4 New Ways Movie Theaters Are Filling Seats and Upselling Patrons

 

The next time you go to a movie theater, you may be coaxed into spending a little extra money—perhaps for a beer, a toy your kid is begging for, or the right to watch the film you just saw over and over.

Even with the blizzard of ticket sales for Frozen starting the year, 2014 has been less than stellar at the box office, with a summer of few blockbusters and overall sales that are down 4% compared to last year. In previous years, theaters and movie studios have resorted to raising admission prices (often using IMAX or 3D screenings as a justification) as a way to offset declining ticket sales.

Is 'Mockingjay - Part 1' really a movie?

This is not a rant about anything. I need to clarify that up front, because 2014 has been a horrible year for ranting. But it’s also been great year for very good things that straddle the line between how we used to define television and how we used to define movies.

Is True Detective a miniseries or an 8-hour movie? Should The Knick rank in Steven Soderbergh’s filmography? Fargo and Hannibal transformed well-trod source material into a new kind of remake—half greatest hits compilation, half concept album. Not for nothing, 2014 was also the year that Shonda Rhimes claimed Thursday for old-fashioned weekly TV, with three flavors of throwback procedural (doctor show, politics show, lawyer show) infused with soap operatics.