How do they pick those movies ?

What do American “Sniper,” “Spongebob Squarepants” and “50 Shades of Grey” have in common?
All three were being shown at the same time recently at the Queen Cinema — children’s cartoon movie, a biographical war drama film packed with Rated R action and a very adult movie based on a very risque book series.
Each year, the theater shows 50 to 60 movies for an average of about one new movie each week, and some might wonder just how the theater’s showings are chosen.
“Movies for the Queen are selected in the same fashion as our other theaters, which is from movies that are made available to those respective theaters,” said Cathy Collins, who owns the Queen Cinema with her husband Doug Collins.
“Movie studios distribute their product according to their marketing strategy and budgets for each particular picture. Some pictures will be a larger release than others, which means the movie is released in most all markets across the country at the same time.”
“Other pictures are offered in limited release, which means they are offered in large markets first and then made available in smaller markets two to four weeks or more later.”
According to Collins, movie studios rank theaters by how well similar pictures performed at the cinema in the past.  
“They will play their pictures where they get the biggest return,” she said. “The movie studios do not make available all movies to the Eunice market that are made available in the much larger Lafayette market. We pick from what is made available to us.”
Last year’s Top 5 ticket sellers at the Queen Cinema, in order of ticket sales, were “Hunger Games: Mockingjay,” “God’s Not Dead,” “Ride Along,” ‘The Lego Movie” and “Transformers,” and two of the movies shown in the “Spongebob,” “Fifty Shades of Grey,” “American Sniper” movie matrix have surpassed all the 2014 ticket sales.
“Interestingly, we have already had two movies in 2015 that would have ranked Number 1 and Number 2 had they shown in 2014,” Collins said. “They are ‘American Sniper’ and ‘SpongeBob.’ ‘American Sniper’ did 50 percent more business than the next highest grossing movie.”
Here in Eunice, as well as Opelousas, Natchitoches and Picayune, Mississippi, other small towns where the Collins’ also own cinemas, the theater owners work to show movies that appeal to families and teens.
“Our first criteria is that we select pictures from new pictures that are made currently available,” Collins said. “We want to run movies at the same time Lafayette gets them as we find that showing a movie weeks after it was released in Lafayette will do little business.”
Patrons of the Queen Cinema may also help choose movies by sending suggestions to userdgc@msn.com.
“If you want to see a particular picture, there needs to be community support of similar titles when they are offered,” Collins said. “If past grosses for similar movies don’t entice a studio to play their product, we will not be able to get that picture ‘on the break’ or at the same time it is offered nationally in larger markets like Lafayette.”  
“We love to hear from our customers and always welcome movie suggestions. We do our best to bring in the movies that our patrons want to see. It is just important to remember that, similar to other smaller markets, we do have limited titles made available to us.”
According to Collins, the Queen Cinema is busiest during the summer and on holidays, and on the weekends, typically the 7 p.m. feature is the busiest.
“This is similar to the (rest of the movie theater) industry,” Collins added. “Summers and holidays tend to be very busy times of year for the movie industry and so you tend to find the big blockbuster movies as well as more movies released by studios during those times.”
In the years that the Collins’ have owned the Queen Cinema, they have made several financial investments to bring the theater up do date, including replacing the old film projectors with new digital projectors.
“Had we not made this conversion from film, the Queen would likely no longer exist as film is all but a thing of the past now,” Collins said. “We like to be able to offer the latest and greatest movies there are. There are really few instances where we choose to not play a movie that is made available to The Queen at the same time it is made available in Lafayette.”