When cinemas actually schedule their shows

The median title got 4 shows at a given cinema during the week, and 32% of title-and-cinema pairs were a single screening — the one-off repertory night, event or special. The median cinema programmed 5.5 different titles in the week (middle half: 2 to 8).

That split is the shape of independent exhibition: a handful of current releases carrying most of the shows, around a long tail of single screenings that give the programme its character. It is also why a holdover decision on Monday reshapes the whole week — see film programming.

26.6% of shows start exactly on the hour and 18.8% on the half hour. Around a third start at other minutes — usually because a programmer is packing shows back to back and letting the running time set the next start.

Whether that matters depends on your audience. Round start times are easier to remember and to plan dinner around; tight changeovers fit an extra show into a busy screen. The showtime planner lets you try both on your own running times and changeover.

The sample is cinemas that sell tickets through Veezi's hosted booking pages, found by crawling cinema websites listed in Wikidata and through search. Those pages list every upcoming showtime publicly. We made one request per cinema, kept only the seven days of the week shown, and publish aggregates only — no cinema is named or identifiable.

Treat it as a snapshot, not a census. The sample leans heavily towards independent and single-screen cinemas in North America, because that is who uses this system; circuits and multiplexes schedule differently. We have no screen counts or attendance, so this describes what was offered, not what sold. The snapshot is repeated through the year so the pattern can be followed across seasons.

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