Cheap cinema in Britain

The founder of EasyJet, the dirt cheap trendsetting airline in Europe, is trying again with movies.

How much did you fork out last time you went to the cinema? It was probably considerably more than 20p. But that’s how much you can buy a seat for at Britain’s newest cinema, which opens in Milton Keynes on Friday.

Apparently, the film studios are giving him the blockbuster movies because of the lowball rates. In a way, this is not surprising, however. For a major release, the studio gets as much as 80% of the box office take. This is why concessions are so expensive: they are what pays the theater’s bills. At $8.50 a ticket, the studios are fine with $6.80 per admission to something like The Matrix Reloaded. With an average ticket price of $2.25 at Easycinema, that leaves only $1.80 for the studios.