Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie is at 74 Malaysian cinemas, and 551 of its 628 sessions start before six

The film with the most sessions before dinner in Malaysia this week is about puppies and dinosaurs. Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie is at 74 cinemas in this site's listings for 4 to 10 September with 628 sessions at GSC, TGV and FST, and 551 of them start before 6pm. The first is at 10am; only 27 start after 8pm. Two weeks after it opened here on 20 August, the chains have programmed it exactly as the film's audience lives: mornings, afternoons and the early evening, and nothing much past a child's bedtime.

Puppies, dinosaurs and a volcano

Screen Daily's preview of the UK release on 7 August gives the premise in a line: Ryder and the pups embark on a dinosaur-themed rescue mission. The chains' listings fill it in a little, promising a franchise where the cutest doggos go on an adventure filled with dinosaurs, and give the running time as 90 minutes, the classification as P12, and Cal Brunker as director, with Mckenna Grace, Jennifer Hudson and Fortune Feimster among the voice cast; Screen Daily adds Bill Nye and Paris Hilton to the voices. Box Office Mojo lists the film at 1 hour 28 minutes with Paramount Pictures distributing.

The third film, and the numbers behind it

The two earlier films set the bar. Screen Daily's global report of 17 August put Paw Patrol: The Movie (2021) at $144.4 million worldwide and Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie (2023) at $205.1 million, and reported the new one opening in North America to $20.5 million with $48.5 million already banked internationally across 53 markets. By 30 August, Screen Daily had the worldwide total at $124.6 million, $81.3 million of it international; Box Office Mojo's figure as of 2 September is $126.2 million, with $44.9 million in North America. In the United Kingdom, Screen Daily's preview had Paramount opening it in 620 cinemas, two more than The Mighty Movie, which took £1.3 million on its first weekend there.

The halls that matter for a family

The useful fact in the listings is which halls. Of this week's 628 sessions, 157 are in GSC's Play halls and 88 in its Junior halls, the family halls with room to move and a lower tolerance for silence, and 15 are in TGV's Beanieplex, the beanbag halls. The rest are standard 2D and Deluxe halls. GSC IOI Mall Damansara has the most sessions of any cinema this week at 38, with FST PB Sentral, GSC 1 Utama, TGV Boulevard Bintulu and TGV Pavilion Bukit Jalil next. The P12 classification means children under 12 watch with a parent or guardian, which for this film is the point rather than a restriction.

Booking a morning show

A 90-minute film with a 10am start is done by noon, which is the whole appeal on a weekend. The Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie page lists every cinema carrying it with the hall type marked on each session, so the Play and Junior halls are easy to pick out, and the showtimes page puts each cinema's times side by side. The chains reshuffle on Thursdays and a third-week family film usually loses its evening sessions first, so the morning and afternoon shows are the ones to count on next week.