My apologies if this doesn’t belong in Cafe Society, but it was the closest category I could think of.
My son and I went to see The Odyssey today. I had bought tickets on line and had a QR code ready for the theater, part of the Cinemark chain, to scan. We entered the lobby, and it was virtually deserted. There were two other patrons by the snack counter holding soda cups, but no visible employees at the concession stand or anywhere else. We found our way to the IMAX screen and took our seats and watched the show.
We could have written it off as a fluke (maybe someone called in sick?) except we’d had exactly the same experience a few months ago when we saw Project Hail Mary at the same theater.
We did go to a very early midweek showing both times. Does it just make more fiscal sense for a theater to not hire someone to take tickets for the early shows, and not care who walks in? If the showings are generating so little revenue, why have them at all?
Our tickets were about $40, and there were about 10 other people in the audience. Anyone had a similar experience, or can shed light on what the business model is here?
My dad used to d work for the movie companies and explained some of this to me. That said I am no expert and what he told me was a long time ago so things have probably changed some.
For a new movie the movie studios can take 80% or more of ticket sales. Although, the longer the movie is in the theater the more the theater gets to keep.
A lot of it is waiting for the big blockbusters which pull a lot of people in. Kinda like Christmas can be the difference between profit and losing money for a merchant.
Concession prices have always been outrageous but it is so much worse now. 1000% markups can easily happen. Theaters get to keep all of that.
Then, many large theaters have other things like restaurants attached or arcades and bowling allies (mine has an arcade and bowling alley). People rent those out.
When I saw Odyssey early on the theater was filled for a few weeks.
Somehow it all adds up.
ETA: I forgot…the theater sells those pre-movie ad spots. That has gotten crazy now too. In my theater that is a full 30 minutes of ads every time.
Thanks for the inside info – but what has me baffled is that at this theater movies, including IMAX, seem to be functionally free at some showings, since no one is minding the store.
Once you buy the ticket and are in theaters don’t seen to care at all if you sneak into another theater after your movie is over. I suppose that is theft but I’ve never seen a theater enforce it. They’d rather have you stay and buy more food and soda.
Only if a show is sold out do they care and now all seats are reserved so pretty much sorts itself out if someone is in your seat.
I’d hypothesize that they have done the math, realize that most people pre-purchase tickets online or in their app now, and that people don’t realize that there may not be anyone to take or sell tickets – and thus, relatively few people actually walk in for free. The few people who will be buying tickets on-site, or going to the concession stand, for an early week matinee, may not justify the front-of-house staffing.
Given that seats are generally assigned when you pre-order, whoever is running the projector could conceivably know if there is a seat filled that shouldn’t be. Not sure it’s worth their time to do anything about it though. Folks have been sneaking into movies since there were theaters. When I was a kid there groups that would buy one ticket, then the others would go stand by the back door to the theater. Whoever had the ticket would go and open the door for them.
Conceivably, if they look down over the theater, but I suspect that, now that projection is nearly always digital, I’d wager that a modern multiplex probably only has one or two “projectionists” on duty at any one time. So, most of the time, I’d imagine that the projection booth in any given screen/theater is unoccupied.
I went to see Spider-Man last Thursday night and there were only five other people in the theater. Now in my experience, few people go to a movie on a Thursday night so I guess that wasn’t surprising. It was an IMAX theater, and between my ticket, popcorn, and a drink it cost me about $43.50. I only got popcorn and a drink because I had a gift certificate. I’m not sure what their business model is as I feel they’ve priced themselves out what a lot of families can reasonable afford.
There are two trends to be noticed. One is that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a lot of movie theaters to show nothing in 2020. We have only barely recovered from that. Second, there has been a slow decrease in the number of people who watch movies in a theater because there has been a slow increase in the number of people who stream movies at home starting from the early 21st century. That doesn’t mean that everyone now watches movies at home. There are still a lot of people who watch new movies only in movie theaters. People who live by themselves like to go to movie theaters People who don’t like movies on a small screen go too. The movie theater companies are still making enough to get by.
The business model, as Whack-a-Mole points out, is that the ticket revenue is largely taken by the distributor. The theatre’s primary revenue source is the snacks and drinks.
Hence, the cinema doesn’t really mind if you come in without paying. They are not losing much on the ticket, and they have an opportunity to sell high-added-value calories to you. So they have no great incentive to keep freeloaders out of seats that would otherwise be empty.
I’ve experienced this a lot recently at several theaters. Not low attendance levels but rather no controlled admittance. I buy my tickets on line but for the past couple years I just walk directly into the theater and head to my seat. No employee taking or checking tickets. No more velvet rope stanchions. Just wide open for anyone to wander in and out.
In fact they no longer seem to have ticket booths but rather have automated kiosks or signs telling you to go to concessions to purchase tickets.
I can count on one hand the number of times I have never had my ticket scanned when walking in and still have fingers left over, and I see over 100 films per year.
Yeah, In thinking about it, what is keeping the many local unhoused persons from bedding down in the air conditioned comfort of a theater – it sure beats being outside in the 100 deg plus heat. And if someone misbehaves, who you gonna call? When I was there, no employees were even visible at the concession stand. As for projectionists, are they even needed any more? Couldn’t the equipment be automated or controlled remotely? As I mentioned before, it sure seems like an odd business model.
[ETA: in my feed, the thread title immediately above this is “Mass killings in the United States.”
Honestly, in this day and age when a fast food combo meal can run pretty close to $20, having to spend $15 for popcorn and a soda doesn’t feel as usurious as it used to.
They’re still chasing the wrong audience. Movies are aimed at Gen X and Millennials, who are now middle aged, and less inclined to go out to the cinema. Younger audiences, Gen Y, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, are not a primary audience they are aiming movies at, except for animated features, probably because their main interests are thirty second vertical video clips.
Though there have been many box-office successes this year, more so than recent years, they are still only a very few, and still within a narrow genre. Nobody goes to see comedies or dramas or romances anymore, those can now be found on streaming instead.
These are my own observations. I don’t know what this might mean for the future of movie-going. Maybe nothing and it will all course-correct, but I suspect as the movie production companies continue to merge into a singular entity, and AI inevitably creeps in, it will just get worse.
At your normal commercial multiplex, the number of “projectionists” on staff is zero and the number of people in the booth at any given time is zero. Movies come in digitally, someone on the management staff spends about four hours a week loading them in, setting up playlists, and dusting equipment, and that’s it. That’s the only time anyone goes upstairs and touches the equipment. Now that distribution has moved almost entirely from mailing hard drives to Internet-based transmission the whole thing can be even further automated and the process of setting up the show schedule is often done remotely by a specialized contractor.
The only places where anyone is doing anything in the projection booth are locations that show the occasional special release on film like the 70mm Odyssey prints, or multi-purpose venues where the digital projection is part of a larger stage show that requires operating lights and microphones and such.
