Open Letter to Mr. Aron, President of AMC
Dear Mr Aron,
If you’d like a check for approximately $200,000, we can resolve this today and save all of us the trouble. If not, please read on.
Theaters are America’s communal heartbeat. In a bifurcated culture, they remain spaces where stories have the power to knit us together. They’re not just screens; they’re sanctuaries for shared humanity, and those who hold the keys to them hold the keys to our nation’s culture.
I care that this institution survives, and as a producer and director, I am prompted to write an open letter to you with the hope that you care for the survival of the cinema as well.
When cinemas are fighting to fill seats and to keep their businesses alive, I have an urgent question: why would AMC spurn an audience of 40,000 that has already put their money on the table to watch the movie?
We’ve poured our hearts into a Holocaust film about hope and have created something with substance - a thing that seems to be lacking in most films these days. Over the course of seven years, a community crowdfunded and crowdsourced this film. In April, AMC’s indie booker committed to 100 screens for the wide release of Triumph of the Heart on September 12.
In good faith and in order to prove demand, we ran 70 weekday sneaks for the movie. AMC’s execution of these sneaks was embarrassingly poor— of all the committed theaters, the ticketing link was, on average, sent only two days before events, and some screenings were ghosted, forcing us to redirect groups to hotels. Despite this, we sold out every screening and still paid AMC a lion’s share of the ticket sales, fulfilling all our commitments.
AMC assured us these issues would be resolved and said they wanted to be our preferred partner for the release. Based on this, we secured 40,000 tickets sold in group buyouts (450 total), with 200 buyouts (approximately 20,000 ticket holders) specifically allocated to AMC theaters, representing confirmed sales for AMC.
However, with less than a week until release, AMC has barely responded to our communications, allocated only 45 screens for our wide release (instead of the promised 100), placed them in locations poorly aligned with our audience, and left our 200 AMC buyouts unresolved, risking these sales and spurning the audiences who pooled their money for us to write a check.
If I ran a business this way, it wouldn’t matter what market pressures did or did not do; my business would fail, because if you treat the small, passionate customers who want to put money in your pocket as if they are this far beneath your time, I can assure you, eventually there won’t be any people, big or small, who will bother with you anymore.
Now, a week from our release, the screen count and lack of communication threaten the trust of our audience, while the unresolved buyouts jeopardize hundreds of thousands of dollars in confirmed revenue for AMC.
We publicly ask AMC to:
Honor the verbal of 100 screens for the wide release, prioritizing locations with our target audience.
Confirm and coordinate ticketing for the 200 group buyouts to ensure these 20,000 ticket holders can attend as planned. We can write you a single check TODAY and your theaters will be filled to the brim.
Immediate steps: Assign a dedicated liaison today to cut through the fog, provide a 48-hour timeline for screen allocations and buyout confirmations, and review the process to prevent future missteps. We cherish this partnership and believe in a release that lifts both our film and AMC, proving theaters can be vibrant homes for all stories.
With faith and resolve,
Anthony D’Ambrosio
The Triumph of the Heart Team
