History of the Regent Theatre: 1994
| By Allan Webb | Prev | Next |
January, 1994, was very good and the admissions remained high particularly in the school holidays. There were a number of films attracting good attendances, mainly Freewilly and Sister Act 2.
The Piano, a New Zealand film which took a while to get here, ran for twelve weeks and every Thursday morning we had excellent attendances.
We got a little film called Cool Runnings which took off but we had to take it off after five good weeks.
This was the first year that some schools trialed a change to four terms from the usual three. Te Awamutu and Dannevirke were test cases and therefore we were unable to get any day and date releases in the April Holidays because they did not coincide with other centres. Mid term break was still the same and while the September Holidays were later, we kept the Lion King and Flintstones playing.
The next year, all of New Zealand followed suit.
The four term holidays never did the same as for the three terms. The weather was always much better in April and September, whereas in May and August you could nearly always guarantee wet weather during one of the weeks.
Mrs Doubtfire also took a while to get here but did good business, dying off by the fifteenth week. By then, Four Weddings and a Funeral had started and because it was only three weeks into its release it was new and did seven good weeks, but Disney's huge hit The Lion King started in August and the number of admissions were incredible. This film screened for a couple of months and made this year very successful. The Lion King took $52,778 at the box office and was seen by 8,617 people. To begin with it was an unknown quantity and True Lies, which was supposed to be another huge Arnold Shwarzenneger hit, was to run concurrently with it. True Lies was placed in the big theatre and on the opening night The Lion King was bursting at the seams while True Lies was very soft. It was so embarrassing that we had to switch theatres. This was not easy as there were four other films programmed and the times did not conform.
The Flintstones came in and also did very good business. We were obliged to show morning sessions of The Lion King and The Flintstones prior to the school holidays which normally would have been a disaster but both of these films worked. Nothing before and nothing since has done anything like those two films at those sessions, which usually only worked with films suited to an older audience.
Speed came in for the next school holidays which did very well and The Lion King was still running to an all up nine weeks, a record for a Disney film.
Pre-Christmas did not slump as badly as usual, because we finally got the long awaited New Zealand huge hit Once Were Warrior, five months after its original release. There were illegal video copies being shown in Te Kuiti, but it did better than expected at that time and ran for eleven weeks.