Constantin, Museum Lichtspiele, Munich: I used to say that summertime is a bit emptier, as people tend to do a lot of outdoor stuff in Munich when it’s warm, but this year, maybe because of the movie’s birthday, a lot of showings have been very busy or even sold out. Even during the Halloween period, we showed it seventeen times and had around 700 to 800 guests, which made me very happy.
Beruchet, Studio Galande, Paris: We first stopped playing it on Mondays as there was a certain festivity to the film that you couldn’t get, then Tuesday, then Wednesday… This is over forty years. About eight years ago, we still used to do two showings on Friday and Saturday. Now we do 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays. The 9pm slot feels more like theater, like a real show. It still sells out those shows, so that’s not bad… but I must say, Rocky works well, but the theater generally is dwindling. 30 or 40 years ago, we’d have up to 1,000 admissions per week, and now we’re around 300. But we don’t do it for the money. It’s the smell of it, the kids, the adults, the atmosphere.
Paul, Prince Charles Cinema, London: It’s had its ups and downs over the years, but the decline in interest has never felt like it’s due to the film itself, but more in line with a wider level of interest in “event cinema”. The love was always there; it always sold-out double shows on Halloween and was still popular on a Friday evening, but the frequency of performances did slow down.
Part of that is the boom of large-scale, high-cost, immersive experiences being offered up to audiences—doing such things in cinema felt a little small when put up against the competition. Post-COVID, audiences didn’t want to sit and sing and shout in enclosed spaces as much.
But in the past eighteen months, general interest in the film and the interactive element of it has started to creep back up again as we’re slowly returning it to monthly scheduling—to simply meet the level of demand we’re starting to see.
