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The Varsity and Chelsea theaters keep costs low by showing releases later

Martha Moore and her 22-year-old daughter Deanna Riggan have been regulars at the Chelsea Theater for years.

Today, they’ve come to the independently run theater off Weaver Dairy Road to see the comedy “Friends With Kids.”

“It feels better than going to one of the big theaters,” Riggan said.

In a year when theater groups like Regal Entertainment bring in a gross income of more than $1.4 billion, independent theaters, like the Chelsea and Franklin Street’s iconic Varsity Theatre, rely on their niche audiences and intimate atmospheres to stay afloat.

While the Chelsea features newly released independent and foreign films at a standard ticket price, the Varsity specializes in sub-run screenings — or mainstream movies shown for a discounted rate during their second run.

Moore said going to the Chelsea is a convenient way to stay up to date with independent films.

“You feel very cool if you come here,” she said. “You’re part of the in-crowd.”

The Varsity is able to sell tickets at $4 because it shows films five or six weeks after their release dates, owner Paul Shareshian said.

Multiplex theaters — where tickets cost between $7 and $11 — return up to 90 percent of sales to movie distributors. That percentage is less for sub-run theaters, which allows the Varsity to keep ticket prices low.

For every week a movie is shown after its release date, the return percentage decreases by 10, Shareshian said.

He said he returns 30 to 50 percent of his sales. Bruce Stone, owner of the Chelsea, said he generally returns 50 to 70 percent of his sales to distributors.

Neither Shareshian nor Stone would comment on their theaters’ income.

At the Chelsea, Stone said he pays a flat rate to distributors and keeps the movies for a pre-determined amount of time rather than paying different percentages back each week like Shareshian does.

In addition to ticket sales, Shareshian said he gains additional income by renting the Varsity to various community and university groups.

The theater has housed a wedding, a funeral and many birthday parties and has become a valued partner for various University groups like the Ackland Art Museum and the comparative literature department.

Chelsea owners Bruce and Mary Jo Stone became the Varsity owners in 2000, 10 years after the Chelsea opened. They ran both theaters under the same business model, showing mainly independent films with a few mainstream movies interspersed.

But Stone said he gave up ownership of the Varsity in 2009 because it became difficult to show interesting films on five screens — two at the Varsity and three at the Chelsea. The theater shut its doors for about four months.

Stone said several of the independent film distributors had shut down, and the college audience was harder to predict.

“The younger audience has changed a lot in the last 20 years,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s as much of a movie-going interest or passion.”

In November 2009, Paul and Susan Shareshian reopened the Varsity as a sub-run theater, hoping that discounted tickets for recently released movies, even if a bit older, would draw a college crowd.

“It’s across the street from the University, so it kind of made sense to run that type of show,” Shareshian said. “The reduced admission seems to work.”

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Stone said a lot of today’s college students are more interested in current blockbuster films like “The Hangover” and “The Hunger Games” than they are in independent films.

“The art films tend to appeal to an older crowd — drama, characters, Meryl Streep — whereas a younger audience may be more of a Johnny Depp kind of world,” he said.

But Stone knows he has a group of regulars who prefer the Chelsea to the flashy corporate theaters.

“Multiplexes tend to have sort of a circus mentality,” he said.

“There are arcades, kids running around, teenagers. These are adults. They feel more comfortable because they don’t have to wade through all that kind of stuff just to see a movie.”

Contact the Arts Editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.