The Big Picture

As has been widely reported, shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings jumped more than 18 percent this week, set for the company’s biggest gain in a month, after sources said Amazon was looking to buy the theatre chain.

Buffalo and Western New York are rapidly becoming a destination of choice for film and television producers. In the past two years alone, more than 110 productions have been completed, are in-progress or have been announced, including Nightmare Alley, Marshall, and A Quiet Place 2. Tax incentives tell just a part of the story. Over the years the area has developed a sizable film production infrastructure and is still growing. Buffalo FilmWorks claims to be the largest major motion picture film studio in the entire state of New York. The $50 million facility is equipped with over 120,000-square-feet of stage space and 60,000-square-feet of flex space for production support. More studios are under construction. And with a long list of diverse locations – including Niagra Falls – Buffalo can offer urban and suburban settings and farmland, all available within a short distance from one another. Managing all of this is Tim Clark, regional film commissioner of the Buffalo Niagara Film Commission. I recently spoke with Clark, via email, about the current film boom underway in Western New York. Here is that conversation:

In June 2011, when co-founders Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt launched MoviePass, they surely had no idea what the next decade would have in store for them. The new company initially faced hostility from many of the biggest exhibitors, notably AMC. That never changed but MoviePass made progress and by 2016 Mitch Lowe, a former Netflix executive, was named CEO. Throughout that period, MoviePass experimented with different pricing models and slowly, but steadily, grew. In 2017 the analytics firm Helios and Matheson's acquired a majority stake in the company, Spikes was fired, and Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth began to exert more control.

“Looking at sightlines in 3D from the eye of the patron is an important consideration,” says architect Theresa English, AIA, of TK Architects International in Kansas City, Missouri. “Previously, we would look at a single section from a single vantage. It wasn't super effective if the rows or screen or both were curved.”