I’ve been complaining forever about the high price of popcorn at the movies. I used to be in theatre management back in college (which is a great way to work your way through school, might I add) so I have a good idea how much the markup is on the final product.

Now before I launch into the meat of this rant, I will add one additional complaint and several complements on Popcorn in American Movie Theatres.

It was slow to come, but the popcorn bucket seems to have disappeared from theatres everywhere. I may be dating myself, but when I was in theatres (1983 to 1992, from Rumble Fish to Freejack) we served popcorn in three sizes of sturdy paperboard buckets, usually printed in the theatre chain’s livery. Now, they serve it in four sizes of ad-covered paper bags. Less substantial– and prone to ripping open, especially if you ask for lots of butter.

On the other hand, it’s my belief that popcorn actually tastes better than it did fifteen-odd years ago. They probably use the same popping oil we used back then: five gallon buckets of flavored coconut oil, hard as a bar of soap when it arrived. You had to melt it with an “excalibur,” a heated metal wand, before installing it under the popper. One of the things I think has changed is the more widespread use of specially flavored seasoning salt: they add MSG and some other secret ingredient that makes even dry popcorn savory. When I get a bag it’s like movie crack, can’t stop eating it.

And, God bless ‘em, theatres actually started justifying the stupendous markup (we once figured it out to be nearly 1000%) by offering real butter topping. Well, “anhydrous butterfat,’ which is butter minus the water content– similar to clarified butter, but it’s still real. In my day, we served “butter flavoring:” Partially dehydrogenated soybean oil with artificial butter flavoring added. Yuck. Probably better for you than real butter, but yuck. When customers weren’t around we called it what we thought it really was: “brake fluid.”

Even more significant is the current effort to sell fresh product. Poppers are usually going full-bore during peak times in multiplexes. The shameful truth is back in the old days management discouraged the staff from popping during pre-show rushes, to keep more hands free for counter work. The idea was to pop and bag during the quiet afternoons. In fact, some smaller movie theatres didn’t even HAVE poppers back then, relying on bagged corn from other theaters, sometimes a week old.

The core of this article, as it usually is when talking about popcorn, concerns it’s absurd price: Thanks to the increasing demand for ethanol and alternative fuels, Popcorn is going to be even more expensive. According to the L.A. Times:

As a consequence of the booming demand for alternative fuels — with farmers replanting acres of popcorn with more profitable crops that can be converted into ethanol and other biofuels — the sellers of the nation’s favorite movie snack say the salty tub will soon take a bigger bite out of your wallet when you’re at the multiplex.

“The consumer will probably see an increase in popcorn prices pretty soon,” said Carlton Smith, the chairman of Iowa’s Jolly Time popcorn brand.

While the price hike will likely be modest, perhaps no more than 15 cents a serving, the rise is inevitable and necessary, according to the popcorn providers and theater owners gathered here for ShoWest, the annual convention of the National Assn. of Theater Owners, which ended Thursday.

The article gives a turn to the chain owners, who claim that if they did not charge $5 for large bags of popcorn, admission prices would be even higher then they are now.

Concession sales are a theater’s lifeblood, accounting for as much as 45% of profits at the nation’s largest chains. Popcorn offers one of the biggest returns on investment for exhibitors, because the unpopped kernels used to make an entire bucket of popcorn cost just a few pennies.

Now wait a cottin-pickin’ minute here! I was under the impression there was a new admission-sharing deal between studios and chains. The idea was there is a fixed percentage for new releases, which gives the chains a larger cut in exchange for wider releases. This was all part of the perfection of the opening weekend: Instead of keeping a movie on one screen per town, selling it out to keep demand high, and keeping it long so the admission split eventually favors the chain, they were now agreeing to share the gate more evenly for a maximum-audience, blockbuster opening.

One would assume that if the chains were getting more ticket money for big releases rather than a paltry cut and all the concessions it can sell, they would base their profit models accordingly and hang fire on popcorn prices. But no: rising cost of product is going to be passed on to you as soon as possible.

We seem to entering a period of price inflation in this country: the cost of everything is going up, with gasoline leading the pack. I went grocery shopping last night, something I haven’t done in a while: I actually experienced a form of sticker shock.

Regardless of the overall economic downturn, this quick pass-down of popcorn prices can only mean two things: 1). Theatre chains are even greedier than I remember. This actually may be a given. 2). Theatre chains, and the traditional film industry in general, are in deeper trouble than I previously suspected.

If the second thing is the case, maybe I’ll shut up about the popcorn prices. Who knows: expensive snacks may save the movie industry.

–Skot C.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 7:02 am and is filed under General, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.