10 Ways You're Thinking About The Movie Industry All Wrong

6. Cinemas Are About Cinema

What You Think: If there's one point in the movie chain where there must be an extraordinary level of adoration for the medium it has to be the cinema, with staff who would no doubt gush about the latest Malick if only they weren't picking stale popcorn. Some of the multiplex chains make the whole ordeal hardly worth your time, but at its heart it's there to bring you the latest movies. Sure, they do popcorn, nachos and other concessions, but that all adds to the atmosphere. The Truth: Cinemas do endeavour to give punters a good experience, but it's still a business, with people working there as a job, not out of any deep love of film. It may not be as expensive as actually making the films, but running a cinema is a pricey business; a large-size auditorium requires a projector worth about £100,000, which will likely never pay for itself. Oh yeah, we should probably mention that cinemas don't actually make much money out of showing the films, the thing they exist to do. Distributors normally ask for a flat-rate, then a percentage of the subsequent profits and on release week that percentage can get as high as Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol's rating on RottenTomatoes. That's why they have a popcorn stand, an ice cream stand and a coffee shop inside; anything to make up for the greedy distributors. No wonder popcorn has such a high profit margin.