The State of Event Cinema

In the early days of digital cinema, advocates of the new technology said one of the best things about it was the ability it gave theatre owners to show all kinds of content, not just Hollywood movies. The studios scoffed at this and labeled anything they didn’t produce as, essentially, worthless garbage. One early term was ODS, which stood for Other Digital … well, you get it. The industry eventually settled on the name alternative content, although many of us asked, “Alternative to what?” Increasingly these programs are called event cinema and more than a dozen companies around the world supply a wealth of different kinds of entertainment and educational fare. In turn, a rapidly growing number of theatres charge premium ticket prices for an ever-expanding variety of these events and attendance continues to grow.