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Milestones Articles
- Celebrating 30 Years in Publication - Thank You! [Jan 31]
- Find Movies in ScreenX and 4DX Easily With New Search Tools! [Mar 13, 2024]
- View Hundreds of Recent Movie Trailers & Videos! [Mar 5, 2024]
- Find Movies with Spanish Subtitles With Our New Advanced Search Tool! [Oct 12, 2023]
- Find Open Caption Movies Easily With Our New Advanced Search Tool! [Jul 20, 2023]
- Read more »
In January 1995, a movie website called The Penguin Cinema Guide was released. I founded this publication with the intent of providing movie theater showtimes and information about the movies that were playing for the then-new mainstream Internet.
The name changed shortly thereafter to The BigScreen Cinema Guide in order to emphasize the idea of watching movies on the big screen. We wanted to celebrate the movies that were playing, the theaters playing them, and publicizing showtimes on the Internet (or basically anything on the Internet) was still a very new idea.
30 years later, we're confident in saying that we're the longest-running publication of its kind, and frankly, one of the longest-running websites. We don't know how many websites there were in January 1995, but there weren't many, and not too many of them are available today outside of an archive somewhere...
I started this website by sitting down every Thursday night and entering movie showtimes by hand from the newspaper ads in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most newspapers don't even publish showtimes any longer.
The BigScreen Cinema Guide is still a movie website run by movie enthusiasts for movie enthusiasts. We aren't some corporate entity looking to leverage profits until our next buyout. We are an independent publication run by a small number of dedicated people that truly care about the information we produce.
We don't treat the information we publish as a commodity to be served up like any other data with no regard to its quality. This is our mission, and we intend to continue well into the future!
Thank you.
Whether you're one of our loyal and longtime readers, or you just found us today, we appreciate you!
Much like a guy named Harry taking stock of his life on New Year's Eve, this is a good time to take stock of where we started and what we've done:
- We now carry showtimes for every movie theater in the United States, with over 500,000 sets of showtimes for 2,600+ movies playing at more than 5,000 theaters.
- We have photo galleries for over 1,200 movie theaters, with photos taken over the years so you can see how a theater has changed over time.
- Since 1995, we've written nearly 8,000 news articles about movies, movie theaters, and anything movie-related that we think is interesting.
- We don't use AI to generate barely-sensible content for the sake of clicks and views. Every article we write is original content. We don't accept paid article placements or embedded links.
- Given our long history, we have one of the largest archives of news pertaining to movie theaters on the Internet. There are some sites which depend largely on user contributions of unverified information, which is fine in its own right, but we strive to deliver verified information and we provide references to back it up.
- We continue to emphasize the power of watching movies on the big screen, with big sound, and in great theaters.
- We constantly work with our data suppliers to provide the best data possible. We've seen the errors that crop up over the years, and we work to clear up any problems that we find. (You wouldn't believe how many movies named "Halloween" there are, and how many times the incorrect version is tagged...)
- We respect our readers, so we provide the ability to remove all the advertising and take advantage of advanced features through our VIP Service membership program. Websites are so much better without the advertising -- it makes us wish that every website had such an option! We can only control our site, though, and we want to give you, our readers, the choice of how you want to experience our site and support our efforts here.
Looking Ahead
We're continuing to work hard every day to bring you the best website possible. We're also working on new features and coming up with ideas to deliver the information we have in new and useful ways.
We just finished installing new server hardware to provide a faster website and support more features! Complex searches, such as our Search for movies playing in 70mm now take less time to generate. We can't wait to take it out for a spin and see what it can do!
We want to make ourselves less advertising-dependent, so look for enhancements to our VIP Service. If you're familiar with Patreon and other direct-support programs that have popped up in the past few years, additional content geared towards those who support the site directly is in the works. Please consider becoming a VIP member to help us in those efforts!
Privacy is becoming more and more of an issue with big-tech tracking your every step online and selling it for profits, so we're looking into ways to eliminate all third-party tracking if you so choose.
The COVID shutdown of movie theaters in 2020 sent shocks through the industry that are still reverberating today. More than ever before, people are watching movies at home. Even though we still maintain that it's hard to beat watching a big movie in a big theater with big sound, we're big fans of home theater and the experience that can provide! I've been a home theater hobbyist since 1993 and there are many ways to upgrade your moviewatching experience at home. Expect to see expanded home video content coming soon!
We're planning to expand the services we provide to movie theaters to help them reach more customers and to make it easier to do the job of showing us great movies in the best possible environments.
Many more ideas that I hope to share and announce in the coming months...
Suggestions? Comments?
Unlike websites run by faceless corporations and guarded over by number crunchers and maintained by automated programs that can only pretend to be human, we want to hear from our readers!
Our Feedback Form is always open, and every message is read by yours truly. Please let us know what we're doing right, and what we could be doing better, and most of all, what we can do to make The BigScreen Cinema Guide even more useful!
Some of our best features have come from ideas and suggestions from our readers, so keep them coming!
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Add Your Comments
Milestones Articles
- Celebrating 30 Years in Publication - Thank You! [Jan 31]
- Find Movies in ScreenX and 4DX Easily With New Search Tools! [Mar 13, 2024]
- View Hundreds of Recent Movie Trailers & Videos! [Mar 5, 2024]
- Find Movies with Spanish Subtitles With Our New Advanced Search Tool! [Oct 12, 2023]
- Find Open Caption Movies Easily With Our New Advanced Search Tool! [Jul 20, 2023]
- Read more »
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