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NORTH ATTLEBORO — If this was a movie, we’d know the plot already.
A feisty underdog squares off against an apparently unbeatable foe.
The Karate Kid vs. Cobra Kai?
Luke Skywalker vs. (spoiler alert) his dad?
How about Chris Ballarino vs. movie theater chains?
“I’m between a rock and a hard place,” Ballarino, owner of the Route One Cinema Pub, says. “They are bullying me.”
Ballarino says his theater operation, which reopened in March after a two-year hiatus due to state pandemic regulations, is being shut out of the fierce competition for limited film titles by chains such as Showcase Cinemas.
For its part, Showcase, which has theaters in Seekonk, Foxboro and just on the other side of town on Route 1, denies they are blocking movies from independents like Ballarino’s.
“I won’t see any of those movies until they go to streaming” on services like Netflix, Ballarnio, 58, says.
He has been operating his two-screeen, second-run theater for more than two decades, selling tickets at bargain rates and offering a menu of pub grub.
He showed popular films after their first-run appearances in the area’s multi-plexes but before they were released to home video or streaming services.
Then, the day before St. Patrick’s Day 2020, the state shut down movie theaters — along with other “non-essential” businesses — and Ballarino was forced to lay off his 20 mostly part-time workers. With the help of funding from the federal government’s Payroll Protection Program and Shuttered Venues Program, he was able to pay his bills and use the downtime to spend $300,000 to upgrade his operation.
While chains like Showcase were able to reopen — with various cleaning protocols and social distancing rules in place — after a few months, Ballarino’s screens stayed dark.
When he did reopen, he says, he found out the movie landscape had changed.
“They got rid of clearances,” Ballarino said, threatening the survival of operations like his.
“Clearing” is a long-standing movie industry practice. Theaters would request distributors not license their films to competitors in the same area or targeting the same audience until they have completed their run in the original licensee.
But, as the Washington Post explained in a story about the practice several years ago, “Whether tacit or explicit, the implication is clear: If the distributors don’t play ball this time, they might have trouble booking their wares in the same chain’s theaters down the line.”
That, Ballarino says, is what is happening to him. He says there have been 18 movies to come out of major studios in the first three months of the year. Usually it’s 45. He’s in competition for those shows right now, and he says and Showcase “is flexing their muscles.”
“I won’t see any of those movies until they go to streaming,” Bellarino says. “And Showcase is making sure of that.”
Bellarino says he’s complained to Norwood-based National Amusements, Showcase Cinema’s parent company, but gotten no response.
Showcase, in an emailed statement, said it “does not dissuade distributors from working with independent theaters.”
Ballarino rejects the denial. He says he was able to book the animated hit, “DC League of Superpets,” which topped the U.S. box office at $23 million in its opening weekend. He asks why Showcase is not playing the top kids movie in the country in any of their theaters, arguing that the chain is showing distributors they won’t play a film on multiple screens with hundreds of seats if it’s offered to a theater with just 100 seats per screen.
And he won’t be able to book a film if Showcase is showing it.
Jodi Zides of Cinema Film Buying in Quincy books films for scores of independent theaters including the Cinema Pub.
“Now you have a big theater not playing a movie,” she says. “It’s basically bullying.”
And the time between when a movie leaves theaters and goes to some form of home viewing is shorter now.
“The window when a movie will be able to be viewed in a theater has drastically decreased,” Zides says. “Now it’s all a matter of maximizing money to make from a movie.”
And studios and directors want their films in front of as many paying customers as possible. But it’s not enhancing the movie experience, Zides says.
Showcase claims they want as many people as possible to see films in theaters.
“Now more than ever, Showcase Cinemas is committed to supporting the movie-going experience and film exhibition industry as a whole,” the company said in an email. “That includes supporting the success of large circuits, medium-size circuits and smaller circuits (which is the category Showcase Cinemas falls into with 22 locations in the US).
“We know that people want and need to go to the movies, and strongly believe movies are meant to be seen on the big screen. The more accessible all films are to the general public, the better for all of us.”
That may not include Ballarino.
He’s says he burned through $100,000 in the four months he’s been reopened. He’s also had to up his ticket prices, from $7 pre-pandemic to $8 for shows before 5 p.m. and $10 to after 5.
It may not be enough. “I had 99 percent of my people come back (to work). I might have to tell them to find another job,” Ballarino says.
Zides says she hopes the public will back independents like Ballarino.
“Putting the little guy out of business will be something people will care about,” she says.
But Ballarino is not ready to say it’s “The End” just yet. He figures he can stay open until Christmas.
“I’ll go down fighting,” he says.
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