20 minutes of trailers and 10 minutes of AMC puff pieces including the Nicole Kidman OMG Cinema commercials.
Earlier today I went to an AMC IMAX theater to watch Dune Part 2 (spoiler free review, a great film), and instead of the film starting at the scheduled time we have to duck around for 30 min before the film starts (which even then isn't true since we get two 30 second studio logos).
I'm so happy that most theaters I go to are smaller with usually only a preview or two.
Honestly, this has been standard at every chain theatre I've been to for a decade or more. Once reserved seating became the norm, we just show up fifteen minutes after the 'start' time and walk in to the house lights dimming.
I stopped going to movies after covid, but i was at one movie whereca fight broke out in that exact scinario. A group showed up right as the previews were ending to find other people had taken their seats. Its escalated where the girls were physically fighting and the manager had to break them up.
AMC restarted the movie and gave everyone a free ticket to another movie after this 2 girls were escorted out.
Pretty much every theater does assigned/reserved seating nowadays. You choose your seat numbers when you buy the ticket. No need to show up early to try to scout the best seat or score 5 in a row or whatever. They’re just saying they go to their ticketed seat.
Unpopular take, but I like theatrical previews. They're like bonus mini-movies, similar to the shorts before Pixar films. (I hate spoilers so this opinion only applies to movies I wasn't planning on seeing anyway, however I'm not much of a cinephile so that ends up being most of them.) Also it's nice having a buffer for any latecomers to get settled before the feature film starts.
I liked them until they became so full of spoilers, now I actively avoid them. It would have been so much cooler if I hadn't known Spider-Man was going to make an appearance in Civil War.
Don’t worry they’ll be out of business. They’re a billion in debt. Their stock has lost like 98% of its value. Their ceo is a dickhead. They’re diluting shares like crazy.
The previews are part of the experience in my opinion. We can def do without the Nicole Kidman so many years celebration. This probably belongs more in unpopular opinion more than anything else. Some home setups even preroll future trailers. It’s an option in Plex.
That's how all cinemas near me have done it for ages, and the main reason I don't go, apart from it costing more than a 4K blu ray for the both of us to go.
Only 10 minutes of ads? I think it's normally more than that. And there's always a Kevin Bacon one in there.
Look for a theater in your area that serves food (not just snacks). They generally have a better clientele, they usually kick people out who don’t behave, and they don’t waste time on corporate rah rah nonsense like ten minutes of Nicole Kidman commercials.