A cinema is not really selling you a ticket; it is selling you a drink, and the ticket is the cost of getting you near the counter. Distributors negotiate terms that can entitle them to as much as 100% of gross ticket revenue in a film's opening weeks, with the share moving back toward the exhibitor in roughly 10% increments as the run goes on. A film that leaves the screen quickly never reaches the weeks where the cinema keeps much of anything. What the cinema does keep in full is the concession stand. That is the whole disagreement: the customer reasons about the price of a box of sweets against the supermarket down the road, and the exhibitor reasons about the only line on the books that reliably makes money. The public sits almost exactly on the fence: 43% have smuggled something in, and opinion on whether a cinema may ban outside food divides 40% to 43%. That is unusual for a rule that every venue in the country posts and almost none enforces at the door.