Many struggling cinemas depend on sales of pricey food and drink as ticket revenue mainly goes to film studios. But does banning outside supplies really add up, asks Stuart Heritage
Movie theaters already do that here in Canada. Though it’s usually rented out to companies to have movie nights for their employees.
But this is usually only offered on weeknights. Weekends they probably won’t do this because they tend to have more ticket sales those days.
So not sure how this would work for a bachelor party. Would you have one on a weekday? And they may not be able to permit people to drink alcohol in most places for legal reasons. They also wouldn’t be able to show whatever people wanted without approval from the copyright holders. Fair use covers you showing your friends whatever movie you have in your collection when you’re at home, but it doesn’t cover a business doing this.
I did this in my town. It was a local theater though, not a big chain
Went on a Wednesday night and rented access to a screening room for ~5h. We had to pay extra because they normally close earlier on a weeknight
Showed up early to meet the projectionist and get a technical rundown
Setup was a friend’s laptop plugged into HDMI running up to the projector booth
Nobody complained when we brought out a disk full of torrented movies
The theater already had a license to sell alcohol, so we had that covered
We brought a small bit of outside food, and nobody complained
It was absolutely the best time I ever had at a cinema. When the evening wound down, the projectionist invited us into the back area for a tour of the projection equipment.
I think that because we were a private event the rules about screening copyrighted materials to public audiences did not apply.
We have a local cinema that offers bookings for events here, too. There’s a lot of behind the scenes jank to get through that many people don’t even bother.
Movie theaters already do that here in Canada. Though it’s usually rented out to companies to have movie nights for their employees.
But this is usually only offered on weeknights. Weekends they probably won’t do this because they tend to have more ticket sales those days.
So not sure how this would work for a bachelor party. Would you have one on a weekday? And they may not be able to permit people to drink alcohol in most places for legal reasons. They also wouldn’t be able to show whatever people wanted without approval from the copyright holders. Fair use covers you showing your friends whatever movie you have in your collection when you’re at home, but it doesn’t cover a business doing this.
I did this in my town. It was a local theater though, not a big chain
It was absolutely the best time I ever had at a cinema. When the evening wound down, the projectionist invited us into the back area for a tour of the projection equipment.
I think that because we were a private event the rules about screening copyrighted materials to public audiences did not apply.
We have a local cinema that offers bookings for events here, too. There’s a lot of behind the scenes jank to get through that many people don’t even bother.