In regards to the big news this week about Sony buying Alamo Drafthouse, no one anywhere has mentioned that this is not their first time at the rodeo. Quite the opposite – you’d think this recent purchase of theirs was some kind of revolutionarily huge new 21st-century deal.
As we’ve been saying for a while, nobody knows anything any more. By contrast, we like to look things up — on our own, not with AI. Like this:
Sony has always been able to get into the exhibition business because the 1949 Paramount Decree only applies to movie companies that were in business at the time. Sony bought Columbia in 1989.
And so as they once did they now are again. Wonder how long they’ll keep at it this time?
Barely a week into its run, the 10-screen Sony Theaters Lincoln Square complex, the new flagship of the Japanese-owned chain, is drawing record crowds, company figures show, including gawkers drawn by the outsize sidewalk video screen, a monumental mural of filmdom nostalgia and electronic panels flashing show times.
Inside, patrons find gift shops, black and gold palm trees, faux movie palaces, and ushers wired like secret service agents who practically wrestle people down to say hello.
Many visitors seem taken aback by the unexpected salutation and genuinely puzzled by such amenities as the indoor box office, actually a counter of ticket takers, which obviates cold outdoor lines and pathetic questions like, “Is this the ticket-holder’s line?”
… Occupying the site of a demolished post office at Broadway and 68th Street in what Sony considered one of the “underscreened” areas of the West Side — between Lincoln Center and Sony’s multiplex at 84th Street and Broadway — the Lincoln Square complex has become something of a show of its own.
Both these theaters on Broadway in the UWS are now owned by AMC. The Lincoln Square and Empire on 42nd Street alternate back and forth with Burbank as the chain’s highest grosser.
And they’re all kind of cruddy there too, in NYC. Some of the floors look like storage areas.
Burbank, California 