A woman brought her own snacks to Despicable Me 4. Then the police arrived
A woman brought her own snacks to Despicable Me 4. Then the police arrived
Many struggling cinemas depend on sales of pricey food and drink as ticket revenue mainly goes to film studios. But does banning outside supplies really add up, asks Stuart Heritage
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In rhe UK (at least the part i live in), they dont stop you from bringing your own food in. I think that staff know that no one wants to pay the crazy prices for the food they sell. If i could buy the snacks they sell for the prices that the shops across the road are selling them, then i wouldn't need to go to the shops across the road. Maybe thats not possible for them, maybe they need to find a new revenue stream.
Movie theatres make almost nothing from ticket sales. They have to pay a huge lump sum (upwards of $100,000) up front just to be able to get the movie and show it for a month. Often they simply lose money on it! So the crazy price of snacks is an attempt to recoup their investment faster and hope to get some profit.
The other model is for the theatre to simply pay 95% of ticket sales to the movie studio for the first week (and a bit less as the weeks go on). This essentially guarantees the theatre loses money on the film (due to all the other overhead that easily eat up that 5%) but it’s less risky if the film is a failure. Either way, they only make money on food!
So they need another revenue stream. If i am forced to pay high tickey proces and high snack prices, im going to wait for the film to come out on a streaming platform and watch it then.
Lots of people do the same. Its the reason most films ive been tonsee recently are in empty cinemas where i basivally get a private screening.
The industry at large is failing and has been for a while.
Personally I like going to see movies in a theater. I even run a little movie group. We go out and talk over food , then hit up a movie. It's a nice night out. I don't want to see them go away entirely. The theater I go to is independent and the people who run it are cool. They gave my group a free tour of the projection area where they not only have new projectors but some old equipment they preserved. Fun fact: the bulbs got so hot that they could be dangerous and a special leather vest was worn whenever they worked on the projector in case it exploded.
The group only goes on Tuesday nights because the movie is $5.00. so yeah, in a time when everything is so expensive it feels like you can't do anything, I understand to complaints. Tipping is like that too. It's gotten out of hand.
But honestly, this is nothing new. I'm pretty old and it's been this way for as long as I can remember. But calling the cops? Come on! The stupid thing is, movie theaters survive mostly on regulars like me and that woman. She'll probably never go back there again. So they're just shooting themselves in the foot.
$5 movies? Where is this, I'll be there right away. (most of the cinemas in my country start at like $10 USD per ticket...)
Yeah, it's only on Tuesdays. Must be their slowest night or something. Wednesday also has $5.00 classic movies, stuff like Jaws and The Shining and that even comes with a free small popcorn. Pretty cool. I really like that place.
It's in central Florida. I know ...Florida. who da' thought?
Rent-a-cinema, just let dudes rent the entire screen for bachelor parties or something so they can play on it or watch whatever they want. Make it in the hours the cinemas aren't showing anything and bang, free moneys
I guess. Skeleton crew, someone to see you in, someone to serve you drinks and snacks and someone to work the projector. bring a data pen with your videos on it and give to them to plug in and play.
Or log into your streaming servitheand hook your device up to the projector.
It would need all kinda of restrictions and protections for the cinemas but its not like that couldn't be worked out in a room somewhere. Private parties would be great.
If it became lucrative then pay more staff and capitalise on it.
Movie theaters already do that here in Canada. Though it's usually rented out to companies to have movie nights for their employees.
But this is usually only offered on weeknights. Weekends they probably won't do this because they tend to have more ticket sales those days.
So not sure how this would work for a bachelor party. Would you have one on a weekday? And they may not be able to permit people to drink alcohol in most places for legal reasons. They also wouldn't be able to show whatever people wanted without approval from the copyright holders. Fair use covers you showing your friends whatever movie you have in your collection when you're at home, but it doesn't cover a business doing this.
I did this in my town. It was a local theater though, not a big chain
- Went on a Wednesday night and rented access to a screening room for ~5h. We had to pay extra because they normally close earlier on a weeknight
- Showed up early to meet the projectionist and get a technical rundown
- Setup was a friend's laptop plugged into HDMI running up to the projector booth
- Nobody complained when we brought out a disk full of torrented movies
- The theater already had a license to sell alcohol, so we had that covered
- We brought a small bit of outside food, and nobody complained
It was absolutely the best time I ever had at a cinema. When the evening wound down, the projectionist invited us into the back area for a tour of the projection equipment.
I think that because we were a private event the rules about screening copyrighted materials to public audiences did not apply.
We have a local cinema that offers bookings for events here, too. There's a lot of behind the scenes jank to get through that many people don't even bother.
This is also mentioned in the article
So it is!
Yeah, in my entire time of going to the cinema and sneaking snacks in a backpack, not a single member of staff asked me or other movie goers about it.
I think it's only questioned if you openly bring in say, a bag of minstrels of a share bag of doritos.
I mean shit, the smaller hotdogs that VUE sell are like a fiver which is an absolute rip off. You'd think with popular films coming out they'd make a killing with the revenue from the tickets being sold so food prices wouldn't be that shite.
The standard UK rules seem to be no hot food, smelly food, glass containers or alcohol.