In June, AMC Theatres (AMC) announced a bold change in its movie theaters to avoid dramatically raising ticket prices, which frustrated moviegoers.
The theater chain finalized a deal with cinema advertising company National CineMedia to play more commercials before the start of movie screenings at its theaters.
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“For the past five years, AMC has sought out crucial revenue that is not reliant on the increase of base ticket prices,” said AMC in a statement to The New York Times last month, adding “while AMC was initially reluctant to bring this to our theaters, our competitors have fully participated for more than five years without any direct impact to their attendance.”
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A notice on AMC’s website now warns customers that “movies start 25-30 minutes after showtime.”
The move sparked backlash from some consumers, who took to social media to claim that they are sick of ads and would rather watch movies at home.
Consumers have recently been avoiding movie theaters nationwide as movie ticket prices increase. According to recent data from The Numbers, the average movie ticket price in the U.S. was $11.31, 3% higher than the $10.94 average in 2023.
Amid higher prices, a recent survey from the Wall Street Journal found that 65% of consumers said they prefer to watch movies at home, while only 35% said they prefer to watch movies in theaters.
Image source: Shutterstock
AMC has a plan to keep customers happy
To prevent exacerbating this trend, AMC recently revealed that it will reduce some of the “marketing material” that runs before films in its theaters.
“What we are going to try to streamline a bit is we run about four minutes or so of AMC marketing material and fluffy ‘Silence is Golden’ and turn off your cell phone and …things like that as part of our whole preshow experience,” said AMC CEO Adam Aron during an earnings call on Aug. 11. “We think we can take we’d take four to five minutes in length. We think we can easily take two to three minutes out of that.”
He also said that AMC shows more movie trailers before the start of a film than some of its top competitors, which the company plans to fix.
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“We carefully surveyed the number of trailers that we show before the future film and the number of trailers that our largest competitors show,” said Aron. “And it looks to us like we’re showing one extra trailer more than our principal competitors, which adds another 2.5 minutes or so to the length of our preshow package in total. And we knew that when we did the NCM deal, we might have to make a trade-off. If we’re going to add six minutes of, we would call it NCM time, we might have to reduce a trailer and might have to add down some of our marketing fluffier stuff in advance of the feature film.”
He also emphasized that the company is not walking back on its agreement with the National CineMedia.
“We’re not cutting back the agreement that we put in place with NCM,” said Aron. “That is contractual, and it’s contractual for many years to come.”
He said AMC is trying to find a “happy medium” to please its studio partners and customers.
“We know our studio partners love the trailer packages because the best form of advertising that they’ll find anywhere is putting their movie product right in front of moviegoers’ faces,” said Aron. “But we also know that some of our other consumers think the trailer packages go on too long, and we’re trying to find a happy medium. And we’re also doing a better job of telling people when the movies will start.”
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AMC recently saw increased consumer demand, despite backlash
The move from AMC comes after its U.S. movie theater attendance increased by 28.5% year-over-year during the second quarter of 2025.
The growth follows the release of blockbuster hits such as “Lilo & Stitch,” “Superman,” and “Jurassic World: Rebirth” during the quarter.
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AMC also generated about $1.3 billion in total revenue, a 35.6% increase compared to the same quarter last year, while the average ticket price in U.S. markets increased by 76 cents.
The theater chain also shrank its net loss to $4.7 million, which is lower than the $32.8 million net loss it suffered during the same time period last year.
In response to AMC’s improved performance during the second quarter, Aron took to social media platform X to send a stern message to the theater chain’s critics.
“For those humans, bots, shills and shorts who like to bash AMC (or for that matter me) on X/Twitter, let me bring back a phrase that’s an oldie but goodie: ‘Choke on that !!!!!!’’’ wrote Aron in the tweet.
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