That's a pretty good deal for them too. It doesn't cost very much for a butt to be in a seat for 2 hours, but just getting them in the door more often increases the chances of high margin concession purchases. Plus there are always the people that subscribe-and-forget
Any idea how they get the movie distributors to buy into it? The infrastructure cost overhead is small, but as I understand it, most of the cost of a movie ticket ends up going straight to the distributor. I doubt the distributor wants them giving away complimentary tickets without getting something.
I'm not sure how these deals are structured, whether there's a per-viewing cost or a bulk "we rent this movie and show it as many times as we want to whoever we want".
Theaters generally pay the distributor per showtime, not per ticket sold (IIRC). So a distributor makes the same amount for an empty showtime as a full one. Theaters then price tickets to optimize towards fully covering the amount they paid to air the film, making their profits on concessions.
So while you're right that most of the costs of a ticket go to the distributor, that's not related to number of tickets sold, it's that tickets are priced to cover the costs already paid.
If someone knows more about this and has a source confirming, clarifying, or correcting me, please share, as I've been interested in this for a long time.
Reference? I've never heard that before. Sounds highly unlikely. Would be fascinated to see evidence showing otherwise.
What is true is that the studios take a higher percentage of ticket sales during opening week, possibly 55-65% or more in some cases. I believe it depends on the movie. The percentage starts to flatten out back below 50% in the following weeks. So it's true that the theater chains do want to optimize for concession sales, since so few films have legs these days.
It's two-fold.
The theatre pays a guarantee per screening - usually $60, or a certain percentage per sold ticket. Whatever is higher.
The typical cost is ~$5.
>It doesn't cost very much for a butt to be in a seat for 2 hours
I thought that the deal between the movie theaters and the production companies were that they paid a flat rate per head that views the movie, with almost 100% of ticket sales going to the production company, where the theater only makes a profit on concession sales.
It's always been more complicated than that, but generally 100% of ticket sales only applies to the biggest movies like Endgame or Star Wars.
For other blockbusters, somewhere between 50-75% is the norm, with the range varying based on the chain's size/leverage and the movie's expected performance.
For all other films, the cap is 50% of ticket sales for the first weekend.
With all of the above, the studio gets a smaller % of ticket sales each weekend. Somewhere around 8-12 weeks in, the studio's share drops below 10%, which is why some films will stay in theaters for months if there aren't any new big films to replace them.
I think there’s also a flat rate? Maybe it varies from territory to territory.
These days I believe movie theaters makes a lot of money on advertising as well as concessions. Now that everything is digital advertisements can be changed on a whim and moved around and updated. Many chains (at least in Europe) are now selling premium advertisement spots. Like after the trailers just before the feature film starts.
