Yes, it’s still happening, every week, for cinemas across the country.
Recently, the Carlton Cinema, a downtown Toronto venue owned by the independent circuit Imagine Cinemas, made known that they had to remove screenings of Tony that were already on sale, because the distributor A24 pulled the film.
Tony is the new film from Canadian director Matt Johnson, who directed and starred in the cult hit Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which only opened six months ago and played the Carlton for 14 weeks. This run brought in almost $100,000, making the Carlton the film’s fourth highest-grossing theatre across all of North America. With a great deal of Tony‘s press being centred around Johnson’s work and cult of personality, it would seem reasonable to expect his fans to attend Tony with similar enthusiasm.
But ‘reasonable’ is not the key word to use when describing how films are booked across screens in Canada.
For many Canadian cities with a Cineplex, you can only watch new films at the Cineplex. This practice is upheld by ‘clearances’ or ‘zones,’ an opaque system that mostly serves to keep indie cinemas from playing new movies. Read more about zones.
With Cineplex claiming nearly 75% of the Canadian box office, it is incredibly hard for any kind of fair competition to exist when it comes to placing films. In a report we published in 2024, we found that 53% of respondents had to clear a Cineplex before they could show a film. Read the full report.
When asked about zones, Cineplex’s stance has consistently been that placing films is the responsibility of the distributor. In this instance, A24 has not released a statement. But the end result is the proof: no matter where the decision is made, no matter if there was a phone call or not, it still remains a fact that many Canadian audiences are not allowed to decide which cinema company they’d like to support when watching a new release.
As an anonymous head of Canadian distribution company said in a Canadaland Commons episode about Cineplex: “Cineplex acts as an absolute monopoly. Cineplex’s claims that film distributors act independently is for all intents and purposes – false. Because of Cineplex’s enormous market share, no independent film distribution company can afford to do anything that Cineplex might perceive as going against its interests.”
It is not fair that exhibitors like Imagine Cinemas find themselves in the position where they must stick their own necks out when films are unfairly withheld from their screens. It is the unfortunate truth that Imagine took a risk by going public. This happens every day for cinemas across the country, and there is a culture of silence surrounding such cases as it would be both onerous and risky to speak up.
Since booking decisions are not a public matter, discriminatory practices can hide in plain sight. Unless films have been confirmed by a distributor and pulled after tickets have gone on sale, or a cinema chooses to go public, there is no record of whose screens have been blocked. In any one situation, distributors can attribute any number of reasons for a booking decision, which means that we can lose the forest for the trees.
The same anonymous distributor from the Canada Commons episode said: “If they make them angry enough, Cineplex can find ways to punish distributors. It’s never explicitly framed that way, but a distribution company could find that their movies aren’t getting enough screens at Cineplex theatres, or they’ll show a film at a theatre where it’s unlikely to get the right audience, or they’ll refuse to play trailers for their films before big releases.”
There are no zones like this in the US, UK, or any other country we know of. All types of cinemas are able to open new releases on the opening date, and not only do the films make more money, but audiences get a choice of where to watch! Imagine Cinemas has a $5 Tuesday rate. That’s a missed opportunity for audiences. Many indie cinemas have grand old interiors, bespoke cocktails, fun popcorn flavours, community partnerships and more — those are more missed opportunities.
We need a fair industry where it is not down to the cinemas to go public and seek an unclear resolution. It would be a feudal approach indeed to allow the biggest players to be the unspoken arbiters of how business is conducted in this industry. In France, there is a médiateur du cinéma for such cases; in Australia, the role is called the conciliator.
Today, if you want to see Tony in downtown Toronto, you would have no choice but to go to a Cineplex.
Image: Image from Tony taken from the film poster.