AMC moviegoers frustrated by long trailers before a film might be in luck.
After the cinema company struck a deal last month to add more advertising before its films, fans were furious. AMC even added a disclaimer on its website that films would start 25-30 minutes after the advertised time.
Now, the company might be walking back some of those changes.
According to Deadline, AMC is currently looking to shorten its pre-show, but details regarding the change are not known.
The Independent has contacted AMC for comment.
The latest report comes just weeks after the cinema company agreed to a deal with National CineMedia, a cinema advertising platform, that included placing in-theater ads in the “platinum spot” just before a film begins. Shortly after, AMC added the aforementioned disclaimer to its website about the delayed film start times.
The Independent found the disclaimer on AMC’s website after looking into movie tickets at local theaters.
According to Deadline, executives at major movie studios quickly became angry that, on top of the extra ads, AMC would also still be showing its branded pre-show, causing the extra delay in starting the film and leading theater-goers to avoid showing up for in-theater trailers.
Movie-goers turned to X to echo the point, claiming that they would simply begin showing up at the theater half an hour after the time listed on their ticket. “They want me to pay……to sit…….and watch 30 minutes of advertisements?” one X user questioned.
“Let me just see the damn movie. Why all the commercials?” another person wrote on the platform.
“If they start at ‘showtime’ then they’re not PREviews,” a third user pointed out at the time. “Here’s an idea…Don’t add a note about how the movies always start late. How about just make the time when the movie DOES start the actual published ‘showtime!’ Sigh…”
The National CineMedia deal was originally expected to boost AMC’s advertising revenue, offering critical support as the company faces its weakest first-quarter earnings since 1996, excluding the pandemic years.
AMC has closed 169 theaters since 2019 to cut costs, but CEO Adam Aron remained optimistic, calling recent poor earnings an “anomaly” and highlighting a strong summer box office.
Although 2024 ticket sales fell to $8.7 billion, a 3.3 percent decline from last year and 23.5 percent below the pre-pandemic total of $11.3 billion in 2019, the summer box office has begun to rebound.
