I must mention a fabulous postcard I received….a postcard, I hadn’t seen one of those for decades…furthermore it was from Australia. One line said “we totally look forward to every one of your incredibly informative emails. Your email, with a up of tea in bed is our morning ritual. Patrick and Cherylanne McMahon…we love you!
The movie was brilliant, DiCaprio and Pitt were both incredible…yet we are all familiar with going to the movies and watching a $150 million movie for $9.00 to $13.50 yet paying $8.00 for 60 cents worth of popcorn and $6.50 for a Coke whose syrup costs 0.25 cents. What the hell is going on here? I don’t know how we got here but no-one, at least no one in their right mind, would invest in this business model. The movie business is in decline.
The movie concessions “racket” is what is keeping the industry afloat, unless you want to pay twice as much for tickets, which the public is not prepared to do. Having said that, you are seriously overpaying at the concession stand. While movie, food and beverage prices vary widely by geographic region, theater size, and a number of other factors, popcorn prices also vary, from as low as $0.99 to as high as $13.75.
At most major movie theaters, you pay around $8 for a medium-sized bag of buttered popcorn — nearly the price of the average movie ticket ($9). At 11 cups, the average medium-sized movie popcorn sells for $0.73/cup. By contrast, a 175-cup bag of genuine movie theater popcorn can be had on Amazon for $48.23, or about $0.27/cup. A movie theater ICEE ($6.49) runs 4.4x more than a 7-Eleven Slurpee (which is the same thing), and a soda ($5.99) is 3x the cost of a store-bought Coke. One box of movie M&M’s ($4.79) could buy you nearly 3 boxes at your local Walmart.
For a simple date night (let’s say a popcorn to share, two sodas, and some Red Vines), you’re looking at $24.79 — more than the price of two average tickets ($18). For a family of 4, the cost of snacks might run up to $50 or more. Richard McKenzie, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, ( and a fellow METal member), determined that it costs the average theater around $0.90 to produce a bag of popcorn. At $7.99, that’s a 788% markup. Including the cup and a free refill, that $5.99 soft drink costs a theater $0.91 (a 558% markup); candy, which can be purchased wholesale for ~$1.16, isn’t far behind.
Theaters don’t make much on tickets. When a theater wants to show a film, it must agree to pay the distributor a percentage of all ticket sales. This percentage is higher during the first few weeks of a film and decreases over time, but generally averages out to be about 70%. So, if a theater sells a movie ticket for $9, its cut is only $2.70 — and that’s without accounting for other expenses. So movies are a loss leader. In reality, the price of a movie ticket hasn’t gone up much in the last 90 years. In 1929, a ticket was $0.35; today, it’s $9. Adjusted for inflation, that’s a fairly reasonable price .
There is an old theatre adage: “Find a good place to sell popcorn and build a movie theater there. This is no different than Microsoft, for instance, who sell its Xbox consoles at a steep loss to get people to buy them, then make healthy returns on games and accessories. Even with $8 popcorn and 84% profit margins, most movie theater owners aren’t living the high life. Profits from popcorn are used to pay off the high overhead costs of running a theater: staff, rent, AC, utilities, and the constant upgrades (Surround Sound, IMAX, 3D) that consumers demand.
The reality is that less than 10% of the US population goes to the movies, compared to 65% in 1930. And those who do go are attending less: In 2018, the average moviegoer paid for only 3.5 tickets, down from 4.9 tickets in 2002. As a result, the number of cinemas in the US has fallen from 7,477 to 5,869 (-22%) in the past 20 years.
Yes, $8 popcorn is a ripoff. But it’s what enables you to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
My local movie theater was robbed of almost $10,000. The thieves got away with three boxes of popcorn, two large sodas, three boxes of candy and a hotdog.