Filling seats not tanks
High gas prices a boon to movie business

ABOVE: Movie-goers watch Hancock on the big screen at Red Rock 6 on Tuesday evening. BELOW: A line forms at the Red Rock 6 movie theater on Tuesday afternoon. Movie ticket sales are, possibly due to high gas prices. [photos by Barin Leddy / Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Not everyone is singing the high-gasoline-price blues.Movie theater owners across the nation and at the Allen Theaters in Gallup are reporting better than expected attendance this summer with the industry enjoying a 4 percent gain nationwide by July 4 for the summer.

In Gallup, Larry Allen, manager of New Mexico’s Allen Theater chain, said attendance is looking pretty good, and he attributes a lot of that to the higher gasoline prices which are keeping people at home more and looking for entertainment close by.

Attendance at the Gallup theaters, as well as nationwide, were down in May compared to last year but that was expected because of the huge grosses of movies in the “Spiderman,” “Shrek” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” series last spring.

“But we had a very good June,” Allen said, which made up for May, and he expects that the rest of the summer will be good for the chain as well.

The theater chain decided not to raise prices this summer — which it usually does when the blockbusters start debuting — because, he said, he realized a lot of people were still trying to cope with not only the higher gasoline prices but the prices for a lot of products as well because of higher transportation prices.

At $5.50 and $7.50 per ticket, prices in Gallup are still about $2 less than Albuquerque, and Allen said he wants to try and keep it that way as long as possible.

There’s still talk of converting one of the screens at Red Rock Six to be able to show 3-D movies.

He had hoped to have that installed by now so that Gallup would be able to show “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” which opens on Friday in 3-D, but while theaters in the chain in Las Cruces and Farmington will be ready, Gallup won’t.

The reason, he said, is a matter of economics.

It costs about $70,000 to put in a silver screen to be able to show 3-D. While chains have been charging an extra $2 to $2.50 for people who decide to see the movie in 3-D over the regular screenings, Allen said the movie theater owner only gets 25 cents of that.

“It takes a lot of quarters to pay for a $70,000 screen,” he said.

Another factor that has held up the introduction of 3-D in Gallup is that there still are only a few 3-D movies being made.

After “Journey,” the next big mainstream movie coming out in 3-D is the Walt Disney production of “Bolt” in November. Allen said he expects that by then Gallup will have 3-D capabilities as Hollywood studios plan to start increasing their 3-D input in 2009.

“There are nine of them scheduled so far in 2009,” he said.
On another matter dealing with movies in this area, he said the jury is still out on whether having three theaters in the area open a blockbuster is worthwhile.

Allen did that to a couple of movies, such as the latest Indiana Jones film, putting it on two screens at Red Rock and one at the Aztec Five. While attendance was booming at Red Rock, attendance at Aztec was nothing to get excited about and Allen said that there may just not be enough demand here to justify having it on three screens, especially since that takes away a screen that could be used to play another current film.