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A lot of years ago, while living in Beijing, I once bought ticket to a morning (9:30 or so) show in a theatre. Then came that day, it rained unexpectedly, so I ended up getting there 10min late. When I get into the theatre, I found out that it's completely dark. I asked a staff, they told me that they only sold that one ticket and since I didn't show up within 5min, they cancelled the show and returned the film. They refunded me in the end.
This is cool. Something about dropping everything to go see a movie in an empty theater is sort of tempting.
One of the joys of having Moviepass in that brief period where it was very cheap but still worked was going to random late-night showings of stuff I'd have never otherwise seen, sometimes being the only person there.

Of course you can still do that with the surviving "all you can eat" plans, but they're way more expensive and aren't quite as generous.

I thought this was the case, but then I went to a full movie theater and really enjoyed being a part of an audience that was all experiencing the same thing. You could feel the emotion and that is a different sense than having the theater all to you to, but potentially just as rewarding.
It is luxurious seeing a movie in an empty theater.
People used to buy out theaters to have that privilege on blockbuster opening nights.
I think whether or not it's worth it really depends on the kind and quality of movie.

When I went to see Project Hail Mary, I enjoyed the full theater, when I went to watch the new Jurassic World movie in an empty theater I was bored out of my mind, on the other hand I've seen many anime movies in empty theaters where I absolutely loved having a quiet theater entirely to myself.

I was going to the 10am or 11am screenings for years to avoid crowds and drunks who'd talk or otherwise distract from the show. I have a 4k projector so the only movies since the pan have been the Spiderverse sequel on IMAX, the Avatar sequel (regular screening), and Everything Everywhere All At Once in a small theatre with sofas and pizza and beer.

Either it's big enough to warrant a massive video and sound system (because I have pretty great ones at home already, so it has to be extravagant), or it has to be something I've heard about and want to see so much that we don't really care about the best, we just want to go. Otherwise, why mess around with high prices and rude people?

I hate to say it, but I think most theaters are gonna die.

I saw IT Chapter II in a completely empty theater, late at night. It was delightfully creepy. However, if I had been an employee there, I think I would have do do something with a red helium balloon to anyone watching that movie alone.
The only film I saw in an empty theater was 'The Death of Stalin'. That was kind of odd but a decent film regardless.
Do enough people buy tickets in advance now that this really indicates anything of value? I'm old and have never pre-purchased a movie ticket in my life. I assume a lot of people do, but the few times I've been to the movies lately, it seems people are buying tickets at the theater.
I'm "old" (mid-40s) and cannot remember the last time I didn't pre-purchase a movie ticket. The movie theater I go to the most (Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco) rarely has anyone in line at the box office when I walk through there. That box office is usually only staffed by one person, which should tell us something about how many people need in-person service.
I'm finding that more and more, when I impulsively go to the theater and try to buy tickets at the door... I always find the only tickets available are horrible, like in the front row to the side. You want like F-6 and F-7 and get A-2 and B-2.

And if I even accept this, the people in the choice seats invariably show up right when all the trailers are wrapping up.

so - people buy tickets ahead of time, and it might be the only way to watch it from a reasonable seat.

This probably doesn't apply to off-hours like tuesday afternoon or whatever.

Do people really just show up and hope for the best anymore?

The "box office" is not even really a thing anymore at most theaters. And the single person you talk to inside that is the "box office" just uses the same system you can reserve seats yourself on your own time?

Pretty much every theater is reserved seating these days. Why would I risk showing up last minute on a whim and end up in a horrible seat near the front of the screen?

I don’t remember the last time I bought a ticket at the cinema. I like picking my own seats online.
When I lived in Germany, I had an apartment in the vicinity of three tiny arthouse theaters. I used to go there all the time by myself because you could basically walk to all three of them. Saw a lot of movies I would have never seen otherwise, most of which I don't remember at all.

The theaters were never full. So it was basically just like watching a movie in your own living room. Yeah, except maybe for the handful of strangers that were there to watch with you.

I remember I went to a small showing once as a kid. It was just our group and 1 lady in the theater.

We got to small talk and the lady mentioned she had once been the only customer for a showing and told the projectionist that she didn’t want to be a bother and could come back and another day.

The projectionist had apparently replied that it was no bother - they would roll the movie even if no one showed up!

To me this suggests that theater’s are at least partially incorrectly pricing things which explains why they are struggling.
This is not just an awesome concept, but blazingly fast. Well done! I would love to see an article about the tech stack.
AMC should start showing Chinese and Korean dramas. That would help them a lot. I'm sure that they could work a deal with those studios that would let AMC set the ticket price. There hasn't been an American-made movie since Lord of the Rings that has compelled me to go see it in the theater. The movie studios seem to be pushing more extremes on immorality, violence, gore, etc, being completely disconnected from the average American's values. And then Disney and others make musicals with actors that can't sing -- mind-boggling. Hence, my wife and I watch Chinese dramas instead, a few episodes per week being my complete TV/Movie intake. They're paced better, develop characters, include a few kung fu moves, have nice visuals, aren't afraid of religious topics, etc.
May be I am in minority but I would hate to be alone in entire theater. I enjoy some vibe and people around
I used to frequent the brisbane regent cinema precisely because it was reliably empty. The franchise kept it running because having a really nice prestige theatre was good for their brand, but compared to their other sites it was revenue neutral at best.
Makes me wonder -- does it make any economic sense for a theater to have screenings before 2pm on a Tuesday? I get that some people can afford the leisure, but I'm almost certain the theater loses money on that
Movie theaters are reinventing themselves in various ways, and I’m unsure if it’s working, but some of it is creative.

Around here, films from Bollywood show in Telugu, Hindi, Gujarati languages. There are family films in Spanish (those aren’t bad dubs, but parallel scripts and A-list voice actors.) Want to watch a Studio Ghibli film? Here’s the timetable for dubbed; here’s a timetable for subtitles!

There are live video-game tournaments. There are premieres for live operas and symphony orchestra performances that are simulcast around a region.

There are Christian groups who go in to support a film, and they can turn those into fundraisers and evangelization activity.

The auditoriums can be rented out for special events. Big birthday, Kindergarten graduation, Quinceañeras, etc. They will support teleconferencing and businesses can hold seminars or all-hands meetings there.

I suppose that all of these schemes were harmed by the pandemic and lockdowns, but the advertising is still there, and the Hindus are still showing up on public transit.

I have been quite a heavy patron of AMC theaters these past few years since COVID ended. I have seen A LOT of movies play to empty theaters. I used to actually peek at many of the rooms when I left my movie and so many were downright empty.

Its the norm and its probably why their stock is trading at $1.45 as of this writing.

Its a dead (not dying, dead) entertainment option. When you are competing for the same 24 hrs in a day with TV, Youtube, Gaming, Streaming, TikTok, Instagram and many others the theater is bottom of the barrel for young people today.

And don't tell me its because people are disrespectful or the commercials are too long. These are a problem but Alamo Drafthouse tried to tackle this and they ended up in bankruptcy. AMC would also be bankrupt today but it's saving grace was the meme stock frenzy they had a few years back. Probably bought them a few more years but that ride might be coming to an end.

Currently they fill the rooms for the pop movies like old established franchises but that only comes along every couple weeks at the most and the rest of the time the place is not really busy. This is a bit different in the big cities but AMC has overextended themselves with too many locations in the rural and suburban US.

...Also this app is not displaying accurate data (I assume they are pulling from AMC's API). My local theater is listing no results and I cross checked and there are movies currently listed that have 0 seats booked so the app is counting incorrectly for at least one theater.

EDIT: After I wrote this, the site auto updated with new data. Now I see some screenings but it is still inaccurate because it is still missing movies from that theater...maybe they are scraping instead of using the API? This is a simple problem if using the API (I wrote my own home cooked app): just iterate through all theater ids, find the ones with 0 bookings and display that list.

Interestingly some zip codes just don't seem to work, but this appears to be an issue on AMC's side as I tested the same zip codes on their "find a theater" page and got the same results.

Very cool idea nonetheless.

I have an alternative in this for Alamo Drafthouse. It sends me alerts as soon as new movies are listed, typically before promoted or announced online.

It’s meant I can jump on re-runs etc I really care about (just saw Fight Club last week) - and get the specific seat location I prefer.

(If you want alerts just contact me with your email and location - info in bio)

There is always that one person who eats popcorn so loud for most of the movie and ruins the experience for me.
This site will probably defeat its purpose. You discover an empty showing and are excited to have your own "private theater", but thanks to this site, somebody else will have the same idea and you'll both have to share your private theater.
I wonder if movie theaters ever thought to have "Free" movie tickets before a certain time on certain days. They would probably make money just on the popcorn sales since most of these theaters are empty during the day.
I’ve been to a few showings by myself back in the moviepass days. It was really nice, I’d wait until a movie was basically at the very end of its run and watch whatever was playing. I can’t stand others making noise, too distracting.
Love this concept. - If it could give me a near to showtime notifications to help me decide if it's a true empty screenings. That would be great. - If it connect with my Google Calendar for schedule, it would be amazing.
I remember walking in late to a movie with my wife and noticing that there was nobody there except us. We bought the tickets on site, so the show must have started before we went in, despite no tickets having been sold.
On flip side had switch gyms to be among strangers becomes turning on gym socialization really tanked my training.
FWIW I just checked and AMC Theaters are not connected to the streaming network AMC+.
There is nothing better than seeing a movie in the theaters by yourself.
Damn, people really love going to the movies here in Austin, Texas.
How does AMC stay in business after all these years?
I can tell Super mario movie is a massive flop.
Where does it get the realtime data for this?
i watched 2 movies all alone. one of the best experiences i have ever had since i hate being around people
Delightful! Thank you.
Great example of vibe coding
Holy shit, how are my local theaters staying in business?! Like, all the screenings are just empty!
Would be a wonderful site for people to find places to have private movie sex, but then I remembered that this is HackerNews