Why Your Movie's Showtime Isn't When It Starts
AMC now warns ticket buyers to expect 25-30 minutes of ads and trailers before the film begins. The company’s own math behind the gap — and why it is shrinking.
Buy a ticket on AMC’s app today and, right below the showtime, you may see a line most moviegoers never used to get: movies commence 25-30 minutes after showtime.
It isn’t a glitch or a customer-service disclaimer. It’s the company telling you, in writing, that the time printed on your ticket isn’t when the movie actually starts.
AMC added that language after signing a deal with National CineMedia, the country’s largest cinema advertising network. Under the agreement, AMC now runs up to five minutes of commercials after the official showtime, plus an extra “Platinum Spot” ad placed just before the final trailers, on top of the trailer package that was already there.
The Actual Math Behind the Gap
A year of measuring itself against competitors gave AMC an unusually precise answer for where those minutes go. On an earnings call, CEO Adam Aron told analysts the company could shave four or five minutes
off the preshow without touching the new ad deal. His breakdown: AMC’s own internal review found it was running one more trailer than rival chains, worth roughly two and a half minutes on its own. Another two to three minutes came from AMC’s in-house reels — the “Silence Your Cellphones” and “Silence Is Golden” spots shown before every film — and 15 seconds came out of a one-minute Imax promotional piece.
“We think we can shave four or five minutes out of it. So it’s not that there’s been a change of heart. We always knew that when we did the NCM deal, that we would probably have to shorten at the same time we’re lengthening, so that those two changes offset each other and balance each other out.”
Adam Aron, AMC Entertainment CEO
Does the Runtime Printed for a Movie Include Any of This?
No. The runtime studios publish, and the one theaters print on posters, covers only the film itself, opening logo through the last frame of credits. A film listed at 120 minutes runs almost exactly 120 minutes once it starts; the preshow material is added entirely on top. A rough formula: take the listed showtime, add roughly 20 minutes for previews, then add the film’s own runtime to find when the credits actually roll. Individual trailers typically run one and a half to two and a half minutes each, meaning a preshow can pack in eight to ten of them before a single frame of the actual movie appears.
Why Now
The timing wasn’t random. AMC’s ad expansion followed a brutal stretch at the box office. Setting aside those first quarters directly impacted by Covid and its aftermath, the January to March industry box office in 2025 was the lowest it has been since 1996,
Aron told investors in the company’s first-quarter earnings report. More advertising minutes meant more revenue at a moment the industry badly needed it, and AMC has said the added money helps keep ticket prices from climbing further.
The Backlash Nobody Priced In
Movie studios, not moviegoers, applied the real pressure. Marketing executives worried that longer preshows were training audiences to arrive later, meaning fewer people in their seats for the trailers studios pay to place there, the entire point of the preshow from Hollywood’s side of the business. AMC has said it wants to eventually bring the preshow down from the 15-to-20-minute range to a maximum of 10 minutes, starting in 2026.
Daybreak Wire has previously debunked the myth that a formal rule caps trailer length at two minutes and 30 seconds — there’s no such regulation, just industry convention — and looked at why the film shown on your flight isn’t the theatrical cut either. The preshow gap fits the same pattern: what looks like a fixed rule of moviegoing is usually just a business decision nobody bothered to explain.
Whether AMC actually hits its 10-minute target this year matters less than what the exercise revealed. The 20-odd minutes bolted onto every showtime were never a law of nature. They were a number a company built, had to defend to angry studios, and is now dismantling minute by minute — one extra trailer, two safety reels and fifteen seconds of Imax at a time.
