It is a Saturday night. You are at a party, and as the night is coming to an end, a conversation begins to take place about everyone’s plans for the next day. Your friend who can never recall the names of actors or movie titles is trying to describe the plot of what he or she believes to be a must-see film. With minimal plans and your interest somewhat peaked, it is settled even so – you will all go see a matinee.
What happens next is even more painful than listening to Mr. or Mrs. “I Can’t Remember the Name” try to sell you on going to see “X” movie, though. Now, you are tasked with the bother of hammering out all the details of your plans.
Wait, who is going? What was the name of the movie again? Which theatre should we go to? What time works best for everyone? Did anyone tell Jack and Diane we are all going?
If only there was an app for… wait a minute, there is an app for everything.
The brainchild of former Lionsgate and Amazon employees, Matthew Bakal and Ameesh Paleja wanted to make it easier for groups of people to plan an outing to the movies. Their solution entailed leaving their corporate jobs to launch Atom Tickets.
“It basically takes all the hard work out of planning to go to the movies … It’s like, I want to go, other people want to go, just tell me what you want to do, and then this computer will figure out basically everything we need to worry about,” Paleja said.
The app itself is beautifully and functionally designed, greeting users with an intuitive wheel display on the home screen that allows for fun and easy perusing of fresh movies, A-Z in theaters and coming soon sections. Trailers, reviews, ratings, show times, theatre information and general movie and cast information are all readily available for users to explore.
“You want to learn about the movie, great. You want to watch a trailer for an upcoming movie, great. You want to invite your friends, great. You want to just buy your own ticket, great. It’s all in one place,” Bakal said.
“Everything you do is helping us to understand what’s going on and what things you care about,” Paleja added.
There are also two more distinctive features that allow users to order and pre-pay for their concessions and rally their friends to initiate the process of getting everyone together to head to the movies. Users can also take advantage of in-app communication to further streamline the entire process.
The app has had initial success in its beta testing, which is something that Regal Entertainment Group has welcomed in its theatres. Not only is Regal headquartered in Knoxville and preparing to occupy its new corporate digs near the South Waterfront development, but it is also the largest theatre circuit in the United States.
“Regal has been an amazing partner for us,” Paleja said. “They’ve been forward thinking and embracing new technologies.”
However, Bakal and Paleja want to step in before Regal does its job; they want to guide potential movie-goers on their journey to the theater.
“The popcorn is fresh; Regal does a great job with that. The theatre is clean; Regal does a great job with that. The movie on the screen is great; the studio does a great job with that. But the whole process of getting people through that pipeline is what we want to do a little better … You just sort of cruise through that lobby and scan-in at a couple places, and you’re done,” Bakal said.
And as it would turn out, Knoxville is a good city for app testing –a sentiment that has been shared before by others companies such as music app, Trebel. In speaking of how Knoxville works well for Atom, Bakal said this:
“It’s a city that’s pretty sophisticated – Uber’s very popular here, so to say to someone, ‘Oh, there’s an app and you put your credit card in and you get a receipt later and everything’s really convenient,’ people get it.”
Atom can be downloaded for free on Android and iOS, and is currently available for full use in Knoxville. Their current promotion grants first-time users a $5 dollar ticket to the movie of their choice.
