Tony Jones - Cinema Programmer

City Screen
City Screen has over 500 staff managing a number of cinemas including the Curzon Soho and the Curzon Mayfair. The company does not like to be described as 'a chain' as they try to promote the individual character of each cinema in the group. However, as a company they are known for releasing art house and quality commercial titles.

Describe your average week.
Monday is hold over day, when we look at how a film has performed and decide if we are going to keep it on or not. I talk to the managers of all our sites and see how they have done. I try and visit one of our sites at least once a week, where I look at technical improvements, tweaking the sound if it needs it, whatever issues the manager raises.

In simple terms, how does the business work?
Distributors who have licensed films from film-makers offer us their titles for exhibition. Every year we negotiate a scale for all our sites  how much we take and how much we give to the distributor. It would take half your article to describe the scales in detail but in simple terms, a cinema might take 75% of the box office for the first two weeks and then go down to 50-50.

Does it change from title to title?
These scales are supposed to be agreed but, on big titles, more and more distributors are asking for 50-50 from the first week, which is making our business harder and harder. If a film stiffs we rely on the bigger titles to make up for it. A distributor can respond quickly to demand by striking more prints. We, however, have just the one outlet- the cinema - to create revenue and often have big capital investments like the development of new cinemas to pay for so it's frustrating.