Originally Posted by REDL|NE

Coming from someone that has worked at a movie theatre for over 5 years, many theatres have EXTREMELY large operating costs. Combine this with getting next to nothing profit off of the tickets themselves, theatres are left to make up their costs from popcorn and advertising revenue.

No one can argue that the markup on the food items is ridiculous, but your local movie theatre would NOT exist if everyone snuck in food and did not buy from concessions.