The Popcorn Palace Economy

Slate: The thirsty moviegoer fuels the business. "First, they are in the fast-food business, selling popcorn, soda, and other snacks.

Second, theater chains are in the movie exhibition business. Here they are partners with the studios. Although every deal is different, the theaters and the studios generally wind up splitting the take from the box office roughly 50-50. But, unlike the popcorn bonanza, the theaters' expenses eat up a large part of their exhibition share.

Third, the theaters are in the advertising business. They sell on-screen ads. And some advertisers are paying more than $50,000 per screen annually, especially to theaters willing to pump up the volume to near ear-shattering level so that seated customers will pay attention. Since there are virtually no costs involved in showing ads, the proceeds go directly to the theater chains' bottom lines.

To keep their people-moving enterprise going, theater owners prefer movies whose length does not exceed 128 minutes. If a movie runs longer than that, and the theater owners do not want to sacrifice their on-screen advertising time, they will reduce the number of their evening audience "turns" or showings from three to two, which means that 33 percent fewer people pass their popcorn stands... Indeed, the ultimate test for the popcorn economy is: Will a movie attract enough consumers of buckets of popcorn and soda to justify turning over multiple screens to it? Theater owners know that the popcorn audience is mainly teens. And, since the observation of teen test audiences over many years has demonstrated that they prefer action to dialogue, expect a salty, supersize portion of amusement-park movies this year." It's a lousy business, but somebody gotta do it.