You know what they say about bullies…
Don’t be one.
Yet that’s how a number of movie theater circuits around the country view KC based AMC Theatres. In no small part based on the combative business style of former AMC honcho Gerry Lopez.
Lopez made it abundantly clear he would not sit still for what in the movie biz they call “playing day and date” with AMC’s competition. Day and date is the practice of allowing nearby, competing theaters to both play blockbuster, first run films.
Under Lopez AMC pressured movie studios to not allow its nearby rivals to play day and date.
Net result: AMC’s competition was unable to screen many movies that would have enabled them to be profitable.
Take Cobb Theaters, a southern exhibitor that filed an antitrust complaint against AMC four years back, labeling AMC’s actions “ruthless” and seeking damages in the “hundreds of millions.”
Just over a year ago in a story in the Hollywood Reporter Cobb claimed AMC under Lopez had begun anti competitive practices by “successfully” setting out to “bleed” dry a dine-in theater in Kansas City, Missouri.
That would be the short lived Studio Movie Grill near AMC’s Barrywood 24.
Movie studios were left to choose between a tiny dinner movie plex and a gargantuan multiplex.
“Barrywoods said it would not play the movies that Studio Movie Grill played, effectively forcing film companies to go with AMC,” says a source. “Because it didn’t make sense to give a blockbuster movie exclusive to a small theater.”
Absent hit movies, it didn’t take long for Studio Movie Grill to blow taps; it closed quickly and quietly in late 2010.
In AMC’s favor however, Studio Movie Grill’s facility was poorly designed it likely would not have been long for this world regardless of which movies it played.
Which brings us to the Cinetopia Overland Park 18 that opened in 2014.
After allegedly threatening Cinetopia, AMC insisted that film companies divide and alternate blockbuster movies between Cinetopia and AMC’s Town Center 20.
Leaving Cinetopia to attempt to make a profit playing only half the movies.
“My opinion is that AMC Town Center took a hit by playing only half the movie product for the good of the company, by making a statement to other exhibitors not to build near AMC’s theaters,” says a source. “They didn’t totally shut out the competition like BarryWoods did because they allowed film companies to allocate their product to both theaters. So AMC took a bit of a hit at Town Center, but Cinetopia didn’t have the resources that AMC did.”
Which brings us to the owner of Cinetopia’s Overland Park plex who is now accusing AMC of violating antitrust law via the “weaponization” of keeping first run movies out of its theater here.
Between May and September 2014 Cinetopia says AMC prevented Cinetopia from showing at least 14 different movies.
That said, Cinetopia launched its movieplex here with what arguably were ridiculously high ticket and food prices, which it has since lowered. And at present the two competing theaters are playing day and date.
An interesting footnote: years earlier, faced with competition in Johnson County near 119th and Metcalf, AMC founder Stan Durwood argued that Dickinson Theatres’ Southglen 12 and Cinemark’s Movies 10 should play day and date with AMC’s Town Center.
At that point, the smaller, local chain Dickinson argued against playing day and date because it needed to protect its $8 million investment by convincing studios not to allow AMC to screen the same movies it was showing.
Go figure…
Communist tactics by a business owned by the Red Chinese.