Femi Branch and several other Nollywood professionals have voiced their disapproval of what they see as the unfair preference for some films over others in theaters.
The head of Viva Cinemas’ operations and former chairman of the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria, Patrick Lee, is now discussing some of the charges made against the theaters. This is what Patrick Lee said.
Speaking about people complaining about their movies being moved from one screening room to another, usually with a bigger movie getting preferred hall, Patrick Lee said:
PATRICK LEE: In any busy period you often have situations where sometimes your equipment breaks down and when it comes like that and you’re unable to repair, you make a commercial decision. Your commercial decision is: if I’m going to expect a hundred customers to come in to watch a particular movie, it is advisable to put it in the hall where you have air conditioning if another hall doesn’t have.
So that often happens where you might have a situation where equipment breaks down and they move one film from one hall to the next one. The highest selling film will always get the best facilities because we need to take care of our our customers both in terms of their safety and in terms of their comfort, so that can happen and it can happen at any cinema.
Then, speaking about cinema staff advertising one person’s movie over another, or telling staff to watch one movie over another, Patrick said:
PATRICK LEE: We don’t tell the staff to tell customers what movie to watch. I’ve been in the business now 15 years.
When I first started, we had customers come into the cinema to ask our staff what movies should I watch because there wasn’t a lot of social media information with regards to movies that are showing so they depended on staff and we encouraged most of our staff and still do till today, for our staff to go and watch movies for that number of customers that will come and ask “Should I watch this movie? Is it a good movie?” Those questions are often asked, but our staff do not encourage customers to go and watch one movie over another.
We do have situations where a customer can come to buy a ticket and see a staff wearing a t-shirt of a movie, these are all promotional material that is given to us by the producers and the distributors and in some cases we agree to wear those promotional material while selling the movies. Not every producer or distributor brings promotional material.
When they do, it serves as two things: one, it allows us to promote the movie. Two, it allows us to compliment our staff. We give them those t-shirts they enjoy, they take the T-shirt home, it’s nice. But when customers come, it can sometimes be misinterpreted to lead to the fact that a cinema is trying to sway a customer to do that. But that’s not what we do. Generally, it doesn’t happen.
Finally, speaking about why it looks like “Everybody Loves Jenifa” is getting preferential treatment over other movies like “The Waiter” in terms of screening times, Patrick Lee said:
PATRICK LEE: Funke Akindele’s movie “Everybody Loves Jenifa” and “Thin Line” released one week earlier than “The Waiter”.
When a movie releases on a particular day, the most important period of determining the movie’s success and it works 90% of the time, is the first week. The first week tells you if a movie is going to sell and I’ll give you an example going back almost 10 years+.
When the first ‘Jenifa’ was released then and we gave that movie first showing 12:40, second show 6:00 or thereabouts; at 12:40, the hall was 90% full. Now you would say that’s an unfavorable time, but the customers came out at that unfavorable time to watch the movie at 12:40. That immediately told me that this movie may have legs, it may sell, and we are now put in a situation where you have to make a decision: what do I do next? Do I give it additional shows, because people will come.
Now coming back to today, when the movie Jenifa released the Friday before Waiter, the level of attendance in almost every cinema around the country told exhibitors of each cinema that this movie was going to do well.
By the first weekend, the movie has scaled 100 million+ and it kept at that level of about 30 million naira per day, which is the type of figure some movies make in the whole of their lifetime in the cinema. This movie was doing it per day.
Now you are a business owner, you make a judgment call. Do I gamble on what I know or do I risk the new movie coming out?