for smaller food portions, and more expensive tickets overall. Really hard to justify the cost lately, although that can be said of pretty much everything these days.
I resent being forced to use my phone for stuff like this. Or paying for parking.
Fuck, now I need to install a goddamn app to pay for parking at this garage the one fucking time I use it?
Fuck you, guess I’m not going to the Alamo after all since parking is now a huge fucking hassle. Guess I’ll just go home now and not spend $200 tonight.
We’ve saved thousands of dollars a year now because you bastards decided to do shit like this. Nope, not going to shows because you’ve made parking even more of a hassle.
Try a walkable city. Oh, wait.
I used to like Alamo but after getting hearing damage from how loud a film I watched was, and the constant back and forth of the staff bringing concessions, I feel like getting rid of pen and paper to have everyone using their cell phones would make that experience even worse. I’ll just watch at home, thanks.
As someone who’s used this system a lot in the past year… I think it mostly works, but there are definitely some kinks that need to be worked out. The system works maybe 80% of the time we’ve used it, but the other 20% involve you needing the pen and paper to resolve an issue. There’s also some annoying usability issues such as out of stock items simply not being listed instead of being labeled as out of stock causing confusion. I do wish they would implement the timed ordering system that we’ve seen at Emagine theaters where you can order things to be delivered half way through the movie. But it’s still nice to be able to not miss anything and have a beer delivered. We’ll see how the whole screen thing works out. I haven’t noticed much of a problem with it at Emagine theaters, but it’s also not required so likely less people use it. Anyway, I’m mostly fine with this if they can smooth out some of the kinks in the app. These days we go out of our way to go to Alamo Drafthouse so we don’t have to go to the shitty AMC that’s much closer. It’s certainly an all around better experience regardless of this change.
