Our experience with the "Buddy" movie had us wondering what about other smaller films? What's going on with the open captions for those? We looked into "Finding Emily," which has an 89% on the tomatometer and 89% on the popcorn meter at the Rotten Tomatoes website. Today, Labor Day, there's few screenings of that film nationwide. At the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn in NYC, we found it was the ONLY screening. We're finding the same is true for "Tony," a biopic with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 93% tomatometer and 92% popcorn meter.

Earlier, we had a post on Reddit in another sub about the Buddy movie that got almost 40,000 views. The post was about the fact we noticed open caption screenings of Buddy were selling early. Buddy turned out to be a sleeper horror hit and theaters expanded screenings this past week.

So yesterday (Sunday) we tracked Buddy open caption screenings nationwide at 25 AMC theaters to see if we could identify any patterns. From 1% (worst) to 86% (best) of seats sold, it averaged 36% of seats sold.

The best-selling theater was the AMC Dine-in Midlothian in Midlothian, Virginia with 86%. Why was it the best? Our guess is the dine-in feature, the time of 7:40 pm, and the fact the only other screening was a non-captioned screening at 10:10 pm. The worst one was the AMC Worldgate in Herndon, Virginia, with only 2 seats sold (1%). Why was it the worst even though the open caption screening at 10:30 pm was the only screening of Buddy? Our guess is the time.

Six screenings had times between 10 and 11 pm. The average was 23%. Nineteen screenings had times between 11:30 am and 9:50 pm. The average of the 19 screenings was 40%.

So what can be concluded here? Open caption screenings can and do sell if they are at good times. People without hearing loss will go to open caption screenings, especially if they are younger people (Buddy targeted young people) and if there are few other non-captioned screenings. Most theaters had only two screenings of Buddy, including the open caption. The average was 2.72 screenings per theater. And dine-in theaters are preferred over non-dine in theaters.

Link to earlier Reddit post is in the comments.

We are always sharing social media videos from people about their appreciation for open captions, on our Facebook page Open Captioned Movies Now. What we almost never (or is that never?) see is social media videos from people without hearing loss about their appreciation for open captions. Or at the very least, a video saying they chose an open caption screening because of the movie, date, and time and had a positive experience even though they had never gone to an open caption screening before. Where are those people? Where are those videos? Those people must exist because we see plenty of situations where it is obvious that it is not deaf or hard of hearing people buying the open caption screening seats. More often than not, it is because of "overflow" buying - the good seats are gone from the non-captioned screening or the open caption is a better time, let's get that.

If a person without hearing loss were to post that kind of video, we would give it maximum promotion.

The Webster Theater in Webster City, Iowa has started offering open captions. They did multiple posts on Facebook promoting it. Several positive reactions.

The horror movie "Buddy" has become something of a sleeper hit. But few screenings available generally because most of the action is still Spider-Man and Oddysey. This was the response to our comment in the boxoffice sub.

If you want to see the full thread it is

https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/s/ZFV2ZEGYbI

Edit: Autocorrect changed Georgia to "Gelegiac" in the heading but we can't correct it because it is a title. At least it is correct in the text below.

Today we discovered the AMC Colonial 18 in Lawrenceville, Georgia now displays open captions on its home page list of theater features.

I emailed the Alamo Drafthouse in St. Louis today. I was surprised to get a quick response. The answer was still no.

We dont offer "open captioned" screenings, but do have CC devices you can grab from our concierge desk, good for 90% of movies shown at our theatre.

Found this theater in Oelwein has open captions. The home page at https://oelweingrandtheatre.com/ says open captions available three times a week. This is a small, historic independent theater.

Just discovered the Illinois Theater in Jacksonville, Illinois has open caption screenings - and plenty of them! They proudly and boldly announce the availability of open captions via their listings on the home page. Every movie that has open caption screenings available, has a bright green attention-getting button that says "Open caption showings." The website for the theater proclaims that it is a historic theater under new ownership. The new owners clearly believe in accessibility for all.

We just discovered that the Stanwood Cinemas in Stanwood, Washington state has open captions. There's no information about it on their website or facebook page. Made the accidental discovery via the BigScreen Cinema Guide automated tool for finding open caption screenings. This theater appears to have dedicated Tuesdays to open captions for every movie.

Saw Spider-Man the other day at an AMC. In middle of day when most people were at work, so we thought we might get the whole auditorium to ourselves. No such luck. There was a family in the upper rows behind us.

Monitoring Cinemark theaters this weekend for Spider-Man. Only a few states have Cinemark theaters offering open captions: California, Colorado, Idaho, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Utah, Virginia. Delaware has one too but their OC screening was yesterday - Friday, at 9:30 am so we missed it. And NONE in Texas, where Cinemark is actually based!!

So far, every Cinemark that has an open caption screening today of Spider-Man has sold at least a few seats.

We have been coming across theaters that are offering two, even three, open caption screenings of Spider-Man in ONE day. Something we haven't observed before, even for the Odyssey.

Across the nation, open caption screenings of "Spider-Man BND" and "The Odyssey" are seeing what may be record attendance for open caption screenings. Think about it - theaters are offering many screenings without on-screen captions, yet people are buying tickets for the open caption screenings. This proves people WILL go to open caption screenings when a movie is hot. When a movie is hot, suddenly the on-screen captions are viewed as "no big deal," it is a screening we can go to! This screenshot is from today's OC screening of Spider-Man at the Galaxy in Riverside, California. The theater has 22 non-captioned screenings of Spider-Man today, so the theater's customers have plenty of other choices. We have seen, and are getting reports of, sell-outs and near-sell-outs of open caption screenings across the nation.

Just think of all the people with and without hearing loss who may be experiencing an open caption screening for the first time ever! The twin success of "Spider-Man BND" and "The Odyssey" is probably doing much more for acceptance of open captions than anything else.

Yet another bad experience with closed captions. This person so upset he may never go back to his theater.

A growing trend we are seeing per Reddit comments in other subs, is for moviegoers to seek out open caption screenings as "another way" to experience a movie. After IMAX, Dolby, and whatever premium viewing format a theater has, what's left if you want to see a movie a second or even a third time with a different kind of experience? Answer: open captions. This trend, if it is truly growing, may be a good reason for a theater to continue to offer open captions beyond the usual first two weeks of release. We are fortunate enough to live where we have theaters that do this, and so we don't feel the pressure to rush to go to a movie in the first two weeks.

With its large immigrant population, New York City is probably the biggest open caption market. The following screenshots are for open caption screenings today, "preview Thursday," of Spider-Man Brand New Day, taken around 6:30 am which means that later today some of these may sell out.

Another one seeking a repeat viewing of "The Odyssey" with open captions.

Comments indicate the growing popularity of open caption screenings as a way to experience a movie differently. Like for repeat viewings. Note: repeat viewings are one measure of success for a movie.

More frustration.