Hamlet, a new four-hour movie filmed for posterity on colour-saturated 70mm film by director Kenneth Branagh (with help from William Shakespeare), opened yesterday in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. After some deliberation, distributor Castle Rock Entertainment decided not to release a two-hour version.
Castle Rock president Martin Shafer said the decision to release the longer movie was made only after consulting with Branagh and theatre exhibitors, who all agreed it would be criminal to cheat the public out of the full experience, however exhausting, er, exhaustive. "All the theatres we talked to wanted the longer version," said Shafer. "They thought their audiences would consider the two hours 'Hamlet Lite.'"
Audiences aside, the reality is that a prestige art-house movie like this relies heavily on critical acclaim to win an audience, and everyone involved did agree that critics would not take kindly to being given, so to speak, short shrift.
For their part, exhibitors say that while they can show the movie only a couple of times a day, they will make up for lost ticket revenue in popcorn. "Our real profitability is at the concession stand," notes Howard Lichtman, executive vice president for marketing at Cineplex Odeon, which will exhibit the movie in several cities. "There is an intermission. From an exhibitor's perspective, that's our theoretical lost revenue."
Robert Laemmle, owner of Laemmle's theatres in Los Angeles, agreed. "You definitely sell more concessions during this type of film than when people are coming in and out of a two-hour movie."
However, he adds, "It probably will not make as much money as...a Woody Allen film."
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