Tommy Washbush
“FORMERLY MADISON’S FAVORITE THEATER!” a cineaste exclaimed on Facebook when the Sundance Madison website changed. The new name, AMC Dine-In Madison 6, evokes buckets of comfort food delivered to recliners.
I pretended to buy tickets at full-service AMC Dine-In auditoriums and discovered that they range from 70 to 100 seats. Was this the fate of Sundance’s auditoriums, which range from 138 to 206?
Well, no. The transition at Hilldale will not be a radical one. AMC spokesperson Ryan Noonan confirmed that Madison 6 will offer Dine-In Express Pick-Up service (translation: counter service). AMC has no current plans for delivery-to-seat service or for any additional renovations beyond the new kitchen currently in progress.
Tweets from @AMCMadison6 suggest that programming (“same heart”) and real butter popcorn will stay the same. So, what does keeping things the same actually mean?
Sundance delivered what the specialty market demanded. The theater screened 75 percent of IndieWire’s list of highest grossing specialty releases in 2015 and 2016. (“Specialty” means indie, foreign and limited-release documentaries.) Of the 136 feature films Sundance screened in 2016, 90 (66 percent) were from specialty distributors or specialty divisions of studios, while 46 (34 percent) were mainstream studio releases.
Even though Tone Madison and others have criticized Sundance for programming too much mainstream fare already available elsewhere, the reality was always a mixed bag. On its six screens, Sundance averaged four specialty films and two mainstream films. Sundance showcased specialty distributors like Music Box and Oscilloscope far more frequently than Marcus or AMC.
Sundance programming had limits, however. In 2016 only .05 percent of its features were documentaries (7). Sundance had no foreign-language bookings between May and September, and came in third behind Marcus Point and AMC Fitchburg for foreign-language films last year.
The avatar for Sundance programming was not Robert Redford, it was Helen Mirren. The specialty film market in Madison has been driven by audiences over 50 years old, and that will continue regardless of what changes take place at Madison 6.
Recent research commissioned by AARP found that people over 50 are 583 percent more likely to attend art cinema than audiences under 50, and they represent 75 percent of all tickets to art-house films. For indie films, make that 212 percent more likely, and 54 percent of indie revenues.
So why did the Helen Mirren vehicle Woman in Gold play for a month at Sundance? Audiences over 50 accounted for 82 percent of its audience, which propelled it to the top spot on IndieWire’s box office list for specialty films in 2015.
Mirren’s 2016 feature, Eye in the Sky, played at Sundance for seven weeks, landing at number four on the IndieWire list. Maggie Smith’s Lady in the Van also played seven weeks, landing at number 12. Only Oscar-nominated films had longer Sundance engagements last year.
The most likely shift at Madison 6 will be an increase in Asian popular cinema, as suggested by the screening of three Mandarin-language titles just before Sundance’s rebranding. This reflects the corporate strategy of AMC’s parent company, the Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group.
Will AMC Madison 6 maintain an average four specialty, two mainstream split? Was that sufficient, or will it ever be? Haters are going to hate no matter what happens. Before we go all-caps on social media, however, we should understand what Madison’s film market has been — and remember that we’ll only get the market we earn.
