Anchorage Daily News

Normally, Lisa Bridge and her 13-year-old daughter, Marie, wouldn't go see a movie on a school night.

But last Thursday, they couldn't resist the lure of deep new discounts at the Fireweed 7 theater in Midtown.

"All movies, all times, just $3," say the street signs out front.

"It's wonderful," said Bridge, who sells jewelry at J.C. Penney. "There's a lot of people out there who don't have a lot of money -- single moms."

Regal Entertainment Group, the nation's largest movie theater operator, recently premiered the bargain ticket sales at the Fireweed, evidently as a way to draw in more customers to the venerable movie house at the corner of Fireweed Lane and Gambell Street.

Before the change, an evening show cost $9.75 and a matinee $6.75.

Theater workers are telling patrons that films at the Fireweed won't be first-run. Rather, they'll be films that have been in release for a few weeks.

This week the lineup includes such pictures as "Wall-E," "City of Ember," "Burn After Reading" and "Mamma Mia!"

Megan Hubbard, 27, was thrilled at the chance to watch the "The Dark Knight," a Batman flick, for less than the cost of popcorn.

"Freakin' rad!" said Hubbard, her hair dyed pink and yellow, with two huge fluorescent stars dangling from her ears. "I'm all about it. Three dollars is great!"

Local managers for Regal deferred questions about the pricing change to corporate headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn. A spokesman there did not return repeated phone calls for comment.

The discount ticketing policy applies only to the Fireweed and not Regal's other Anchorage movie theaters, including the Dimond Center theater in South Anchorage and the Totem in East Anchorage.

Regal is huge, operating 6,782 movie screens at 551 theaters in 39 states.

The company is "in sound financial shape," and the movie business is doing fairly well too, despite the economic downturn, according to a recent analysis from the investment firm Hilliard Lyons. In general, the quality of movies is more important for theater operators than the shape of the economy, the firm said.

Analysts say movie theaters actually are several businesses rolled into one. Ticket prices are just one source of revenue, and much of it goes back to the movie studios and distributors. Theaters make much of their profit on sales of pricey popcorn, soft drinks and candy. They also make money from on-screen advertising.

People have been watching movies at the Fireweed site since 1965, when the doors opened on what was then touted as "the largest theater in Alaska." The first film shown was "Mary Poppins," an Oscar winner starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.

In the ensuing years, the Fireweed was expanded, more screens were added, and for a time a drive-in theater operated nearby, despite protests from some residents that open-air movies encouraged "promiscuous conduct" in automobiles.

Ownership of the Fireweed has changed hands a few times. It's been part of the Regal group at least since 1998.

The theater is modest by modern standards, lacking the stadium seating and other amenities of Cinemark's flashy Century 16 in Anchorage.

The Fireweed isn't the only show in town when it comes to $3 tickets.

The Bear Tooth, a single-screen theater in Spenard, also shows second-run films at that price. Unlike the Fireweed, however, moviegoers at the Bear Tooth can sip beer while watching the big screen.

Matt Jones, a Bear Tooth owner, said he doubts giant Regal was thinking of competing with his theater when it slashed Fireweed tickets to $3.

"My gut is that they're doing it because, I believe, all theaters are hurting right now," Jones said. "I'm guessing the ultimate goal is to sell that piece of property and they don't have a buyer yet."

As a stopgap, the cheap tickets just might work for the Fireweed, he said, though "its heyday has come and gone."

Meanwhile, Regal appears poised to roll out a huge new attraction in Anchorage.

The company has signaled it wants to build a 17-screen cineplex, including an IMAX theater, in Tikahtnu Commons, a mall Cook Inlet Region Inc. is building off the Glenn Highway in Muldoon.

"That's the expectation. We haven't inked the final contract yet," Jim Jager, a CIRI spokesman, said Monday.

For now, it's clear many Anchorage residents are happy to see a $3 movie at the Fireweed, even if it's slightly dated. Last Thursday saw a steady stream of moviegoers come in from the cold.

"I'm cheap!" said Bridge, laughing, before she and her daughter headed down the ramp to watch "My Best Friend's Girl."

Find Wesley Loy online at adn.com/contact/wloy or call 257-4590.

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