Somehow, the Callicoon has managed to operate continuously for 71 years. It has survived television. It has survived the multiplex. It has survived Netflix. But, like a lot of small-town movie houses with one or two screens, the Callicoon is facing a new uncertainty. This time it’s not because of something new but the eradication of something old.
The Justice Department last week moved to terminate the Paramount Consent Decrees, the agreement that has long governed the separation of Hollywood studios from movie theaters. Hatched in the aftermath of a 1948 Supreme Court decision that forced the studios to divest themselves of the theaters they owned, the Paramount Decrees disallowed several then-common practices of studio control, like “block-booking,” or forcing theaters to take a block of films in order to play an expected hit.
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“Without these decrees, larger circuits could make business more difficult for theaters like mine. The movie studios are not as motivated to work with our needs and would prefer to streamline their product to large circuits that will offer exclusivity,” argued the two-screen, circa 1927 Falls Theatre in Falls River, Wisconsin, in the DOJ’s public comments.
These are also theaters that, catering to rural, less affluent areas, don’t sell premium $15 or higher ticket prices. So the prospect of studios setting a nationwide ticket price on a movie is also worrisome to them.
“The removal of the decree on resale price maintenance is another step in the death knoll of the independent, regional chains, and small theaters in rural and metropolitan areas,” said the Trinity Theater in Weaverville, California.
Most smaller independent theaters are already just squeaking by. Funneling as much as 65% of a movie’s box office back to distributors, any profits mostly come from concessions. And they feel like they know their audience better than distant corporations. The United Drive-In Theater Owners Association, for example, noted that they have their own programming considerations separate from “indoor cinema.”
