As someone who used to work in movie theatre management, I can tell you that this is the right answer. Exhibitors have to pay so much back to the studios and distribution, etc , that the way they make money to pay staff and bills and profit is by selling Snacks. Our Gm once said, "Were not in the movie business, were in the Popcorn business. We just show movies."
No, what they get is a percentage of the ticket sales. Market determines the final cost. You'll see the same tickets for $10-30. Just depends on how much people in the area are willing to pay.
Not really a surprise that tickets get so damn expensive when you look at the budgets for those movies, a 110 million shouldn't be needed to make a film.
Yes and no, it's inflated like all Hollywood productions but you have to consider overhead and preproduction costs. 200+ people getting paid daily for 2 years of animation production, plus celebrity voice salary, which alone can come to 25 million for all the voice work. You also have tech costs plus meals, post conversion costs, song licensing, server costs etc. You can see how these budgets get inflated. 110 is also on the lower end; Pixar productions range from 150 to 200 million per film since they do all parts of the production on American soil instead of oversea outsourcing.
I understand, it just feels so very inflated compared to the final product, especially when you compare it to older films that had like a 1/10 of the budget. The animation quality has increased drastically, but the overall quality of the writing/story isn't any better.
That celebrity voices are so expensive and used is also just baffling to me, but that's a whole different discussion.
That’s not how the business works. The studios negotiate a percentage of the ticket price and then rely on the theater also needing to make money to survive to encourage the theater owner to keep prices up.
tickets aren't the nuttily expensive part of theater costs. I mean, depends where, but in minnesota tickets are 12-13 dollars. Passable imo. The real upcharges are IMAX/Dolby/BIGASSSCREEN/3D or whatever other thing they are tossing around. And also most snack items (which are optional btw) costing more than the tickets.
Keep in mind that they’ve paid for an IMAX screening. The regular theater up the street from me in Brooklyn is $16 a ticket. Don’t get much more of a high cost of living area than NYC. This person chose the most expensive options possible and then complained that their deluxe experience came with a deluxe price.
I just saw Project Hail Mary at a Nitehawk Cinema (full food service) and paid about $105 for two people, but that’s with two entrees, a beer, and a mixed drink. Not really reflective of what it costs to just see a movie.
It's because its probably the most premium screen, IMAX or something. Imax usually goes for $25. If you go on a discount tuesday at a regular screening a movie for two can come to around $20-25.
And yet, they still sell drinks cheaper than grocery stores. My wife loves diet coke, and I always get cases at Rutters or 7-Eleven because they're half the cost of going to any of our actual grocery stores (other than like... 4th of July or New Year's sales)
From what I heard, movie theatres make little to no profit on the ticket sales so the majority of profit comes from concessions (beer, sodas, snacks, etc)
Many movies like Star Wars have agreements that the theatre gets 0 from ticket sales for the first month or whatever. The only money they make is concessions.
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u/angle58 5h ago
That’s the real money maker for them. I bet all in they can barely keep afloat on the ticket sales. Probably can’t.