In the UK most of the distributors lay out what they expect from different size cinemas and for all except the biggest films single and twin screen sites can double up on films without any problems. It's also a 2 week minimum here rather than 3, and a lot of distributors will actually take a single week on release for some of their films now.
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We are playing "Wicked For Good" right now (January 9-15).
I figure at this point, there are four groups of "Wicked" fans that are all about equal in size.
1. Those who have already seen it
2. Those who have lost interest by this point for whatever reason
3. Those who say "I'll wait for the video"
4. Those who still want to see it
So our crowds this weekend have been consisting of group 4, because it's about 1/4 of the size of crowd we'd have had if we could have played it on Dec. 12 when we wanted to. Kind of makes you wonder what this movie would have grossed if ALL the theaters that wanted it could have gotten it on a timely basis, AND the stupid PPV version hadn't come out a couple weeks ago to chop it off at the knees.
Could you pass that info along to their American counterparts please?It's also a 2 week minimum here rather than 3, and a lot of distributors will actually take a single week on release for some of their films now.Comment
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Do you mean the people that are coming are coming in groups of 4 so you had like 16 people? Or do you mean 4 people total per showing?
Any indication if any of the people that have already seen it are coming to see it again? Or wasn't it a see it twice for most people?Comment
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I didn't say "groups of four," I said the audience was in group 4 of my list: Those who still want to see it. I feel like we hardly got anyone from groups 1, 2 and 3.
I also didn't hear anyone say "this is my 2nd time" or whatever. I think it was a one-and-done for most folks.
It did below average business. Probably about a third or less of what we'd have done if we could have played it for one week starting Dec. 12, like we asked for. (We wound up playing "Predator: Badlands," which flopped, instead.) So (as noted above) their dumb policies cost them $$$$ in film rent, and cost us $$$$ in ticket sales and also $$$$ in concessions.Comment
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Mike, I feel your pain! I have Avatar next Friday 1/23. I longed for your 6 week WFG, Zootopia, Avatar schedule. We could have all made money. I always feel like an annoying mosquito buzzing around the studio's head.Comment
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As a little postscript to this whole saga, last night (on our first night of "Anaconda"), a couple of teenage girls came in to buy a bucket of popcorn and on the way out they said they were going home to watch... Wicked For Good.
Well...at least we got their popcorn money.Comment
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Freshly popped popcorn, warm nachos and cheese sauce, fountain drink sodas and hotdogs steeped in sewage for the better part of the day, delivered via Uber Eats, right on time before the streaming experience starts... Maybe that's the somewhat dystopian way to keep the local movie theater running?
Quite a few years ago, when I was actually involved in designing the software for a Set-Top-Box for an early streaming service, we had one button on the remote we hadn't really any function for... we called that button the "Popcorn button"...Comment
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Would be an interesting experiment if your market was big enough to support such an idea. However, depending on when implemented, one could view it as a double edged sword. On the one hand it might earn you some money from those that never come into the theatre. On the other it might cause some who do to consider staying home more often. Maybe there is a frequency reward that is an actual ticket voucher? Lure some of those home bodies back out into the world?Comment
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One thing that did change with the Covid was, we developed a market for walk-in popcorn sales. We usually get a few people every night coming in just for popcorn. We've always done that, but a lot of people just didn't realize you could come in without buying a ticket.Comment
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It also never really came to my mind to walk into a cinema, just to walk out with a bucket of popcorn without having watched a movie.
How many people would actually stay at home, just because they can now have "real movie popcorn" instead of microwave popcorn? I honestly think, how sad it might sound, it would offer more business opportunities than it would loose. It wouldn't also be too costly to try, especially not in a region where e.g. Uber Eats is active with their own delivery drivers. If you have to organize your own delivery, then it quickly becomes quite expensive.
And yeah, you could combine it with some kind of voucher system. It also opens up new marketing avenues: Did you know this popcorn is even more awesome fresh out of the popper? Did you know that our screen is bigger than yours?Last edited by Marcel Birgelen; 01-19-2026, 06:31 PM.Comment
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I was curious enough to look. In my area Uber Eats has one option for popcorn from a restaurant that happens to show movies in an ambience way called “moviehouse”. But no cinemas have thought to try it, unless they are just weirdly categorized in the app. Plenty of grocery style popcorn options though.
personally I consider most 3rd party food delivery an utter rip off, fees are too high, tip encouraged before service rendered etc etc. But really there is not much way to try this otherwise besides marketing the pick up option. And the home movie crowd is already pretty set on not going out, so they pay the lazy tax. Ideal market really.Comment
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Around COVID, the entire delivery thing blew up, prices went through the roof and never really came back from there. It's the same over here, but luckily, the out-of-hand tipping culture didn't get a foothold. I'm never even considering giving any delivery driver a tip.
Getting back to the popcorn delivery: If it's a zero or near zero cost effort for you to run this alongside your existing business, then I guess, starting a "movie concession delivery" out of your existing infrastructure might be worth a bet. I can't really see this growing beyond a certain point though.
The joke back then with the popcorn button was that we would put a popcorn delivery app behind it and would team up with the local "shawarma shack" or rather "döner kebab shack" to do the actual delivery and since you could already buy movies on the platform based on credit we could debit the order from that credit. Those often pretty dingy eateries, often ran by Turkish immigrants, have the tendency to be open late. Essentially, we "invented" the "ghost kitchen", before it even was a thing.
Actually, a good "European or even German style" döner kebab is something I'm sometimes missing in when in the U.S.Comment
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Following this.
We booked 'Mercy'. First week was horrendous. Now its "held over".
Why?
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One advantage of being in a small town is, we know almost everyone. I would say at least 85% of the people who walk in for "popcorn only" are ones that never go to the movies, or go very infrequently. For a lot of people the reason is "I can't stay awake." Which I can relate --- I almost always have to fight off the urge to sleep unless a movie is really compellilng.However, depending on when implemented, one could view it as a double edged sword. On the one hand it might earn you some money from those that never come into the theatre. On the other it might cause some who do to consider staying home more often.
Why, indeed? A flop is a flop. The studios have the flexibility to flush a movie down the streaming toilet in 17 days if it flops, but we are stuck with it for whatever dumb length of time we agreed to. There should be an escape clause in each movie's contract....if it performs below that theater's average, theater should have the option to drop it, or at least get a percentage discount for the subsequent weeks.We booked 'Mercy'. First week was horrendous. Now its "held over".
Why?
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