Picture this, you go to the movie theater with some buddies one night for a 7 PM showing. You all get there around 6:40 to make sure there is plenty of time to grab snacks, find seats, and use the bathroom before the light dim. Then 7 PM rolls around and you get the obligatory warning to silence your cell phones, followed by an ad for snacks, followed by a cacophony of trivia/trailers. Next thing you know, it’s 7:30 and the movie is just starting.
We’ve all been there, and if Connecticut Senator Martin Looney gets his way, sitting through previews at the cinema may become a thing of the past.
Looney has proposed a bill that would require movie theaters to list the start times for trailers/ads along with the start time for the film itself. So the scenario above would be listed as starting at 7 PM with the film starting at 7:30 PM. The senator believes this will allow moviegoers to skip the preamble and get right to the film.
“It seems to be an abuse of people’s time,” Looney explains. “If they want to get there early and watch the promos, they can. But if they just want to see the feature, they ought to be able to get there just in time for that.”
The Problem
It’s safe to say that most moviegoers find an endless barrage of trailers and ads annoying at the absolute least. So you’d think a bill that would allow cinephiles to have it both ways in terms of previews would be a slam dunk. However, theater owners, especially independently owned-establishments, are saying this could be bad for business.
“This is kind of a strange bill,” says Peter H. Gistelinck, executive director at the Avon Theatre in Stamford. “We, as an independent movie house, are financially dependent on our previews as well as our overall messaging, including commercials. We always announce the start time of our screenings so that our patrons can enjoy the whole experience.”
While ticket and concession prices continue to climb, movie theaters profit margins remain surprisingly thin. Much of the current crisis has to do with numbers never really recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Total box office gross went from slightly over 11 billion in 2019 to barely 2 billion in 2020, according to The Numbers. Those numbers did climb in 2021 through 2023, sales started to stagnate in 2024 and are still nowhere near what they used to be.
Gistelinck believes that Looney’s proposed bill could hurt the survival of movie theaters. “Announcing the start time of the actual movie would definitely disincentivize our business partners’ video messaging which would have a direct negative impact on our financial stability in an already so challenging environment,” Gistelinck explains.
Part Of The Theater Experiance
Some have also pointed out that ads give people a chance to unwind before the film starts or for late comers to find their seats. Since the lights are often dimmed and not fully off, previews create an unintentional buffer where people can switch gears before they are expected to be silent for at least 90 minutes. As much as people complain about trailers, they do serve several functions.
But Looney maintains it is “truth-in-advertising bill as I see it.” “I got a couple of calls from constituents who said that they went to the theater a few times and the feature did not start for a considerable period of time after the advertised starting time,” he adds. “It does seem to me that people are, in effect, a sort of captive audience watching the advertising before they get to see the feature they came to see.”
Yes, that is kind of the point…
We’ll keep you posted on updates about this proposed bill as they become available.
