[HN Gopher] Sony Pictures Acquires Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
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       Sony Pictures Acquires Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
        
       Author : leotravis10
       Score  : 11 points
       Date   : 2024-06-12 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.hollywoodreporter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.hollywoodreporter.com)
        
       | schlauerfox wrote:
       | For some historical referrence, there was a court decision in
       | 1948 stopping the movie studios from owning the theater chains
       | too.
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
       | I worked in a movie theater in the early 2000s and the
       | studios/distributors had theaters by the throat anyway. Disney
       | for example could demand any terms they wanted for allowing for
       | example star wars and theaters bid against each other regionally
       | for an artificially limited number of 'prints' (today they're
       | hard drives) and could insist on 100% of the take, a % of
       | concession sales, pretty brutal terms. I don't know what the
       | industry is like in the last 15 years. Disney has owned the El
       | Capitan in hollywood for years, though. Not sure how that was
       | allowed as an exception if the rule was only recinded in 2020.
       | Maybe just chains.
        
       | nonameiguess wrote:
       | The article briefly mentions all of the North Texas locations
       | closed a week ago when the franchisee that owned them declared
       | Chapter 7. Alamo Corporate immediately vowed to find a new
       | franchise owner who would reopen. I hope Sony does something
       | about this. I live down the street from one of the Dallas
       | locations and, along with live music, this was effectively the
       | out-of-house social life for me and my wife. Alamo was in the
       | midst of a retrospective of anniversary re-releases, showing
       | films from 1999 (which was our high school graduation year), then
       | going back every five years until 1974. It was currently on 1989
       | and we were supposed to see _Do The Right Thing_ this weekend. We
       | 've been there three to four times a month every month this year.
       | The app still works, but listings were all deleted and tickets we
       | already paid for are gone. The franchisee who closed the
       | locations released a statement basically saying fuck yourselves.
       | Nobody got any refunds. 600 employees were let go with no notice.
       | The doors were simply locked and a paper sign put up.
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-12 23:01 UTC)