Roger Wyllie: Capitol Cinema co-owner on movie theatres taking a revenue hit

There's hopes poor financial results don't spell the final act for cinemas. 

Revenue dropped for all the Hoyts, Reading and Event Cinemas chains in 2024. 

Auckland's Capitol Cinema co-owner Roger Wyllie says the combination of Covid and the Hollywood writer's strike brought tough times.

He says there are good movies out there - but interest is low.  

"We've probably done 40 percent on pre-Covid with people coming through the door."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It looks like the old cinema business is tough At

(00:02):
the moment. New Zealand's major cinema chains are posting dire
results across the board. Australian owned Hoytz profit was down
eighty percent. Event Cinemas made an even bigger loss than
last year. Now Roger Wiley is the co owner of
Capital Cinemas on the Minye Road in Auckland with us. Now, hey, Roger, hey,
how are you well? Thank you? What's going wrong?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
What's coming wrong? Well, there was a thing called COVID,
and then there was a writer's strike and basically things
kind of haven't come back since then.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Still still Hollywood still not pumping out any good movies. No,
not really, why not?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Why not? Well that's the ten million dollar question. Well,
also audiences aren't coming back either.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
That's the audiences aren't going to come back if there
aren't any good movies to see, are they.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, there is good movies to say, they're not coming
back like they were. So we're probably done forty percent
on free COVID with people coming through the door. So
people are coming through the door, but they're not actually
they're buying a ticket and they're not spending anything else
apart from that ticket, or they are coming to one

(01:19):
off kind of special events, that type of thing. So
we've kind of changed our model a little bit. We're
doing more kind of event based screening and things like
that to try and reinvigorate or as perbits so that
you know, we've got some longevity in and because we
really believe in the industry and we just want it
to work. So we've we've kept all our prices down.

(01:41):
We've tried to absorb as much costs as possible because
you know, we believe that it should be accessible to everybody.
And you know, we've got one of the cheapest tickets
in town fifteen.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Dollars and fifteen dollars for an adult.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
I went to the movies the other to the three
year old to the movies for the first time. I
paid nineteen bucks for myself, So fifteen sounds like a
good deal.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Well, you know, two of you go out to one
of the big change and you're looking at one hundred
bucks by the time you parked and put your popcorn.
So we kind of believe that we knew it was
never going to be a hugely profitable business, but we
wanted to make it accessible because you know, my other
two business partners, we have a love for that cinema

(02:28):
and it would be such a shame to see cinemas
like that go from your suburbs around New Zealand, which
we all kind of grew up with. You know, we've
got those memories of Zaffa's and you know the short
films that used to play before films, and yeah, the
pre shows were great fun.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Roger beast of luck with it. I really hope that
the audiences do come back. That's Roger Wileye Capital Cinema Cone.
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