I’ve pretty much given up on theaters because all the ones near me have one issue or another. (I keep saying that if we had a GOOD theater here I’d go to it at least once per week no matter what it was showing, but no theaters here meet that standard.)

Anyways, ever since I discovered that Fandango.com will let you check how many tickets are sold for theaters that have reserved seating (which is all but a few here) I’ve been routinely checking it multiple times per day just to see how many people are going. If nothing else it’s interesting to find out what people are going out to see. Tonight for example it seems a couple of Bollywood (Indian musical) movies are getting the most people. I projected a few of those at the Regal I worked at and enjoyed them. Since the theaters here are bad, I also get a nice laugh whenever I see that zero tickets have been sold for a show that has already started. They have ticket buying still open for 20 minutes after the start time, and given the amount of trailers shown now some people might wait til after start time to go in but I still see zero tickets sold close to when the 20 minutes are up. Back when I did go to theaters, I’d usually at least buy tickets 30 minutes before start time and go in as soon as possible to get the best seats. I was usually the first one in and last one out.

I’d never use Fandango for actually buying tickets since they have a $2 “convenience fee” on top of the already too high prices, but just checking out attendance I might be using it more than anyone else for that. Just wondering if anyone else does this.

Funny you mention this. I did it (for the first time) all weekend of Joker 2s release at my local theater just to see how many people showed. Not many.

They’re not connected to fandango but you can do the same thing through their website.

I've been doing this with my local theatre. Still feeling a bit cautious after COVID, if the theatre was too full (or my favorite seats weren't available) I'd wait for a different showing.

I'd never heard of a movie called The Sound of Freedom, yet every time I looked at a screening, it was sold out. "Crazy this movie is so popular," i thought, "Looks like I'll have to wait awhile before I can get in." I later found out about the "buy-tickets-for-others" campaign the film was doing, leaving me to wonder if those weeks of sold out showings really had people there or not.

It was interesting checking out the tickets sold for Longlegs on its opening day, and actually seeing in real time the theatre cancel the evening showings of Maxxxine in order to give Longlegs a second screen... and seeing those fill up quickly.

We get a lot of Indian films, and they fill up the theatre Friday or Saturday, then sell only a couple seats per showing the rest of the week.

I wonder if the theatre is sometimes contractually obligated to have certain films in their biggest theatre, because Joker 2 spent its entire run in the biggest theatre, despite selling only a handful of tickets each show, meanwhile Terrifier 3 was nearly selling out a smaller theatre, so why not switch?

The “bigger” a movie is, the more obligations a theater usually has. But that’s another thing I’ve always hated about theaters. Some have nice big theaters but also pathetically small ones. In the 80s some didn’t even have stereo in every auditorium. Right now EVERY theater should be “premium large format” if they want to give me any reason to go out rather than stay home. There’s certainly no excuse for new theaters having 50 seats in some auditoriums, if you can’t even get that many people to come to a showing you might as well not run it at all.

My local theater's website shows how many tickets have been sold for each showing. Very handle.

What a weird thing to check.

Last weekend I saw Juror #2 in a 100-seat theater, and there were about 20 people in it (I checked Fandango beforehand to see how crowded it was). That has famously gotten a very limited run, but it's nice to have the option to see smaller films, and it makes sense to fill up a 12-plex with more than four different movies.

It's fine if you only want to go to the theater to see the big films; that's generally my preference as well. But the last film I saw before Juror #2 was It Starts With Us, which was definitely not a big-screen movie. I don't go often, but when I do, I like having choices. A couple weeks ago I thought about going, but there was nothing I wanted to see.

What are the issues of your local theaters that keep you from attending?

Main thing now is no screen masking- for different ratios, proper screens have the sides or top/bottom moved in to cover up the unused areas. If I see an unmasked screen in a theater I simply don’t go back. I can already watch movies that way at home.

Other issues are 3D movies shown in 2D even when they’re equipped to show 3D, pre-show commercials which simply shouldn’t be there, small screens, house lights not fully turned down, and inexcusable technical issues- biggest one being a dead front left speaker in one theater here for more than TWO YEARS with nobody there noticing it.