Special Showings:

You may request a Special Showing of the movie which is currently playing. This means that the regular movie would be shown to your group only, at a special showing, with no other patrons attending.

The pricing for the Special Showing is that you will pay the normal child or adult price. If the movie is shown in 3D--at your option--we will charge 3D prices.

We also require a minimum of forty tickets, even if less than forty people attend. For example, if you have fifteen people in your group, the additional charge would be for the price of 25 adult tickets.

We can schedule your Special Showing generally in the week(s) when we are showing the regular movie, if we can schedule staff to help and if the studio will authorize it. We might also need a new decryption key, so advance planning is crucial.

To schedule a Special Showing, pleasecontact either the theater manager or the City Office.

We will serve regularly-priced concessions if you prefer. You may not bring your own food.



House Rental: Showing DVDs in the Theater

We are sometimes asked about showing DVDs in the Theater for your group. While this is technically possible, it has serious copyright implications: see below.

A detailed explanation:

Here is what Brad Bills, our movie booker, said in his July, 2019, theater-insider newsletter (slightly edited for clarity):

"Playing a DVD for a private showing (birthday party...church group...etc.) or for a public viewing (either free or charging admission) is illegal and can result in your theatre being taken off service by the studio that released the DVD. The DVD is a copyrighted version of the studio's original content and has to be booked through me (the booker) to obtain the license to show it.

"Disney does not allow the showing of any of their retro titles...not on DCP or DVD...and now that they have purchased Fox...the same goes for the Fox titles. I know it's easy to think 'Well, how would they ever know?' If you've advertised it on your Facebook page or theatre web site... They Will Find About It. (Believe me, I've had it happen twice this summer.)

"Any outside groups for these kinds of bookings are subject to a $30.00 booking fee (in addition to the movie rental fees) that you need to pass on to the group.

"If you are wondering 'Okay, but how come the city or the C of C can show it in the park...or the local library have a book series of screenings or the church is showing Passion of the Christ?' Any booking like this is supposed to be booked and licensed through SWANK Motion Pictures."

We thank Brad for his complete description of the issue!

The important thing to understand here is that while some entities do show DVDs in public, possibly in violation of copyright law, those groups can't be sanctioned easily by the movie studio that produced the movie. The studio could bring a law suit, but they probably won't go to the trouble and expense of doing so.

However, the Cheyenne Theater is at much greater risk in this scenario: the movie studio can--with merely a stroke of a pen--prohibit the Cheyenne Theater from showing that studio's future productions. Our theater could be black-listed from one or more studios, which is a serious threat to us.

Bottom line:

If you want to show a DVD to a large group, we suggest that you do it in another venue, possibly the High School, which has an excellent facility. We also suggest that you contact SWANK to learn about licensing.

So to do a House Rental, there is a fee to license the movie (no DVD, but a real movie formatted for our projector), a booking fee, and the theater House Rental fee. This could easily total more than $500, just to show an old movie.

We also require that you provide a check that we can cash on the date of the event, or a credit card number. (For the sake of our accounting, we need payment concurrent with the event date.)

To schedule a House Rental, pleasecontact either the theater manager or the City Office.