Agreed. Disney is notorious for using its leverage to extract high % gross from theaters big and small, owing to its relatively unbroken streak of successful movies the past few years. There's no way they would have agreed to this without some sort of back-end make-good, especially when Disney's Marvel films draw a higher percent of high-value ticket sales (3D/IMAX/PLF, etc.) that are easily 2-3x the price that AMC says it will pay studios for each Stubs viewing.
Disney is, in fact, in a bit of a bind. The Force Awakens has sold over 100M tickets. Endgame about 95M. (source: ultimatemovierankings.com) AMC represents about half of the total, perhaps a bit less. AList has fewer than 1 million subscribers. Therefore, even though it knows AMC is likely to lowball its reimbursements on the AListers, it is not in Disney's best interest to refuse to release its next blockbuster at AMC theaters, and risk losing even a small percentage of the many, many millions of normal, traditional ticket sales.
It doesn’t matter where the power dynamic lies. No corporation would be crazy enough to unilaterally pay another corporation with deep pockets less than they had agreed on. Do you really think that Disney gives AMC a distribution license without an iron clad agreement with lots of lawyers involved?
