Q&A: Theater Vital Statistics

Lisa asks:

I'm in the process of trying to pull together a business plan for a tri-plex in Oregon. I found your posts pretty enlightening, and was wondering if you happened to know of any source for finding out "vital statistics" of an existing theater -- how many it seats, what kind of projection equipment it has, etc. Thanks! --Lisa

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for the note. i love hearing from kindred spirits and hope you keep reading the blog.

The most comprehensive source (that I've personally read) is the Moxie blog I link to on the sidebar (http://blog.moxiecinema.com/). I can't stress enough what and amazing job Dan Chilton does of chronicling the entire process he's going through to bring his theater to life. He has plenty of vital statistics in the many posts on the blog, but if you want a shortcut to specifics, I'm sure you could just email him and ask. He's also posted a comrehensive budget of purchases he's making which reads like a how-to.

I'd actually really like to see the balace sheets and any other numbers associated with big multiplexes myself, since my leanings are to be numerically analytical, but I don't currently know where to find this stuff myself. If you happen to find a good resource, please let me know :)

There are a few other resources that I've always wanted to chek out as well. One is the nato publication "The Encyclopedia of Exhbition" This is available on their website (www.natoonline.org) for a C note, which is a little too much for me to cough up before I've even seen the book. I attended the nato (national association of theater owners) convention, SHOWest, last year and disappointingly, they didn't have on there. I think this should have some great zeitgeist type views of the industry if not specifics for individual theaters or chains.

There is also the website www.bigscreenbiz.com which they rave about on the moxieblog. I think there are some very accessible forums to query and converse in.

Those are all my ideas. I'd love to hear what you find out!