Cinemark’s CEO On VR, Esports And The Future Of Movie Theaters
To be sure, Zoradi said, Cinemark is still showing lots of movies, lighting up a film 27,000 times a day across 6,000 screens in most every country in the Western Hemisphere. But the chain is doing a lot of other things too, trying to find new ways to entice people to come, stick around, and spend more money.
The sexiest experiment might be with virtual reality. Earlier this month, Cinemark opened its second VR experience, this one built by SPACES and based on the Terminator franchise. That launched in a new facility in the lobby of a 20-screen complex in San Jose, Calif.
The Void also built its own haunted-house experience, Nicodemus, that it was able to switch over to every evening during the Halloween season in about 45 minutes.
"I’m very optimistic about it, but I still put it in the category of R&D," said Zoradi, with a much more cautious embrace of VR's potential than many early adopters, or even Dave & Buster's, whose Jurassic World Expedition proved a big hit last summer for that restaurant chain/arcade operator.
"We’re waiting to see what happens in months seven through 12," Zoradi said.
...the company believes one key for in-theater VR installations is to make sure they are "front and center in the lobby," instead of tucked away in Screen 18 in the back of the facility.
The company has been experimenting with other kinds of new technologies too, especially esports. It made a small investment in Super League Gaming, which runs two kinds of gatherings in Cinemark theaters.
In the afternoon, Super League runs tournaments built around Microsoft's huge Minecraft franchise, focused on the tween set of Under-12 gamers. Later in the day, the tournaments shift to teens and older gamers playing Riot Games' League of Legends and Supercell's Clash Royale.
That too, remains an experiment, if a more broadly conducted one across perhaps 25 Cinemark facilities, Zoradi said.
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That said, all is not lost when it comes to movie-watching by teens and 20-somethings.
Indahash, an international content-marketing platform, surveyed 1,300 influencers about their movie-going preferences and found that though most said they go to theaters less often since the rise of Netflix and other online streaming sites, 65 percent still see a movie in a theater once a month. About one in seven say they still go to movies at least three times a month. That's an opportunity.
But it's important to change the way people think about theaters, Zoradi said. The VR and esports experiments will help a lot in changing perceptions, particularly if they lead to sustainable business models for Cinemark and other theater chains.
See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom/2019/02/25/cinemark-ceo-mark-zoradi-virtual-reality-esports-theaters-movies-film/#44c738101ec3