AI Takes Over Scheduling and Marketing... The Quiet Revolution in Movie Theaters

Expanding Beyond Major Chains to Independent Theaters
Drawing a Line at Creative Tasks

European theaters are increasingly adopting AI technology. Photo by Yonhap News

Movie theaters around the world, which have struggled to recover audiences after the pandemic, are seeking solutions by adopting artificial intelligence (AI).

According to the British film magazine Screen Daily on the 17th (Korean time), the two-screen public cinema Tynset Kino in Tynset, Norway, saw its admissions rise by 21% to 14,000 over the past year. This is an exceptional result, considering that the average growth rate for all theaters in Norway during the same period was only 2.5%.

At the center of this transformation in the small mountain town of just 6,000 people is AI. Sergio Chavez, manager of Tynset Kino, built a customized scheduling and marketing agent using Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude.

The scheduling AI analyzes national cinema data and Tynset’s own box office statistics to recommend the optimal showtimes and screening frequency. Chavez explained, “It’s very useful for scheduling when audience patterns change during holidays like Easter and Christmas.”

The marketing AI automatically generates promotional copy for upcoming releases and even schedules posts on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Chavez said, “Thanks to AI, I save more than a day of work per week. Anyone with a little technical knowledge can build something like this, and it will become even easier in the future.”

The leading adopter of theater AI is the UK chain Vue. More than ten years ago—before the emergence of large language models like ChatGPT or Claude—the company started operating its own AI scheduling system (AIS). Today, it is also used at Vue’s locations in Italy and Poland. Otto Turton, Chief Commercial Officer at Vue, explained, “Thanks to AIS, we can screen up to five times a day per screen. A branch with eight screens can offer a programming variety comparable to competitors with fifteen.”

AI is also used to determine how long to keep hit films in theaters. In the UK market, movies achieve 90% of their box office within the first four weeks on average. However, Vue has been able to extend the screening lifespan by up to 50% through AI-driven scheduling optimization.

This trend has accelerated as specialized software companies have joined the market. The most notable player is Vista, a New Zealand-based company that commands 46% of the global cinema management market outside China and India. Its proprietary AI box office prediction tool forecasts opening weekend attendance with an accuracy of plus or minus 15%. Its AI-assisted scheduling tool can reduce programming time by up to 50%.

This is not just a story about large chains. As the cost of using AI has decreased, small independent theaters are also actively adopting it. According to Kratzky, head of the Czech Film Association, “More than half of independent theaters in the Czech Republic use some form of AI, most commonly as a scheduling consultant.”

However, not all theaters are embracing AI. Watershed, an independent cinema in Bristol, UK, updated its AI policy in February. While it uses AI for data analysis and legal document review, it does not use AI for creative tasks such as marketing copy or poster design that involve audience communication. Claire Reddington, CEO of Watershed, stated, “The way we communicate and curate for our audience is our core asset. It would be risky to delegate that to AI.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.