Sounds like the theater paid some fee to show the movie, the artful contents. Whether that fee was flat, flat per showing, or a percentage of the gate or some of each probably depended on the film, the distributor, etc. In the film print days showing the art necessarily involved borrowing a physical film and later returning it in the same condition you received it. Which condition had a “You broke it; you bought it.” contingency fee of $2000 if you couldn’t return it undamaged.
Nowadays with digital distribution, the fee to play the movie, the artful contents, is structured similarly to the old days. There’s just no longer a print to damage and therefore no contingent fee for damaging it.
Most folks say that the theater makes no profit off of the films but makes up for it at the concession stand. I do recall hearing that some films had a profit split that worked on a sliding scale: first few weeks everything went to the distributor; after that, greater percentages went to the theater. I suppose that would explain why some crappy movies might linger way beyond their time.
A factor that clouded the horse trading for the content was the distinction between major chains and independent movie houses (art houses and such).
My theater chain was United Artists…I’m not sure if that gave a leg up as also being a producer of content.
One thing was certain: the independents would show our prints after they were done at our theater. They also showed plenty of eclectic stuff (hence the term “art houses”).
Not realistic for the scenarios where this was done. As I alluded to above, there are two situations where the 4+ screen interlock was done for paying, ticketed shows to real customers:
*Midnight premieres- In a 20-plex you might have an opening weekend schedule including 4 prints for really big movies, and 6 prints for movies at the “God tier” (prior to the era of digital projection, Marvel dominance, and people streaming movies at home, this basically meant “movies with Batman or Star Wars in the title and nothing else”). 99% of theaters would never have the option of getting 12 prints of the same movie - the only time I ever heard of this was in very specific gimmick situations i.e. the AMC and Regal locations on Times Square that are the busiest theaters in the country and would do things like show Shrek 3 on every screen for its first week. However, if you’re doing a midnight premiere in the 90s or 2000s when the audience existed for this, you want to be able to sell as many seats as possible for that particular screening, and your other screens will be mostly dark anyway. A giant interlock to put the 4 prints on 20 screens is called for here.
*The summer morning “kids shows” that many theaters still do and even more did in the past. This is another example of “any screen you are not using would otherwise be dark at this time.” For those who are not familiar with it, this is when you show a movie from 10 years ago at 9:30 in the morning for families, day cares, etc at discounted pricing. Generally you get a new title or two from the archive every week for an 8 or 10 week summer program. These will only be shown on 1, 2, or 3 days depending on the particular theater, and then sent back and swapped for the next week’s program. Why would you want to spend 2 hours building up and breaking down each additional print - if you can even get 20 prints of a repertoire title, which you probably can’t - instead of just doing a giant interlock?
In my entire time dealing with this we only had an interlock fail one time, and that was because I wasn’t there to help the other experienced staffers and they relied on someone who had just started that week without properly checking behind him. And because there were other people there with more experience, it got fixed in a short time and no show was cancelled. We did at least 200 of these 6+ screen setups for midnights and kids shows and 199 of them worked without a hitch. The expectation that equipment is poorly maintained, staff isn’t trained, etc. is why the exhibition industry is in the state it’s in today. It doesn’t have to be that way - and with the elimination of all the (literal) moving parts of film exhibition in favor of a much simpler digital setup, it REALLY shouldn’t be that way anymore, though sadly reality does not always live up to the ideal.
Standard split is the theater makes “house nut plus 10” for the first two weeks - you get to cover your operating costs then take 10% of the remainder, with the remaining 90% of gross profit on ticket sales going to the studio. The longer the movie stays at the theater, the higher the theater’s share. There are also sometimes side conditions for big movies that have more negotiating power, e.g. “must play on the biggest screen you have for 4 weeks” or “must play 5 shows a day and cannot split a screen with anything else.” Usually it’s Disney that tries to squeeze extra rules out of exhibitors and the other studios are more reliant on standard contracts that just deal with money.
I remember news articles about the conditions Lucas* imposed on theatres wishing to show Phantom Menace back in 1999. Unfortunately my Google-fu is failing to find any of the articles that listed the full contract, which were posted back in the day. Some of the conditions I remember were no on-screen ads and no more than 8 minutes of trailers before the film. Also for the first X weeks (I think it was 8) the theater could not reduce the number of screens nor move it to a smaller auditorium. All theatres had to meet certain projection and sound criteria as well. Violators could have their prints yanked.
It was Lucasfilm, not 20th Century Fox, that came up with the list of demands.
This one wasn’t a moment so much as an entire experience. I went in to The Sixth Sense knowing there was a twist but not knowing what the twist was. I was confident that I would be able to figure it out. I became so immersed in the movie that I forgot there was a twist and didn’t try to figure it out. It was a big surprise. If I was home watching on tv my attention would be split and I would have tried and maybe succeeded in figuring out what happened.
I started off the thread with an example of using silence for effect. Barbie does it too. Near the beginning of the movie Barbie is having a dance party. While in full choreographed line dance Barbie says, “Do anyone of you think about dying? The complete silence that follows is works in the theater but will probably be lost on a TV.
I saw it on TV, had even been told what the twist was several months earlier, but I became immersed in it as well even on the small screen. I even began to pick up some of the hints of something unusual going on but could not put anything together. I don’t think much of most of his movies but he hit it out of the park with the writing and direction on this one.
The scene in The Thing (1982) where MacReady tests everyone’s blood. It’s only about a minute long, but it needs to be big and in your face for the jump scare and the chaos that ensues.
The first transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London (1981). A lot of care went into the makeup effects and the editing. It really doesn’t come across as impressive on anything other than a large screen.
Just as some pop records were mixed to sound better on cheap car radios in the 60s, I feel like a lot of special effects recently have been made “just good enough” for viewing on a phone, tablet, laptop, or a larger TV across the room. Most of it truly looks like crap on the big screens.
In theaters, the ending of The Cassandra Crossing had the shoddiest model work I’ve seen in a movie-house. When I saw it on TV, the old set we were using gave it a better sense of distance and it looked fantastic. I watched it recently on one of those new, souped-up, four-wheel drive TVs and it looked worse than in the theater. Richard Harris tries real hard, but still… .
It was George Lucas reminiscing over his teenage years. Like in American Graffiti.
I think it was Ray Bradbury who said that he never got the same sense of Gothic Grandeur from watching the 1931 Dracula on the small screen that he did when he first saw it in the theater.
I saw it about three weeks after the movie came out. It was in an absolutely full theater, at midnight no less. I remember screaming and pushing out my hands, and noticed everyone else was doing it too. I had thought I knew the spoilers from folks who’d already seen it, but not that one.
To me though one of the scariest scenes was the one in which the two guys were fishing for the shark, with the roast. You never see the beast but the suspense is amazing. The dock is going out to sea, then it turns around.No blood, nobody gets hurt, but my heart almost stopped. Fantastic filmmaking.
Sure, it was in Episode IV and 1/2, where Luke has to track the corvette down after it is stolen from his shop class. He finds it in sin filled desert town on a small obscure planet…