AMC theaters will no longer show Universal movies

Plus Universal is THE largest entertainment company of the world and this is why this is major news.

 

And, don't forget they own cable company Comcast. Back when the US used to have anti-trust laws, they would break this sort of crap up, and instead "it's all good."

Here's the NASDAQ guide to all the stuff under that umbrella: Your Complete Guide to Everything Owned by Comcast

Comcast owns popular film studio Universal Studios. It is considered one of Hollywood's "Big 6" film studios, along with Warner Bros. Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, Fox Filmed Entertainment, and Paramount Motion Pictures Group.

Universal operates smaller film studio divisions including Illumination Entertainment, art house-centered Focus Features, Working Title Films, Universal Animation Studios, Universal Interactive, Universal Pictures International, and Universal Studios Home Entertainment.

Comcast's NBCUniversal division acquired DreamWorks Animation studio for roughly $3.8 billion last year. While DreamWorks is best known for its hit animated franchises Shrek and Kung Fu Panda , much of the studio's value to Comcast is in the so-called "long tail" of amusement park integrations, merchandise, and other synergistic deals.

Television

Its most prominent media company is NBCUniversal, which owns and operates a slew of television network companies.

In its portfolio, NBCUniversal has the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) network, which includes NBC Entertainment, NBC News, NBC Sports, and NBC Studios. It also owns the NBCUniversal Television Group (Universal Television, NBCUniversal Television Distribution, and NBC-owned local television stations around the country), as well as NBCUniversal Cable (includes popular channels like Bravo, E!, USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, mun2, Chiller, SyFy, Sleuth, and Universal HD).

The company also owns The Weather Channel Companies with private equity firm Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group (BX). This includes the popular Weather Channel, and its interactive components www.weather.com , and mobile and desktop versions.

Through NBCUniversal, Comcast dabbles heavily in sports under NBC Sports Group. This consists of the Universal Sports Network, NBCSN, and the Golf Channel stations, in addition to Comcast SportsNet.

Other sports-themed ventures include the MLB Network in partnership with Major League Baseball and other providers; SportsNet New York in partnership with the New York Mets and Time Warner TWX ; Comcast Sports Southeast/Charter Sports Southeast in partnership with Charter Communications CHTR ; and the NHL Network in partnership with the National Hockey League.

The company also has a large international presence with Universal Networks International.

The division is comprised of the LAPTV (Latin America Pay Television Service), a television company that Comcast co-owns with Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures, MGM Studios, and News Corp NWSA -owned 20 th Century Fox.

Universal Networks International also owns the Brazil-based Telecine, which is co-owned with Globosat Canais, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, MGM, and 20 th Century Fox, as well as Universal Channel Latin America, Universal Channel Brazil, SyFy Latin America, and Telemundo, which includes many local Hispanic television networks.

Cable

Comcast did not become the country's biggest cable provider without acquiring valuable companies along the way.

In 1985, Comcast, along with American Television and Communications (a Time, Inc. TIME subsidiary), Tele-Communications, Daniels & Associates, and the Century Southwest Communications Corporation, bought Group W Cable, a division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation.

In 2001, it bought the largest cable television operator at the time, AT&T Broadband, a division of AT&T T , for over $44 billion.

Then, in 2005, Comcast announced that it had bought Susquehanna Communications, a South Central Pennsylvania-based cable television and broadband services provider and unit of the former Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff company, for $775 million in cash. This gave the company about 230,000 basic cable customers, 71,000 digital cable customers, and 86,000 high-speed Internet customers.

In partnership with Time Warner in 2006, Comcast purchased the majority of the floundering Adelphia Communications Corporation, which was the fifth largest cable company in the U.S. before filing for bankruptcy.

Comcast began promoting its Xfinity service in 2010. This includes what they call their "triple play" services: digital cable, cable Internet access, and cable telephone. Today, most of Comcast's cable services have changed names to reflect the Xfinity brand. For example, Comcast Digital Cable has been renamed "Xfinity TV," Comcast Digital Voice became "Xfinity Voice," and Comcast High-Speed Internet has been renamed "Xfinity Internet."

Other Business Units

In order to cash in on digital trends, Comcast created a division called Comcast Interactive Media; this unit includes XFINITY.com and xfintityTV.com, popular movie ticket service Fandango, entertainment ticketing company New Era Tickets, online video publishing company thePlatform, and StreamSage.

The company also owns and operates sports and entertainment venues under the division Comcast Spectacor. Through this unit, Comcast owns the Philadelphia Flyers of the NHL; it also owns and manages the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.

As part of its NBCUniversal division, Comcast owns and operates its theme park subsidiary Universal Parks and Resorts. There are currently four running parks: Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles; Universal Orlando Resort in Orlando, Florida; Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, and Universal Studios Singapore in Singapore.

Comcast partnered with Disney and 21 st Century Fox to form Hulu, a video-streaming entity that is a burgeoning competitor to Netflix NFLX and Amazon's AMZN Prime. At this year's Emmys ceremony, Hulu became the first streaming platform to take home the coveted award for Outstanding Drama Series for its critically-acclaimed show The Handmaid's Tale , in addition to winning in seven other categories.
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Read that and tell me that you'd be happy to see AMC Theaters die.

 

I'm not going to any theaters until they bring back this ...

 

The US technically still has these laws but they are just being thrown out the window in practice.

 

If PPV streaming/purchasing right out of the gate becomes the new normal for studios you can kiss all movie theatres goodbye. The only reason theatres exist is the 3 month window for new releases, lose that and forget it, that's why AMC and others will fight what Universal is doing.

 

Let’s see. They helped put independent movie theaters out of business. They have exclusive distribution deals that keep competing chains from running the same films. Their theaters are often poorly constructed so the audio from movies from adjacent theaters bleed through.

And their theaters are generic indistinct eyesores that all look the same. They’re the McDonalds of the movie world.

if they’re scared of competition from the studios doing direct ‘home’ releases maybe they should come up with reasons to entice people to visit instead of bellyaching.

 

The movie theater industry is an interesting business. There have always been new strategies, technologies and gimmicks to sell tickets but he majority have come and gone. A few things haven't changed though, a big screen, big sound system and lots of seating for the public.

I like the old saying "Find a good place to sell popcorn and build a theater there." and I think that generally works. I do agree that there is a large number of people would would be happy to watch new releases at home, plenty of people with nice systems to enjoy big picture and sound at home and enough who would rather not risk the annoying coughing and cell phone lights when watching but the act of going to see something on a 20-30 foot screen with surround or immersive audio with your friends is a part of culture that, I believe, will be hard to kill in our lifetime.

If the movie is fantasy or sci-fi, I have to watch it in a theater. I want the escape. If it's a down to earth drama with great writing, I can enjoy that on my couch. I think the shear size of the commercial theater product will keep it going for quite a while no matter how the content owners choose to release their productions.

 

From my POV, they have. A-List is an affordable way to see lots of movies, and I like their concessions choices.

The AMCs near me are good theaters, not "poorly constructed".

Feels like most of those criticisms can be leveled at Regal or Harkins or whoever...

 

You never hear bleed-through of audio?

 

Never? I won't claim "never", but it's not been a prominent issue at most AMCs.

The ones I go to are fairly new. Seems to me that pre-2000 multiplexes are much more prone to bleed-through.

Anyway, however prevalent it may be at AMC - and I don't know - it's not exclusive to AMC. I don't think there's a single multiplex chain that doesn't have some branches that suffer from audio bleed-through.

Like I said, I think the majority of your criticisms of AMC apply to all the rest as well...

 

I don’t go to any chain movie theaters.
The crowds are disrespectful & noisy;
the smell of theater food is nauseous
and they are dirty. Let all of them bite the dust. I’ve got a home theater & I’m happy with the sound, quality & screen size.

 

We saw this same argument on the Amoeba thread, where people suddenly became nostalgic for indie record stores they hadn't patronised in years anyway. In that thread Amoeba was labeled the Disneyland of record stores. Now AMC is the McDonald's of the movie world. Both seem like compliments to me. It is true that the giants had exclusivity deals, but that was more of a turf battle with their fellow giants. People long ago gave up on standalone "indie" movie theaters with their outdated systems and antique seating.

Finally who the hell cares what an AMC (or any other multiplex) looks like? A lot of them are in malls anyway. It's all the same when the lights go out.

But, yes, to hell with the exhibitors and their outrageous prices and questionable hygiene. And to the studios and their interminable franchise and sequels.

 

Hey, if you like bland architecture littering the landscape more power to you. And if you like McDonalds, that's great too.

 

effective immediately

HA. Because they are open and showing films right now.

Silly!

 

Admittedly I don't go to friends' houses if I don't care for the architecture. Every commercial and personal decision I make is based on construction design.

 

So how do you feel about the exclusive contracts AMC has giving them exclusivity to certain new releases so their competitors can't screen them? To me it seems hypocrtitical of them to have these and balk at Universal home streaming

 

AMC stock's up 30% today. (I hate being sidelined.)

 

Streaming Killed The Movie Theater, Streaming Killed The Movie Theater, Amc ,Regal, Cinemark, all left there mark..
In my mind I can't rewind we gone too far..
I got this video killed the radio star. by the buggles

 

I seen this in 2001 in dream how all first run movies would be shown on cable etc.
I guess it's coming true.

 

Yeah but it seems like they just looked at the success of Trolls (which I would not consider to be on the more "serious" side of cinema) and said FU to theaters, they're going to release VOD first day for now on. But like I said in other threads, the tech savvy people who are not into theaters are just going to watch rips of those movies on their firesticks, they're not going to be paying $20 or whatever the fee is.

 

Point is, nobody is really that brand-aware of AMC or Universal as something they care about. It's the movie that drives the business, not the quality of the studio, or the superiority of the theater. So if neither exist, the consumer isn't really going to process this as essential information.

I go to my favorite grocery for my Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, but I don't go down the street looking for different groceries, thinking, "Now, where am I going to get my Kraft Macaroni & Cheese from..."; in fact, if it's not on the shelf, I'll buy something else, maybe a can of chili. That is a different relationship with the consumer.

And that's why a pecker-contest between a theater chain and a studio doesn't ring any bells with the public: because they don't connect either corporation with enough significance in the process of going to a movie, to care about it.
(Oddly though, if your cable company drops FX or AMC from your lineup because they can't agree over their channel charges, now that will get calls...!)("Gimme back my 'Better Call Saul'!")

 

It's probably area-dependent. In my area, AMC had bought out Star theaters, which was a fairly large regional chain. They changed "Star" to "AMC" and proceeded to let the theaters decay and fall apart over the next several years. The last time I went to see a movie at AMC (I think it was an installment of Harry Potter,) the film was so dark there were long sequences where you literally had no idea what was happening. A bunch of people complained, someone tried to do something with the projector, and we all ended up getting our money back. Apparently the projector bulb was *way* past it's end of life, but a co-worker said the same thing happened to him at the same theater a month later.

AMC was doing so poorly that two competing chains popped up and are doing rather well. All the movie-goers I know are hoping that AMC will shutter all their local theaters, and that they will be bought out by one of the two other chains.

 

They have excepti0nal theaters in Chicago and their hometown of Kansas City. The one closest to me was the original AMC theater, the Ward Parkway.

It sounds like they had terrible regional management in your area.

 

And interestingly, in my area, the AMC theaters are gorgeous and comfortable, and you could not ask for a better theater experience. AMC is the only real option for me. There are three of them within a 20 minutes driving radius, and that’s pretty much my only option. There is one arthouse cinema that shows a different type of film I enjoy that AMC tends not to show, but the viewing experience itself is inferior to what I experience at any of the AMCs in my area. If AMC goes under, I am pretty much SOL.

Having said that, I don’t think AMC is any kind of position at the moment to be banning content from a particular source.

 

I’ve vowed to never set foot in a AMC theater after what they did to my favorite local theater chain. They like to throw their weight around to get what they want. I hope this move with Universal blows up in their face and they go out of business.

AMC appears poised to purchase Cinetopia