It's closed?

[Kheldarson]

I thought this was slightly strange. I know there are all kinds of stories on here about customers coming up when you're closed, but had a strange reversal of that last night.

My brother decided he wanted to go out and do something last night, so we decided to see The Soloist. The latest showing was 10:40 at a nearby theater. So we get in the car and go. Got there just minutes before the showtime...only to find out that they were completely shut down for the night. And we weren't the only ones who had shown up.

Now I understand it's a Tuesday night, but still, shouldn't you be open if you have a showtime listed?

[KMMCurly]

The same thing happened to me and my friend when we went to see Sweeney Todd. Double checked the time in the newspaper and on the 'net. Got there 5-10 minutes before start time. Nothing. Completely shut down.

We weren't the only ones. Some girls turned up looking to get into another film (could've been P.S. I love you but I could be wrong), and they were surprised to see it closed too. So it wasn't just us being idiots.

[Jbball]

Sometimes theatres do this when business is slow.

When I worked at a theatre, we were required to run ALL movies, all the time. It got to the point where we'd be wasting money on staff, electricity and using our projector bulbs to show a movie that we really didn't need to.

If someone hadn't purchased a ticket for a movie when it was supposed to start, we'd start it only if someone came up within 15 minutes after the start time. If nobody came, we'd shut down the auditorium.

Worked fairly well. We'd get a few people that would come a bit after and we'd start the movie for them.


I had this one couple that came in over an hour late for Lord of the Rings: FOTR and wanted to buy tickets, but we never started it. I told them we weren't selling tickets, but they still thought we had started the movie on time and wanted to just watch the rest of it. When I told them that we never started the movie, they requested that I play it just for them. I declined, stating that a three hour movie would keep us open over 2 hours past our normal closing time. They quickly scampered off.

Though it does have it's advantages, it sucks for the customers that get caught running late and such. Thinking back, I wouldn't have ever done it. But, I didn't have the greatest work ethic back then.