Theater Looking for Box Office Hit With ATM Tickets : Entertainment: Theater officials say Santa Monica complex will premiere ‘Automated Box Office.’ It will also sell vouchers that can be used to buy popcorn, soft drinks and crab cakes. Yes, crab cakes.

AMC Theatres will introduce an innovative way of separating patrons from their money when it opens its new seven-screen theater in Santa Monica on Friday: ticket purchasing by automated teller.

The new theater, according to AMC, will be the first in the nation to offer patrons an on-site automated teller to purchase tickets. The machine will also sell vouchers that can be used to buy food--not just popcorn, Goobers and soft drinks, but also crab cakes and cappuccino (This is the Westside, after all).

The theater is in Santa Monica’s recently renovated Third Street Promenade, near Arizona Avenue.

AMC calls its ATM the “Automated Box Office.” Patrons will slide their cards through a terminal slot, enter their personal identification number and select a movie and show time from a video display on the machine.

The food vouchers, sold in $20 denominations, will be redeemable at any concession stand in the three-level theater or the theater’s Critic’s Corner Cafe. Change from purchases will be made in cash.

As with all automated tellers, funds are drawn from customers’ bank accounts.

The theater’s ATM, which will be portable and will be wheeled in and out each day, will accept any card connected with the Interlink network, whose members include First Interstate Bank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Security Pacific National Bank. There will be no charge for the use of the machine, except for customers whose banks normally charge fees for automated teller transactions.

The 51,000-square-foot theater, described by AMC as neo-classic revival in style, has a vaulted skylight, large picture windows and splashes of neon. Seating capacity for each of the seven theaters ranges from 200 to 400.

Marketing tests of the automated teller were done recently at AMC’s theaters in Rolling Hills with favorable results, according to AMC Vice President Greg Rutkowski. He said the company was looking for ways to make it easier for people to go to the movies.

“We want to give customers as many choices as possible,” he said.

There is one commodity, however, that movie patrons will not be able to obtain from the AMC’s automated teller: money. Customers who need cash to pay the baby-sitter will have to stop at a bank ATM on the way home.