(no subject)

[cinemadeco.livejournal.com]

Good Morning!

My apologies beforehand for potential cross-posting on your friends list, or for a potential off-topic post. I did my best to check the rules of the community beforehand to ensure that I was within the community guidelines.

I am working with a group to explore opening a movie theatre in Somerville dedicated to showing independant, classic, and genre films such as science fiction, action-adventure, and romantic comedies.

To help develop our plan, we've put together a short survey to try to gauge what the community would want in a new movie theatre. If you're from the Boston area, love movies, and have 3-5 minutes to take the following survey, I would greatly appreciate your support.

Click here to take survey.

If you have any questions, please comment below.

Comments

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

Where in Somerville? We've already got the beloved Somerville Theater near Davis Square. I don't think there's room to support another in the immediate vicinity - unless forcing it out of business is part of your plan.

[cinemadeco.livejournal.com]

We haven't gotten far enough in planning to determine exactly where yet. The Somerville Theatre, from what I know, shows movies that are at the very end of their first run. We are looking to show movies that have been out of the theatre for at least several years, if not decades. Somerville would probably be hurt more by the Fenway Theatre or theatres in downtown Boston than by us, I imagine. We would be more competition for a video store than another movie theatre.

We're not looking to force anyone out of business. I enjoy going to the Somerville Theatre myself. When I miss a movie in current run for whatever reason (usually because I'm too busy during its limited release run), I welcome the opportunity to see it there before it disappears to video. What we're trying to determine is whether there's a niche that neither the Somerville Theatre nor any other current movie theatre currently supports.

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

Interesting! Well, if you did that, it seems that both the choices of movie and the ambiance of the theatre would be quite important (more so than for anything showing something recent). I imagine the Brattle does reasonably with its varied film festivals of older movies, often by theme or some other unifying idea.

after checking your survey

[cthulhia]

I tend to buy concessions almost soley because too little of the ticket price goes back to the host cinema, especially if it's opening weekend, or I've managed to get a free screening.

it's unlikely that any new cinema in somerville will have competitively decent parking. Once you're on the road, why not just go to revere, where the extra time for distance is less than it takes to find parking? If on public transit, you're competing with kendall, brattle, harvard and coolidge for alt.cinema, and competing with some really nice new mainstream cinemas. If I'm going to shell it out for stadium seating, I might as well go to park street and eat in chinatown.

A niche market would be a smaller, more cafe-like version of the upscale-theater in framingham, that serves a nearly full food menu and a decent bar menu. But cheaper, and a little less like disney or vegas. More like a davis square coffeehouse with a decent screen and good acoustics.

(I have no idea what your budget is if you're polling via LJ, but I imagine it's pretty small.)

Re: after checking your survey

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

A) I agree that this sounds like this is in the same market as the brattle.
B) I also agree that something "Cinema & Drafthouse"-like (though without beer is fine by me, truly) is needed around here.

Re: after checking your survey

[cinemadeco.livejournal.com]

I think the means by which we would differentiate ourselves from the Brattle would be by offering movies with more mass appeal than the Brattle currently offers. Rather than just focus on classic or art films, we would show something like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Grease or The Breakfast Club. Something that would be of primarily social rather than artistic value.

The Brattle is arthouse, and that's great, because the world needs arthouse. I think we'd be a little more coffeehouse. Almost like a book club, in a way, with a focus on people and discussion rather than art and film.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. All this feedback is very helpful.

Re: after checking your survey

[rmd.livejournal.com]

the brattle manages a nod to popular cinema occasionally -- their current calendar seems to include the flynn "robin hood", "2001", and some kind of godzilla movie. i'm not sure i see your suggested market as sufficiently different from that as to provide real differentiation.

B) I also agree that something "Cinema & Drafthouse"-like (though without beer is fine by me, truly) is needed around here.

now *that* is a market niche that hasn't been filled around here, really.