AMC drops plan to charge more for the best seats

AMC Entertainment is dropping its plan to charge moviegoers for the seats with better view of the screen. Box Office Guru Founder and Editor Gitesh Pandya joins Yahoo Finance Live to explain why the program fell flat.

Video transcript

- There was news out that AMC is dropping plans to charge customers different prices based on where they sit in the theater. Essentially people would pay more for a good seat. They weren't sitting in the front row for a discount. And it just made me think about, you know, the theater experience generally, how it has changed, have the Alamo drafthouse's of the world and such.

And what in your view is changing, needs to change, should change, isn't changing fast enough perhaps when it comes to getting people who are on the margins of wanting to see a movie? I see a movie maybe once a year, twice a year, like, what needs to happen for me to go 3 times.

GITESH PANDYA: Well, first of all, go more often. Second of all--

- I'm going tomorrow.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

SEANA SMITH: "Barbie" your one movie of the year.

You see, last year--

GITESH PANDYA: See the double header back to back.

- I saw-- we saw "Mission Impossible" last year, which was, you know, no, sorry, we saw "Top Gun" last year, which was amazing. And now we'll see "Barbie."

GITESH PANDYA: Right. Well, the different prices inside the same auditorium, that's something which other countries have used with mixed success. So you have AMC and some others trying to replicate that over here. I don't think it's that great of an idea. I think consumers over here are not really interested in paying a premium to sit sort of in the center where you kind of get the best picture and all of that. So that's an experiment, which I don't think worked out too well. And you'll see that go away.

I think what does make sense is discounting. And so when you have discounting, more people say, you know what? Two for one, I can go and see this movie. It's not going to destroy my wallet. And so maybe I'll wait until Tuesday or whatever day it might be, and that can get more bodies in. And the more bodies you get in, they see posters. They see trailers. And they might come back for more.

SEANA SMITH: All right. We'll see how big of a hit this weekend is. You already got one person on board. I don't really have plans to see "Barbie" yet. I'm not sold.

- Well, you got to get-- yeah, a sitter. I mean, we lined up the sitter, like, a week and a half ago, you know, to prepare you too.

SEANA SMITH: You have to prepare and you got to get the tickets early. All right. Gitesh, always great to have you. Thanks so much.

GITESH PANDYA: Great. Thank you.