Moviegoers may be getting their golf clubs out the next time a Hollywood blockbuster comes to town.

With a downturn at the ticket wicket in Canada, particularly in English-speaking cities, delegates at the 20th anniversary ShowCanada, which kicks off for four days in Victoria starting April 26, will be advised that adding some putting to the picture-viewing could be one way to revitalize the sagging exhibition industry.

That’s according to Adina Lebo, executive director of the Motion Picture Theatre Associations of Canada, which organizes the annual convention and trade show that will host an expected 800 exhibitors, distributors, producers and theatrical suppliers. Lebo sees the recent box office plunge as simply part of a regular cyclical downturn.

‘Exhibition has to reinvent itself every 10 years or so. The movie palaces with stadium seating and the comfy chairs were one reincarnation in the 1990s. Before that, theaters moved to shopping plazas from the street corners,’ she says. ‘I think you are going to see theaters become actual entertainment destination places. You may see bowling alleys and golf courses or driving ranges, expanded restaurant choices and play areas.’

Lebo says that after years of talk, digital cinema has finally arrived, and that this new technology will allow for easy delivery of a more diversified in-theater viewing experience that will incorporate screenings of concerts, fashion shows and sporting events.

Cineplex Entertainment VP of business development Brad LaDouceur will discuss some of these alternative products on a ShowCanada panel on digital cinema.

Meanwhile, Raffaele Papalia, president of indie Quebec theater chain Ciné Entreprise and MPTAC chair, will discuss the creation of the Independent Digital Buying Group, which will enable Canada’s independent exhibitors to get volume discounts. There are about 1,500 independent screens in Canada that could align. A similar group under the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) has signed on 4,000 American independent screens.

Howard Lichtman, president of consultancy company Lightning Group, says that this year his annual state-of-the-industry presentation will be different ‘because we are coming out of a slump and we have to deal with those issues.’

Like Lebo, Lichtman believes the box office plunge isn’t symbolic of a general demise of the movie theater. He ties the downturn to poor product and bad marketing rather than to young people favoring the Internet, video games and DVDs.

He says that box office was down around 7% across Canada in 2005, compared with 6% in the U.S. He is in the process of crunching the 2006 numbers so far, which he will present at the convention.

‘What I am going to do is attempt to dispel the myths around the Internet and DVDs as being the main reason for lower movie theater attendance. I’m going to join the camp of people who suggest that the slump is no more than a historic reoccurrence of cyclicality in the industry,’ he states.

One fix, according to Lichtman, is to better target movies to specific demographics and to treat Canada as a different market than the U.S.

‘The top films in Canada and the top films in the United States in 2005 were dramatically different,’ he notes, reiterating a theme he introduced in his presentation last year. ‘We have fewer younger kids in Canada, which affects family movies. And our ethnic populations are more Asian than in the United States, which is more [African-American] and Spanish.’

As a result, he points out that the small Asian art film Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior, released by Alliance Atlantis, generated proportionately better box office in Canada than in the U.S.

Demographics will be the focus of an April 28 session to be moderated by Lichtman. The panel will include Anne Sutherland, co-author of Kidsfluence: Why Kids Today Mean Business; Max Valiquette, president of marketing consultancy group Youthography; and Tony Lea of Environics Analytics Research, who will discuss the baby-boom generation.

A Telefilm Canada-sponsored session – featuring Christal Films head Christian Larouche, Seville Pictures marketing VP Victor Rego, and Quebec independent exhibitor Tom Sermanian – will address Quebec’s more solid box office, which was down less than the rest of the country in 2005 (4%), due largely to the province’s popular domestic films.

NATO president John Fithian will give the keynote speech, in which he is expected to touch on piracy, as well as shortened release windows for ancillary formats, the digital rollout, and getting people back to the theaters.

The movie studios have become so preoccupied with piracy that ShowCanada organizers won’t yet publicly release the name of a major Hollywood film to be screened at the convention. Alliance Atlantis is similarly hush-hush about a film it will be showing.

A couple of Canadian films will also screen: TVA Films’ zombie flick Fido and Equinoxe Films’ Rwanda drama A Sunday in Kigali.

Michel Mosca, senior VP and coo at Montreal-based Equinoxe, says screening A Sunday in Kigali at ShowCanada will expose the $7-million Robert Favreau-directed feature to English Canada. It opens over the April 12 Easter weekend on 60 screens in Quebec.

‘We have yet to get the opinions of English Canada on the film. If the reaction is favorable, we hope to open the movie in Vancouver, Calgary and maybe the rest of the major seven cities,’ Mosca says.

All of the major U.S. studios will screen trailers of upcoming flicks, and Canadian releases will be previewed during an April 28 breakfast sponsored by the provincial cultural agencies.

www.showcanada.ca