Making money at the movies...

I recently saw a small article on our local newspaper, about a website called RunPee. Essentially, what the site revolves around is providing information about the best time to go run and pee during a movie at the cinema, to ensure that you miss as little as possible of the film. I think it's great, cos we all tend to overdo it on the Coke at the movies, don't we? And then not only do you miss some of the film, but you've gotta bug the people you're with, to find out what you missed! Check the site out at www.runpee.com...

Seeing this, though, triggered thoughts about the cinema business in general. A cinema's business model is an interesting one: They don't make a lot of money off of the actual ticket sales - most of their profit comes from selling you snacks and drinks at huge margins. As many big cinema chains have been struggling somewhat recently (with the advent of everybody just downloading the movie, or copying it from friends), they've been looking for other ways to boost their profits.

Apparently one of the front-running ideas is to bring back intervals for every movie, and not just the 3-hour epics. The rationale behind this is that it then gives them a second shot to sell you something to chow on, over and above the pre-movie rush. Just think about it: How many times have you been running late, and skipped the popcorn to catch the start of the movie? I know I have, plenty of times!

The last movie with an interval that I saw was Titanic, waaaaay back in the day. Now it makes sense why it was given such a long run (here in SA, it probably stayed on the circuit three times as long as any other movie) - not only would youngsters come and watch it again and again, but they'd have two lots of snack-buying in one movie!

And, out of interest, when I say big profit margins on snacks, I mean beeeeeeeeg margins. Apparently, in some cinema chains around the world, the margin on popcorn is 1000 percent - now that's what I call profit!