The Big Picture

This has been a momentous year for digital cinema pioneer Arts Alliance Media. The company celebrated its twentieth year in business and the tenth anniversary of one of its flagship products, the Screenwriter theatre management system that has supported cinema operations through the transition to digital cinema. First launched in 2013, Screenwriter was designed to supersede AAM’s first generation theatre management system that supported exhibitors enrolled in the virtual print fee program as they upgraded to digital cinema equipment. Consequently, Screenwriter embodied an operational restructure, enabling cinemas to centralize their workflows from a single screen instead of traditional, manual methods. The company also launched Screenlighter, a theatre management system designed to solely meet the operational requirements of independent and one-four screen cinemas. But today, the company is thinking only of the future and the ways in which it can help the cinema industry thrive in the months and years ahead. To get a better sense of the company’s plans, I recently spoke via email with David Ong, AAM’s chief commercial officer. One thing he made very clear was the fact that at AAM, people matter most.

Last week AMC Theatres announced that Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film had officially become a record-breaking movie. The film, which was announced with tickets on sale Thursday morning, shattered the record for single-day advance ticket sales revenue at AMC at $26 million. The previous record of $16.9 million was held by Spider-Man: No Way Home.

PVR-Inox, India’s largest cinema chain, has been implementing impactful marketing tools to promote new films, in this case, a horror film. In a recent initiative, the chain used fear to show what it is like to see a horror film alone, on a big screen, in this case – Insidious: The Red Door.

Jeff Benson is the co-founder, along with his wife, Jamie, and CEO of Cinergy Entertainment Group. They founded Cinergy in 2009 after selling Movie Tavern, a 15-location, nationwide dine-in cinema chain that they started in 2001. Benson has been an entrepreneur in the movie theatre and family entertainment center businesses now for 25 years now. He originally started out as a CPA with Deloitte back in the early ‘90s. Said Benson, “It’s been a wild and crazy ride over the years, but we have always tried to be a leader utilizing new business models and technologies within established entertainment industries.” For me, something that sets Cinergy apart from its competitors is the fact that in 2019, the Cinergy Entertainment Group was named the Top Family Entertainment Center of the World by the International Association of Parks and Attractions. I recently spoke with Benson via email and our conversation started there.