Movie screenings depend on … you

I received another e-mail this morning inquiring about the local movie scene:

Hi Dan: In reading last weeks 7, a few movies such as “Talk To Me,” “The Bourne Ultimatum” and another with Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony (I forgot the movie name ) were listed as opening here Friday. Yet, when I looked at the schedule on 7 now it only shows “Bourne.” Can you tell me what happened and who controls these openings here?

Thanks, Edward

Edward: The movies that are opening this week are “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “Hot Rod,” “Bratz” and “Underdog.” Those are the kinds of mainstream films that, as you probably know, typically run at the Regal locations. Anything other than the ordinary, such as “Talk to Me” or the J-Lo film film you mentioned, “El Cantante” – both of which open in other cities on Friday — play here typically at AMC’s River Park Square Theatres.

Trouble is, we at 7 never know until the last minute, usually by Tuesday morning, what films actually are going to open. Those decision are made by the bookers who work at AMC’s headquarters (in Kansas City, I think), and they usually are based on print availability and whether other films (“The Simpsons Movie,” for example) are doing well enough to justify opening up screens to alternative product. All that said, we are forced to run advance listings that report what potentially will open if, say, boxofficemojo.com or imdb.com indicate that a particular film will open “wide” as, say, opposed to “top 10 markets.”

At this point, there’s no way of telling whether any Spokane theater will get either “Talk to Me” or “El Cantante.” What I can tell you is that AMC reports that it is going to open two other much-anticipated films, “Sunshine” and “Paprika,” on Aug. 10. So there’s always a chance to the smaller films eventually will play on a Spokane screen.

Sorry that I don’t have any better news to give you.

– Dan Webster