The long tail

Last weekend the Material movie did good. We didn’t make it to no. 1 though but the number is solid. Our screen average is still the highest by far, which is the most important measure for the cinema chains (we are on 41 sites and the films ahead of us, only very slightly ahead of us I must add, have much bigger footprints).

Today Ster Kinekor are moving their 3 least performing Material sites they have and from this weekend we will have double prints (ie, 2 cinemas) playing at The Zone, Sandton and Gateway in Durban - this is going to be an interesting experiment, and very exciting.

We will still have the full 41 prints in play as we go on to weekend # 4. In weekend # 5 there are some serious big Hollywood films coming out so it is gonna be a real challenge the following weekend.

The supply and demand dynamics of the cinema industry are very clear cut – each Monday the cinema chains (it works like this all around the world) sit down and analyze the data from the weekend gone by – if a site has 10 cinemas, and there are 5 new movies coming that weekend, then the best performing 5 stay on, and the worst 5 get taken off (to make way for the new films). This is the anxiety we have been going through for the past few weeks ... not easy on the nerves, but so far we are doing good. On all the cosmopolitan sites the film is in the top 3 - the challenge is that the cosmopolitan sites are not the majority.

In short, a lot of people have been using the term “the long tail” when analyzing the data thus far – it may just be that this film plays in the dozen or so cosmopolitan sites for a long, long time.

There is only one way to find out ...

Back to work it is ... there is material to get out there !

Posted by Ronnie Apteker