Movie showtime sites?

November 5, 2006 9:01 AM

A site that lists all movie theater showtimes? (or: Why is the fact that the film Borat is playing in my city a trade secret?)

So I tried looking up movie showtimes to see if Borat was playing in my area. Looked at most of the big sites where one would expect to find showtimes/tickets: Google, Yahoo, IMDB, Fandango, Moviefone, etc. All the sites say the film isn't playing in my city (even my local city newspaper website doesn't list the film).

However, when I looked at MovieTickets.com, which apparently is exclusive to one theater in my city, it did list showtimes/tickets for Borat in that single theater.

This movie/theater (or the fact that Borat is playing there) doesn't appear in listings across other sites, even portal sites like Google, etc.

Please tell me that Moviefone, Fandango, and MovieTickets.com have not taken over movie showtime information in the name of ticket sales and keep that information exclusive to themselves. Do I have to search all three movie ticket sites whenever I want to see a movie?

Is there a site that consolidates ALL of the movie showtime information for any given city/film?

posted by jca to media & arts (24 comments total)

Have you tried movies.com?
posted by MegoSteve at 9:12 AM on November 5, 2006

Try googling movies and your location - either zip code or city, state, and then click on show times
posted by spira at 9:17 AM on November 5, 2006

Movies.com doesn't have the listing either.

(It seems, for whatever reason, the theater and/or MovieTickets.com hasn't supplied the information to other sites.)
posted by jca at 9:20 AM on November 5, 2006

spira: Yeah, Google (as mentioned above) was my first stop -- but it didn't have it.
posted by jca at 9:21 AM on November 5, 2006

even my local city newspaper website doesn't list the film

Usually local papers list by theaters as well as by movies. Are you saying your paper doesnt list that theater at all or that it shows that something else is playing there?
posted by vacapinta at 9:33 AM on November 5, 2006

Both cases, vacapinta.

Unfortunately my local city paper (The Huntsville Times) does not have it's own web site -- they've turned over that function to AL.com -- and AL.com as a local news site really leaves a lot to be desired.

FYI, we're talking about Borat playing in the 35801 zip code.
posted by jca at 9:43 AM on November 5, 2006

Fox is only playing Borat in "Big Cities" this week. The full release will be next weekend. I'd guess that if you can't find it in a theater near you then it isn't in a theater near you.

How far are you from Birmingham?
posted by Charlie Brown at 10:00 AM on November 5, 2006

Most movie listings - be they in the paper, internet, etc. all get their information from the theater/chain directly. So if the theater doesn't tell the source where all but movietickets.com gets their info, then they won't have it.
But that rare exception aside, they will usually all be consistent.

If you have a feeling that the listings are wrong though, I would start with the "official" movie website. They often will have a "showtimes" link; which should in theory point you to a site where the information will be accurate.
posted by heh3d at 10:07 AM on November 5, 2006

I'd guess that if you can't find it in a theater near you then it isn't in a theater near you.

Charlie Brown, it's playing at a single theater here, not listed on other sites, as described in my original post:

However, when I looked at MovieTickets.com, which apparently is exclusive to one theater in my city, it did list showtimes/tickets for Borat in that single theater.

I'm just wondering if there is any one site that consolidates all theater (including MovieTickets.com theaters) showtimes into one site. It would be annoying to think MovieTickets.com is holding back that information from everyone else.
posted by jca at 10:09 AM on November 5, 2006

The MovieTickets FAQ makes it sound like it's an opt-in program for the theater.

While Fandango says: We get show times for non-partner theaters from a 3rd party source called Tribune Media Services. If a theater provides their show times to this source they will show up on Fandango.

I can't find a help page at MovieFone.

So perhaps MovieTickets is more complete because they interact directly with the theater owners?
posted by Sibrax at 10:21 AM on November 5, 2006

Sorry, I totally misread that sentence.
posted by Charlie Brown at 10:24 AM on November 5, 2006

Cinemaclock is ideal for Canadians.
posted by solid-one-love at 11:06 AM on November 5, 2006

type showtimes:10029 (or zip code) into google.
posted by krautland at 11:53 AM on November 5, 2006

also: borat went only into limited release this weekend.

says my favorite nutcase nikki finke:

Fox showed savvy to cherry-pick its theaters in big cities and college towns: "They knew people would have a great group experience watching a very funny movie, and the word of mouth would spread like wildfire," a source explains to me. "What they didn't want is for people to walk into half-full theaters and have theater owners feel like it was a disappointing weekend before the word of mouth could catch up."

OK, my gurus are telling me that today's Borat matinees are HUGE and so are tonight's showings. The per screen averages in those 837 theaters will be killer this weekend. But they say Disney's Santa Clause 3 is still gonna win the weekend with its 3,458 theaters and Saturday kid bounce. Still, Fox's last-minute Borat strategy -- to suddenly cut back its opening to just 800 big-city screens in the U.S. and Canada when it became clear Sacha Baron Cohen's spoof wasn't tracking in Middle America -- looks smart. I'm told Borat should outperform Paramount / Dreamworks' animated Flushed Away despite the kiddie fare's 3,707 theaters. In terms of numbers, look for Santa Clause 3 in the high 20s as in millions, Borat $15 mil, and Flushed Away also in the teens. I was the first to warn that the tracking showed Middle America wasn't getting the Borat joke. Back on October 17, I learned that awareness of Cohen’s pic, widely thought to have runaway box-office potential, was well behind that Tim Allen clunker The Santa Clause 3. Then the Borat PR blitz started to wear thin (I began referring to it as Bore-At). For awhile, Borat looked comparable to Snakes on a Plane: examples of how Internet hype do not necessarily translate into box-office hype. So, even though Fox felt they had a movie that plays better than any comedy they'd released in a while, the studio blinked and announced Borat's “tiered theatrical release.” (A better word for it would have been retreat.) Most of the Borat theaters are in big cities, with the studio hoping that word of mouth will motivate "the local yokels" to see it next week when it expands. With only an $18 mil budget, this pic is certain to make moola. But how much more publicity can this movie generate? The pic started making waves at the Cannes Film Festival and wowed audiences at September’s Toronto Film Festival. Cohen, in character as fictional TV reporter Borat Sagdiyev, the “sixth most famous man in Kazakhstan,” staged various Washington, D.C., stunts outside the White House gates and Kazakhstani Embassy during a state visit by Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was not amused. The media ate it up, and since then Cohen has been red hot in Hollywood. Sacha already has his next deal in place: the British comedian is getting $42.5 mil from Universal for his next pic in which he'll play gay Austrian fashion reporter Bruno in the same documentary-style as Borat.

source: http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com
posted by krautland at 11:58 AM on November 5, 2006

type showtimes:10029 (or zip code) into google.

...
posted by jca at 12:01 PM on November 5, 2006

Rotten Tomatoes has what appear to me to be pretty comprehensive showtimes for the movies it lists.
posted by Johnny Assay at 12:20 PM on November 5, 2006

Yay krautland!!! Way to read that post. It's a shame there's no "worst answer" button. :-)

To be fair, JCA, perhaps if you framed the question as:

Why don't Google, Moviefone, or Fandango know that Borat is in fact playing at my local movie theater? Is there a consolidated search site that's better than Google, MovieFone, or Fandango when it comes to movie listings?

---

I'm particularly uninterested in postings about Google. Thanks!

What kind of movie theater is Rave Motion Pictures Valley Bend? It looks like it might be an independant theater. It probably isn't set up to release its information to the public databases the way a chain theater would. It does not appear that Google has any kind of way to add a theater that currently is unlisted. MovieTickets.com does (i.e., Sibrax has the answer).
posted by Deathalicious at 12:27 PM on November 5, 2006

Rave Motion Pictures is a theater chain, Deathalicious.
posted by jca at 1:04 PM on November 5, 2006

Either way, Y! Movies certainly lets you click on a showtime to purchase tickets via MovieTickets.com, so I'd think their data would be in sync. If Y! Movies isn't showing it for your zipcode, there may be something anomalous here.
posted by kcm at 2:58 PM on November 5, 2006

If Y! Movies isn't showing it for your zipcode, there may be something anomalous here.

Yahoo Movies: Borat or Yahoo Movies: 35801

"Sorry, we have no showtime information for this theater at this time."

I assume one could dig for a MovieTickets.com link (buried within Yahoo in this case) to buy tickets -- but you wouldn't even know to do that based on the lack of info.

Seriously, when did movie theater showtimes information become another exclusive commodity?
posted by jca at 3:33 PM on November 5, 2006

Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0443453/
posted by dbk at 6:08 PM on November 5, 2006

Okay, never heard of that chain before; around here we have Carmike and Regal and that's it. :-)

Looks like imdb is not helpful for you either

But, it does list a Rave Motion Pictures theater in another town! So that means that all theaters in the chain aren't being covered, I guess. This is more than just site weirdness, this is chain weirdness! Maybe you should call the theater and let them know?
posted by Deathalicious at 8:21 PM on November 5, 2006

Of all the sites that people have listed here, only one (IMDB) correctly shows that Borat is playing at the theater by my house. So I have no idea, but it's definitely not just you.
posted by unknowncommand at 9:26 PM on November 5, 2006

Borat was released in only 830 theaters this weekend. Compared to the usual high of about 2500 for a first weekend film.
posted by Gungho at 6:53 AM on November 6, 2006