The Two Towers had a pseudo-intermission: the bit where Aragorn is floating down the Anduin. It was amazing how many people got up to go to the loo.
I saw a movie in a Mexican theater back in the early 1990’s once. It had an intermission. Never been to a US theater that had one.
For that matter, Attack of the Clones does as well. Just get up and go during the “love scene.”
The Arclight may indeed be a comfortable theater, but it’s not exactly cheap. It will always run you double digits to go see a film. And the concessions are even more expensive than your multiplex, although you get fancier food.
$11 (plus parking) versus $8-$10 at your typical Pacific, UA, or Laemmle multiplex. (I think the Cinerama Dome shows are $12, but that doesn’t even begin to compare to the typical multiplex screen.) It’s well worth it, plus it’s right next door to Ameoba Records. I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything at their concessions, but the Arclight Cafe is meh-typical Hollywood; slightly overpriced and palatable but unimpressive. I usually just head down Sunset to The Kitchen or over to Vermont to Fred 62 if I want to eat.
Stranger
I guess at Arclight you also have to pay the wages of the person who has to announce to you what movie you are going to see before it starts.
And who reminds people to turn off their cell phones and not to talk, shows your to your seat (and clears out any squatters), checks sound and visual quality, et cetera. You also aren’t forced to endure any interminable commercials. And it has clean, plush, comfortably seating.
I’ll happily pay the premium for for all that. YMMV.
Stranger
I seem to recall a brief intermission in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” as they are crossing the Bridge of Death. 
Not exactly an answer to the OP, but 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) had an intermission.
The glorious Astor theatre in Melbourne, Australia still has intermissions during longer films. Which certainly helped us when my wife and I realised we couldn’t stomach watching Gladiator again. Most Hindi films still have an intermission, mainly because they tend to run close to three hours in length.
I went to the cinema in Holland. I think it was in 2003, I saw the Hulk and there was an intermission halfway through. Apparently they had never let go of the intermission tradition despite technically being able to. The cinema-goers all knew when to get back to their seats.
Titanic managed two feats of time distortion in one movie.
The first two and a half hours seems to take three days, and the last half hour seems to take five minutes.
Theatres make zip on ticket sales. All the revenue comes from concessions. By providing an additional opportunity to patronize the concession stand, they would acutally come out ahead.
And the Arclight rules. We went to see Ice Age at Universal Citywalk. Bad print. Bad projection. Bad popcorn. Nasty “butter flavoring” instead of real butter. Plus the fact that the place is infested with scary gangbanger types with the freakish girlfriends who shave the eyebrows and pencil in new ones 1/2" too high so they look prepetually surprised, and who when they are not glaring at each other are glaring at you. Parking at Citywalk? TEN BUCKS. Near the Arclight you can almost always find free street parking if you arrive a few minutes early. Plus there has never been a shooting at the Arclight.
All this makes it no contest.
I think there’s a problem with your premise here. I’d argue that is reality intermissions would actually cost theaters money, and most likely it’s a monetary reason for their being eliminated. While true concession sales would likely get a bump, it’d come at the expense of about 15 minutes per showing. The net result would likely be the loss of at least one showing of the movie in question. Losing that one showing means that those additional concession trips has to make up for all the revenue of the ticket sales for that lost showtime and all the concessions for that missing showtime. Frankly I think most people are satisfied with one giant soda and popcorn in a 4 hour span so if the number of people who’d use a intermission to buy more food (especially with the dinner and a movie phenomonon) is probably pretty small, much less than the balance as extra showing creates, and 95% of customers would use the intermission for a stretch and potty break and little else.
You might be able to make an argument that people scared off of a 3+ hour movie would be lured back with intermissions, but I’d guess that just as many people would be annoyed that the 15-20 delay would make the experience even longer and create a annoying hassle of half the people tripping over each other trying to get out of the theater while the other half saved seats.
Personally, as a person who likes epic movies and rarely is bothered by the long sitting, an intermission would probably be something I’d avoid. That said, I bet a smart theater owner could use intermissions selectively to improve his business. Perhaps running King Kong without intermissions during opening weekend and high-traffic times, but creating an alternate showing during the week or at matinees that had an intermission to attract those viewers who prefer it.
Sorry, but bullshit. True that theaters take a smaller share of the ticker revenue than does the distributor/studio, but it’s by no means “zip”. Theaters make in the ballpark of 20-30% in the first week, increasing to 65% in later weeks of ticket sales, which is a pretty sizable amount. In addition to that, they profit off movie trailers and advertising. In both cases, the number of showings directly affects profits and there’s no way intermission’s concession sales would make up for the loss of a showtime or two.
Believe me, if it were more profitable for theaters to have intermissions…they’d have them.
Movies like Titanic are getting rarer, and most movies close within a few weeks. The diminishing time before the release the DVD is exacerbating this. So we go to the movies and spend about $40, $20 on tickets, $20 on concessions. Let’s do the math:
25% of $20 is $5.
$20 on concessions minus trivial labor and ingredient costs (maybe a dollar, popcorn and soda cost them pennies per serving) leaves $19.
So the theatre is making roughly 4x as much on concessions in the first weeks (the only weeks that 90% of movies ever stay in distribution these days). Add in the fact that a lot of movies have very poor box office performance and the theatre is taking a bath on those and you will see what I mean. The box office pays the electric bill maybe. It is the concessions that pay the rent, the salaries, the newspaper ad expenses, etc. and if there is any left over at all for profit, they are damn lucky. So it’s not zip, but it almost might as well be. Titanic made a billion dollars in domestic BO, but it was a freak. Since then, 400m is a more reasonable upper limit for a major blockbuster. Again, like 80% of movies never make a profit in domestic release. Just ask Sharon Stone.
And I question the idea that a 15 minute intermission would cut the number of showings. Most theatres want to show a movie 5 times in a day. 5x15 equals 1 hour and 15 minutes, not even a whole showings worth of time. Start the first show half an hour earlier and the last show half an hour later and bob’s your uncle.
But this could only work with small theatres.
Do you really think that a 15-minute intermission would be long enough for the stupid herds to get out of the theater, stand in line, buy more popcorn, and get back to their seats again? Especially given the fact that, in larger complexes, they would be in line with people from other shows. At our local AMC theater, you can sometimes wait 10 minutes to be served at the concession before entering the movie; there’s no way that a 15-minute intermission would be long enopugh, and it would mean another round of inconsiderate morons clambering over people to get to their seats while the movie is playing.
No thanks. My attention span and my ability to sit for three hours without popcorn are great enough that i’d probably avoid a place that had intermissions.
Not only that, but for me seeing a movie in the theater is something i like to immerse myself in. I don’t want to be dragged out of my escapism just as things are getting interesting.
When I went to King Kong (the Peter Jackson version), the local theatre added an intermission. I and my bladder were grateful.
The last time I saw one in the theatre as an actual part of the pacing was “The Right Stuff”, unless you count the joke in “The Holy Grail”.