Mark Cuban responds: New ideas on marketing movies and theaters

Mark Cuban responds to almost 900 people who posted ideas on his blog about marketing movies and the theatrical experience more effectively, and less expensively.

The most interesting thing to me is that Cuban is essentially conducting an online focus group here... where do you see representatives from AMC, Regal, or the National Association of Theatre Owners engaging and interacting with their customers online?

Cuban mentions a few ideas that his Landmark Theatres chain is developing, both of which sound intriguing:

we are currently working on 2 theater projects. One is a theater just for kids under the age of 10. Just showing kids movies, with tons of amenities for parents and kids, along with retail geared towards kids. No parent will be able to get out of the theater alive if they dont buy the Curious George goodies we sell when we show a Curious George movie. And of course we will be able to make our own movies to show, and with our policy of day n date releases, we will be selling the DVD of the movie as well.



The 2nd is what I call Rock N Roll Theater (ok Im showing my age), but bottom line it will be a theater geared towards 16 to 25 year old demo where the motto will be



“If you expect silence during this movie. leave now. “



Again, lots of retail. Lots of security. Lots of kids who can see what they want to see , txt who they want to txt, yell what they want to yell. In fact, part of the thought process has been for the movies we make and show, to post portions of the script of the movie so kids can learn lines from the movie BEFORE they come, or hopefully make them read it after they saw it the first time and come back , creating our own rocky horror show like environment.

Both of those sound like they'd mean an expansion from Landmark's traditional arthouse/documentary fare.... unless there is an untapped market of 7-year olds who are dying to see Al Gore's "An Inconvient Truth."