Operations Research II: Optimizing Movie Scheduling Solutions

Movie theaters face a persistent challenge in scheduling films due to the distinct release intervals of specific movies. This task involves decisions such as selecting featured movies, allocating screens, determining screening times, and setting exhibition durations. Current scheduling procedures, primarily reliant on manual processes by “movie programmers,” lack efficiency and often fail to generate optimal solutions, compounded by time constraints.

To address this issue, our paper proposes reframing the movie scheduling challenge as a linear programming problem, which finds an optimal solution that maximizes profitability by assigning movie screening times. We then apply our model on a case study and then a larger simulated dataset.

Using our model, we observe several patterns regarding effects of different parameters and answer the question of why movie theatres rent movies more often than buying them.