10 Films Cinemas Refused To Play (And Why)

In most cases, Star Wars movies are guaranteed box-office hits - so it's pretty weird to learn that some cinemas turned down the chance of screening Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which went on to make over a billion dollars worldwide.

Disney is the most powerful entertainment brand on the planet, and it knows it. It knows that most cinemas pretty much rely on the likes of Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar to stay in business, meaning that the Mouse House holds all the cards when it comes to outlining deals with movie theatres.

And with The Last Jedi, the details of said deal turned a lot of small cinemas off. If a cinema wanted to screen the film, Disney was demanding 65% of all ticket revenue, one of the highest percentages a studio has ever asked for (the normal figure is closer to 55%). Cinemas were also required to put the film in their largest auditorium for at least four weeks, and if any of these rules were broken, the studio could enforce a 5% penalty, raising their take to a whopping 70%.

Because of these strict terms, a lot of theatres with only one screen - like northeast Iowa's Elkader Cinema - refused to play the film, because they couldn't rely on one movie to carry them all the way through the Christmas period.