SAVE the theater? The E25 is reputed to be the highest grossing theater in the U.S. I’m glad the E25 (and the Lincoln Square) doesn’t have recliners in most of the auditoriums (although there are some auditoriums where their seats do need to be fixed or replaced). Recliners reduce the seat count to ridiculously small levels and when they construct it with a center aisle, there’s no ideal seat.
There’s at least 8 screens with fewer than 100 seats. With recliners, they’d probably only have 50 seats each.
The E-Walk once had 3276 seats and now, with their two best screens, #12 and #13 being closed due to renovation, the seat count is down to just 932. Word is that one of those auditoriums is going to be the new 4DX auditorium. The lobby of the E-Walk is being destroyed to make room for some crappy retail.
What I’d like to see the E25 do is to take either screen #14 (currently 301 seats) or another screen they have with 351 seats and make a second Dolby screen. There’s a lot of films released in Dolby that never get played in NYC in that format because all the AMC’s with a Dolby screen play the same film.
Whenever I’ve been at the E25, the bathrooms have been very clean. I will say that the hallway decoration at the E-Walk is nicer. Also, the elevators are almost always not working at the E25 and taking the escalators up from the entrance lobby to the theater level is narrow and ugly.
The Continental 1 and 2 may have opened in ‘63, but the 3, which was equipped for 70mm, opened much later, probably in the 90’s. The Brandon stayed open longer.
When I heard they were closing the 3, I wrote to the landlord asking him to keep the 70mm theater or to move that equipment to the other theater, but he said they closed the 3rd theater because it was easier to reconstruct into retail because the floor didn’t have as deep a slope. The Brandon is now a pediatric emergency care center. The 3rd theater, as stated, is now a Gap.
OK, I recounted now that they’re fully open again and I get 2057 seats (not including wheelchair spaces). I suppose it’s possible there are some slight errors and it’s the 2068 that @ridethectrain claims.
@HowardBHaas: While it’s true that the 70mm Todd-AO format called for a 2.2: 1 aspect ratio, it’s not because of the “surround sound”. It’s because the Todd-AO format was based on the Grandeur 65/70mm format of the 1920’s, which was 2.13:1.
Also remember that when Cinemascope was first released in 1953, it had 4-track mag soundtracks only and the original aspect ratio was 2.55:1. It was reduced to 2.35:1 to also accomodate a mono optical sound track, which the theater owners demanded.
One of the first films to use 2.35 was “Love Me Tender” with Elvis Presley, released in 1956. (To accommodate digital sound and because lab splices were visible on the screen, the entire image was made slightly smaller and the AR became slightly wider at 2.39:1 in later years. In digital, it’s generally 2.4:1.)
Starting in 1986, a few 70mm films WERE released in 2.35 which was accomplished by simply reducing the height. This way, the sides didn’t have to be cropped as they were with most 35mm anamorphic to 70mm spherical blowups. Those films were: Star Trek IV (1986), The Untouchables, Casualties of War and Die Hard 2 (the last two are unconfirmed.) IMO, they should have been doing this all along and it was actually a recommended practice as published in the American Cinematographers Manual, I believe beginning in the 6th edition, published in 1986.
Dalian Wanda has cashed out its stock investment in AMC Theaters, so they’re no longer the majority shareholder and no longer in charge. That could be either good or bad news. AMC almost always lost money in recent history, but they ended 2020 with a $2.4 billion net loss and in the first quarter of 2021, they lost almost another $295 million. The last times they were profitable were 2018, 2016 and 2015.
There are real questions about their future, although I think the NYC theaters would survive no matter what. Not that Regal is in much better shape.
Since the renovation and the installation of lounge seating, the total seat count (not including wheelchair seats) is down to 1036. It was 3065. Screen #4 is just 11 seats and screen #5 is just 12 seats. Who thought this was a good idea?
I would have to disagree that it will have very little impact. I think it will have tremendous impact, although time will tell. Even before COVID, AMC theaters across the chain averaged ticket sales of only 92 tickets per day, per screen. From 2015 to 2019, AMC (which is the largest chain) lost $289 million. During the first two quarters of this year, AMC lost over $563 million and by the end of the year, it will probably be $1 billion.
So theaters are going to have a tough time surviving in any case.
Now throw in day-and-date streaming and a generation of people who are happy streaming on small screens and I personally don’t see how theaters can survive. Personally, I love going to movie theaters, but during the week, before COVID, whenever I went to see a film, there were few people in the theater. That’s not sustainable anywhere, but especially not in such an expensive city like NYC.
I think the only hope for movie theaters is if the studios buy them. But they might not care. Disney+ now has over 80 million subscribers. That will generate $7.68 billion per year and Disney keeps most of that money (no distributor shares). They may decide they don’t need the theaters.
Having said that, theaters could survive if people actually attended, but they don’t. In 2019 there were about 23.9m admissions per week. It was 50-60m in 1950 and 85-90m each year from 1945 to 1948.
@mikeoaklandpark No matter what happens to the movie industry, you will never see a theater of that size again open. There simply isn’t the business for it. AMC is the largest chain and they averaged (before COVID19) sales of just 92 tickets per day, per screen. That’s about 23 tickets per show. That’s why all the new and renovated theaters being built have so few seats in each screen. That’s quite unfortunate and I think it hurts the movie experience, but that’s the reality. Theatrical attendance is becoming a specialty market.
Back in the day, the Ziegfeld (1150 seats 52' screen), the Astor Plaza (1440 seats 61' screen) and the Loews Orpheum (1025 seats downstairs theater, 599 upstairs theater) were my screens of choice, but we’ll never see the likes of those again.
“The premiere Loews auditorium is THX-certified. ”
That auditorium is now the Dolby screen with a reduced seat count (from 787 to 289) and therefore no longer has THX certification (although theoretically, there’s no reason why a Dolby auditorium couldn’t be THX certified.) By my count, the total seat count is now 3245.
Good question. I’d love to know the answer myself. One of the issues is that some of the theaters might have been built primarily for movies, but had stage shows with the films, like the Loews State and Radio City Music Hall.
One source of info is if you have an online subscription to the NY Times, you can go to Times Machine site and look at the pages of almost any issue going back to the Civil War. The Times wasn’t always a great entertainment paper, so it won’t have everything, but if you start around 1920, make a list of theaters featuring stage plays or Vaudeville and then as you get into the film section, see if there are theaters that played films, but never previously played live shows. This site might help as well – just go through every Manhattan theater and see in the description if it ever had live performers.
Not sure of its exact location, but there was a west side theater called “City Photoplays” built in 1910 with 2267 seats (not sure where I got that info). Sure sounds to me like it was built for movies.
I’ve also gotta' believe that most of the East Side theaters were built as movie theaters.
By my count, the total number of seats in this theatre (not including wheelchair spaces, but including wheelchair companion spaces) is now 3699. IMAX: 312, Dolby: 221, Prime: 175 and from 50 to 371 in the rest.
Ads? Every theater I go to keeps the lights half up during ads anyway. Who cares? What’s more disconcerting is the reflection of the EXIT lights on the screen during the actual movie, but due to NYC Fire Department rules, there’s not much one can do. These are antiquated rules that go back to the days of nitrate film. When was the last time there was a fire in a NYC movie theater? And even if there was, if the EXIT lights were dimmer, do they really think people wouldn’t see them?
Bobby: Theaters don’t play Blu-rays or DVD’s or even UHD’s except in some special circumstances, like a film festival or a very old film. They play what’s called a DCP (Digital Content Package) that’s provided by the studios. It’s a hard drive with lots of security that is opened by a digital key and is then uploaded to a server by the theater staff. And you’re confusing laserdiscs and laser projection. Laserdiscs were read by a laser (as are CD’s, DVD’s, Blu-ray and UHD discs). Laser projection uses a laser as a lighting source to project the image and in most cases, also uses two projectors to brighten the image. Laser projection is used today mostly only in IMAX, Dolby, Prime and other large format screens. That could change in the future as projection equipment gets upgraded.
I’d say laser is sharper than 70mm, but is it better? That’s subjective. Some people feel that film’s inherent colors and its grain structure makes for a better picture. But today’s few 70mm prints are generally made from digital intermediates, so they’re not a true representation of what Todd-AO or Super Panavision 70mm was like. And old prints are faded and damaged. Also, today’s few 70mm prints use DTS digital sound and while the specs are better than analog, I feel the old 6-track magnetic analog soundtracks when they were at their best, sounded far superior.
Seat count was originally 1555 and now it’s just 560: 62, 72, 82, 89, 97 and 158. (That doesn’t include wheelchair spots, but does include companion chairs).
While I agree that the tickets are expensive, the people that theater is going to attract are those who paid multi-million dollars for their apartments or are renting apartments for $5000 a month. I don’t think they’re too worried about an $18.50 movie ticket. Besides, the entire place has only 558 seats. The theaters are 19, 22, 25, 34, 48, 75, 164 and 171 seats. Shouldn’t be too hard to fill.
IMO, they’ve made each of the theaters far too small. I think there’s only a total of 272 seats across all five screens, the largest with 66 seats and the smallest with 36 seats. If they’re going to show the same film on three screens, wouldn’t it have made more sense to simply have a larger theater and fewer screens? The old two main screens were ideal and had excellent sound. But then they put it in a 3D reflective screen and the images had soft focus. But that was before the latest renovation.
Personally, I think this strategy of pulling out half to two-thirds of the seats to install lounge seating is nuts. Every time they sell-out a show, they’re leaving money on the table, plus it limits the number of ideal seats. It might make sense for Monday-Thursday, but it makes no sense for weekends when popular movies draw big crowds. This theater used to have almost 3300 seats. Now it’s about 1345. The RPX screen was 508 and #12 was 490. Now they’re 208 and 204. They should have left #12 and #13 alone. Why do we have to lie down to see a movie? Ridiculous, IMO.
I don’t know whether they’ve converted some of the screens to lounge seating, but the seat count is way down from what it was. Looks to me like the current total seat count is around 3369. That doesn’t include wheelchair spots, but it does include the accompany wheelchair seats. The IMAX #1 screen is 312, the Dolby #8 is 221. Two other screens (probably #13 and #18) are 301 and 256. The other 21 screens have 50 to 152 seats.
I don’t know how they can stop Moviepass because they don’t know Moviepass is being used. Moviepass essentially puts money onto a credit card. AMC doesn’t know Moviepass is being used as it’s just a payment method. Moviepass can’t be used for IMAX or Dolby screens, but it’s Moviepass that prevents that.
In terms of advance ticket sales, the next Avengers movie has already broken all previous AMC records. After the first 72 hours of advance ticket sales at AMC, Infinity War is 257.6% ahead of Black Panther, 715.5% ahead of Captain America: Civil War and 1106.5% ahead of Avengers: Age of Ultron. So for everyone who complains that Hollywood is only making sequels, prequels and comic book movies, that’s because they sell.
In the 1950s and early 60’s, I lived not far away and went here often. At 560 seats, it would now be one of the largest theaters in NYC, but at the time, it was considered tiny. I was taken by my father to see Fantasia here in 1955, which is the first film I remember seeing in a theater. I also saw “Freud” there around 1962. It tended to play slightly higher-class films than the RKO Marble Hill around the corner, although I think I saw far more films at the RKO. When I got a little older, I’d take the bus to the Loew’s Paradise.
The addition on the roof is to hold solar panels. And the big screen is not #1 – I forget what it is – it might be #3. It is six screens – you can easily see that by looking at the show times . The sound in the theaters is pretty good, but @thebrat is correct that the middle aisles in all but the big screen are pretty bad. Also, the big screen suffers from parallax distortion. When I saw “Darkest Hour” there on one of the smaller screens, the left channel was missing. I do like seeing arty films there, but for bigger films, I go to a better theater in Manhattan.
One thing I don’t like about the theater is that the elderly audience who patronizes it always has someone who lets their phone ring and doesn’t know how to shut it off and they also tend to talk a lot during the film. They’re worse than the kids.
The MTA is threatening to tear down the bridge and isn’t renewing leases on the stores. This theater isn’t quite over the bridge, but anyone know if that construction is going to negatively impact the theater?
SAVE the theater? The E25 is reputed to be the highest grossing theater in the U.S. I’m glad the E25 (and the Lincoln Square) doesn’t have recliners in most of the auditoriums (although there are some auditoriums where their seats do need to be fixed or replaced). Recliners reduce the seat count to ridiculously small levels and when they construct it with a center aisle, there’s no ideal seat.
There’s at least 8 screens with fewer than 100 seats. With recliners, they’d probably only have 50 seats each.
The E-Walk once had 3276 seats and now, with their two best screens, #12 and #13 being closed due to renovation, the seat count is down to just 932. Word is that one of those auditoriums is going to be the new 4DX auditorium. The lobby of the E-Walk is being destroyed to make room for some crappy retail.
What I’d like to see the E25 do is to take either screen #14 (currently 301 seats) or another screen they have with 351 seats and make a second Dolby screen. There’s a lot of films released in Dolby that never get played in NYC in that format because all the AMC’s with a Dolby screen play the same film.
Whenever I’ve been at the E25, the bathrooms have been very clean. I will say that the hallway decoration at the E-Walk is nicer. Also, the elevators are almost always not working at the E25 and taking the escalators up from the entrance lobby to the theater level is narrow and ugly.
The Continental 1 and 2 may have opened in ‘63, but the 3, which was equipped for 70mm, opened much later, probably in the 90’s. The Brandon stayed open longer.
When I heard they were closing the 3, I wrote to the landlord asking him to keep the 70mm theater or to move that equipment to the other theater, but he said they closed the 3rd theater because it was easier to reconstruct into retail because the floor didn’t have as deep a slope. The Brandon is now a pediatric emergency care center. The 3rd theater, as stated, is now a Gap.
I count 3241 seats.
OK, I recounted now that they’re fully open again and I get 2057 seats (not including wheelchair spaces). I suppose it’s possible there are some slight errors and it’s the 2068 that @ridethectrain claims.
1: 86, #2: 119, #3: 124, #4: 21, #5: 22, #6 (4DX): 120, #7: 124 #8: 98, #9: 50, #10: 135, #11: 127, #12: 133, #13 (RPX): 277, #14: 148, #15: 118, #16: 91, #17: 288.
As of July, 2021 (and probably long before) they are NOT showing movies.
@HowardBHaas: While it’s true that the 70mm Todd-AO format called for a 2.2: 1 aspect ratio, it’s not because of the “surround sound”. It’s because the Todd-AO format was based on the Grandeur 65/70mm format of the 1920’s, which was 2.13:1.
Also remember that when Cinemascope was first released in 1953, it had 4-track mag soundtracks only and the original aspect ratio was 2.55:1. It was reduced to 2.35:1 to also accomodate a mono optical sound track, which the theater owners demanded.
One of the first films to use 2.35 was “Love Me Tender” with Elvis Presley, released in 1956. (To accommodate digital sound and because lab splices were visible on the screen, the entire image was made slightly smaller and the AR became slightly wider at 2.39:1 in later years. In digital, it’s generally 2.4:1.)
Starting in 1986, a few 70mm films WERE released in 2.35 which was accomplished by simply reducing the height. This way, the sides didn’t have to be cropped as they were with most 35mm anamorphic to 70mm spherical blowups. Those films were: Star Trek IV (1986), The Untouchables, Casualties of War and Die Hard 2 (the last two are unconfirmed.) IMO, they should have been doing this all along and it was actually a recommended practice as published in the American Cinematographers Manual, I believe beginning in the 6th edition, published in 1986.
Dalian Wanda has cashed out its stock investment in AMC Theaters, so they’re no longer the majority shareholder and no longer in charge. That could be either good or bad news. AMC almost always lost money in recent history, but they ended 2020 with a $2.4 billion net loss and in the first quarter of 2021, they lost almost another $295 million. The last times they were profitable were 2018, 2016 and 2015.
There are real questions about their future, although I think the NYC theaters would survive no matter what. Not that Regal is in much better shape.
Actually, I think it’s 1353 seats.
Since the renovation and the installation of lounge seating, the total seat count (not including wheelchair seats) is down to 1036. It was 3065. Screen #4 is just 11 seats and screen #5 is just 12 seats. Who thought this was a good idea?
I would have to disagree that it will have very little impact. I think it will have tremendous impact, although time will tell. Even before COVID, AMC theaters across the chain averaged ticket sales of only 92 tickets per day, per screen. From 2015 to 2019, AMC (which is the largest chain) lost $289 million. During the first two quarters of this year, AMC lost over $563 million and by the end of the year, it will probably be $1 billion.
So theaters are going to have a tough time surviving in any case.
Now throw in day-and-date streaming and a generation of people who are happy streaming on small screens and I personally don’t see how theaters can survive. Personally, I love going to movie theaters, but during the week, before COVID, whenever I went to see a film, there were few people in the theater. That’s not sustainable anywhere, but especially not in such an expensive city like NYC.
I think the only hope for movie theaters is if the studios buy them. But they might not care. Disney+ now has over 80 million subscribers. That will generate $7.68 billion per year and Disney keeps most of that money (no distributor shares). They may decide they don’t need the theaters.
Having said that, theaters could survive if people actually attended, but they don’t. In 2019 there were about 23.9m admissions per week. It was 50-60m in 1950 and 85-90m each year from 1945 to 1948.
@mikeoaklandpark No matter what happens to the movie industry, you will never see a theater of that size again open. There simply isn’t the business for it. AMC is the largest chain and they averaged (before COVID19) sales of just 92 tickets per day, per screen. That’s about 23 tickets per show. That’s why all the new and renovated theaters being built have so few seats in each screen. That’s quite unfortunate and I think it hurts the movie experience, but that’s the reality. Theatrical attendance is becoming a specialty market.
Back in the day, the Ziegfeld (1150 seats 52' screen), the Astor Plaza (1440 seats 61' screen) and the Loews Orpheum (1025 seats downstairs theater, 599 upstairs theater) were my screens of choice, but we’ll never see the likes of those again.
“The premiere Loews auditorium is THX-certified. ” That auditorium is now the Dolby screen with a reduced seat count (from 787 to 289) and therefore no longer has THX certification (although theoretically, there’s no reason why a Dolby auditorium couldn’t be THX certified.) By my count, the total seat count is now 3245.
Good question. I’d love to know the answer myself. One of the issues is that some of the theaters might have been built primarily for movies, but had stage shows with the films, like the Loews State and Radio City Music Hall.
One source of info is if you have an online subscription to the NY Times, you can go to Times Machine site and look at the pages of almost any issue going back to the Civil War. The Times wasn’t always a great entertainment paper, so it won’t have everything, but if you start around 1920, make a list of theaters featuring stage plays or Vaudeville and then as you get into the film section, see if there are theaters that played films, but never previously played live shows. This site might help as well – just go through every Manhattan theater and see in the description if it ever had live performers.
Not sure of its exact location, but there was a west side theater called “City Photoplays” built in 1910 with 2267 seats (not sure where I got that info). Sure sounds to me like it was built for movies.
I’ve also gotta' believe that most of the East Side theaters were built as movie theaters.
By my count, the total number of seats in this theatre (not including wheelchair spaces, but including wheelchair companion spaces) is now 3699. IMAX: 312, Dolby: 221, Prime: 175 and from 50 to 371 in the rest.
Ads? Every theater I go to keeps the lights half up during ads anyway. Who cares? What’s more disconcerting is the reflection of the EXIT lights on the screen during the actual movie, but due to NYC Fire Department rules, there’s not much one can do. These are antiquated rules that go back to the days of nitrate film. When was the last time there was a fire in a NYC movie theater? And even if there was, if the EXIT lights were dimmer, do they really think people wouldn’t see them?
Total seat count is now about 3254 (not including wheelchair seats).
This theater now has 883 seats: 104, 118, 149, 167, 169 and 176 seats (not including wheelchair spots).
Bobby: Theaters don’t play Blu-rays or DVD’s or even UHD’s except in some special circumstances, like a film festival or a very old film. They play what’s called a DCP (Digital Content Package) that’s provided by the studios. It’s a hard drive with lots of security that is opened by a digital key and is then uploaded to a server by the theater staff. And you’re confusing laserdiscs and laser projection. Laserdiscs were read by a laser (as are CD’s, DVD’s, Blu-ray and UHD discs). Laser projection uses a laser as a lighting source to project the image and in most cases, also uses two projectors to brighten the image. Laser projection is used today mostly only in IMAX, Dolby, Prime and other large format screens. That could change in the future as projection equipment gets upgraded.
I’d say laser is sharper than 70mm, but is it better? That’s subjective. Some people feel that film’s inherent colors and its grain structure makes for a better picture. But today’s few 70mm prints are generally made from digital intermediates, so they’re not a true representation of what Todd-AO or Super Panavision 70mm was like. And old prints are faded and damaged. Also, today’s few 70mm prints use DTS digital sound and while the specs are better than analog, I feel the old 6-track magnetic analog soundtracks when they were at their best, sounded far superior.
Seat count was originally 1555 and now it’s just 560: 62, 72, 82, 89, 97 and 158. (That doesn’t include wheelchair spots, but does include companion chairs).
While I agree that the tickets are expensive, the people that theater is going to attract are those who paid multi-million dollars for their apartments or are renting apartments for $5000 a month. I don’t think they’re too worried about an $18.50 movie ticket. Besides, the entire place has only 558 seats. The theaters are 19, 22, 25, 34, 48, 75, 164 and 171 seats. Shouldn’t be too hard to fill.
IMO, they’ve made each of the theaters far too small. I think there’s only a total of 272 seats across all five screens, the largest with 66 seats and the smallest with 36 seats. If they’re going to show the same film on three screens, wouldn’t it have made more sense to simply have a larger theater and fewer screens? The old two main screens were ideal and had excellent sound. But then they put it in a 3D reflective screen and the images had soft focus. But that was before the latest renovation.
Personally, I think this strategy of pulling out half to two-thirds of the seats to install lounge seating is nuts. Every time they sell-out a show, they’re leaving money on the table, plus it limits the number of ideal seats. It might make sense for Monday-Thursday, but it makes no sense for weekends when popular movies draw big crowds. This theater used to have almost 3300 seats. Now it’s about 1345. The RPX screen was 508 and #12 was 490. Now they’re 208 and 204. They should have left #12 and #13 alone. Why do we have to lie down to see a movie? Ridiculous, IMO.
I don’t know whether they’ve converted some of the screens to lounge seating, but the seat count is way down from what it was. Looks to me like the current total seat count is around 3369. That doesn’t include wheelchair spots, but it does include the accompany wheelchair seats. The IMAX #1 screen is 312, the Dolby #8 is 221. Two other screens (probably #13 and #18) are 301 and 256. The other 21 screens have 50 to 152 seats.
I don’t know how they can stop Moviepass because they don’t know Moviepass is being used. Moviepass essentially puts money onto a credit card. AMC doesn’t know Moviepass is being used as it’s just a payment method. Moviepass can’t be used for IMAX or Dolby screens, but it’s Moviepass that prevents that.
In terms of advance ticket sales, the next Avengers movie has already broken all previous AMC records. After the first 72 hours of advance ticket sales at AMC, Infinity War is 257.6% ahead of Black Panther, 715.5% ahead of Captain America: Civil War and 1106.5% ahead of Avengers: Age of Ultron. So for everyone who complains that Hollywood is only making sequels, prequels and comic book movies, that’s because they sell.
In the 1950s and early 60’s, I lived not far away and went here often. At 560 seats, it would now be one of the largest theaters in NYC, but at the time, it was considered tiny. I was taken by my father to see Fantasia here in 1955, which is the first film I remember seeing in a theater. I also saw “Freud” there around 1962. It tended to play slightly higher-class films than the RKO Marble Hill around the corner, although I think I saw far more films at the RKO. When I got a little older, I’d take the bus to the Loew’s Paradise.
The addition on the roof is to hold solar panels. And the big screen is not #1 – I forget what it is – it might be #3. It is six screens – you can easily see that by looking at the show times . The sound in the theaters is pretty good, but @thebrat is correct that the middle aisles in all but the big screen are pretty bad. Also, the big screen suffers from parallax distortion. When I saw “Darkest Hour” there on one of the smaller screens, the left channel was missing. I do like seeing arty films there, but for bigger films, I go to a better theater in Manhattan.
One thing I don’t like about the theater is that the elderly audience who patronizes it always has someone who lets their phone ring and doesn’t know how to shut it off and they also tend to talk a lot during the film. They’re worse than the kids.
The MTA is threatening to tear down the bridge and isn’t renewing leases on the stores. This theater isn’t quite over the bridge, but anyone know if that construction is going to negatively impact the theater?