Film prints are very, very expensive to manufacture and ship and not too durable. And they're worth nothing after a film's first run. They degrade in quality fast and require some skill to project. The industry is moving fast toward digital projection, motivated by the cost of prints and shipping, 3d, the fact that most film prints are from digital sources, etc. In many ways digital looks much better, too--the resolution is superior and almost all films are timed 100% digitally so there's one step less generational loss, though black levels remain considerably poorer.
In terms of actual cost of film and processing, an average 35mm film print costs a couple-few thousand dollars. By agreement between Technicolor and United Parcel Service, a movie costs about $60.00 to ship one way. ($120.00 round trip.) The cost of the film print is built in to the first run rental agreement. The theater pays for the prints as part of the price of getting the film. The cost of the film prints is already made up for when the movie hits the screen for the first time.
Do you realize that most of the price of a movie ticket goes to back to the movie studios? If the average price of a ticket costs $10.00, the studio gets about $8.00 or $9.00. The theater gets $1.00 or $2.00. That's why popcorn costs so damn much. A movie theater is little more than a popcorn stand that just happens to show movies in order to entice people in.
Move theaters run on a per-capita profit model.
They tally up the number of tickets they sold that day.
Then they add up all the money they made selling popcorn. They total up the money they made at the box office then subtract the studio's take. (80% - 90% in favor of the studio.) That is their gross receipts for the day.
Next they divide the gross receipts by the number of tickets. That gives you the income per-capita. (AKA: The "Per-Cap")
Next, they tally up all their expenses for the day. They count cost of goods sold. They count payroll. They count rent and utilities. Then they divide that by the number of tickets sold. That gives cost per customer. (AKA: "C.P.C.")
If Per-Cap is greater than CPC, they made money that day. If not, they have to figure out whether they can stay in business any longer.
Theaters report their earnings as the margin of their Per-Cap against their CPC.
Many theaters are working against shoestring margins. A really great margin might be $2.00 or $3.00 per customer. A lot of theaters are working on $1.00 to $1.50 per customer margins.
A megaplex theater in an urban area which collects $250,000 in gross receipts on a busy Friday night might only put $30,000 to $50,000 in the bank at the end of the business day. That's pathetic!
The reason why film gets damaged is NOT because film is inherently prone to damage. It's because theaters hire teenagers to run the projectors. They are too preoccupied with school and their social lives to have a work ethic. They slap the film into the machines and they hit the "start" button. They walk away and they go downstairs to chat up the popcorn girls. It's a freakin' miracle that there is even a movie at all!
Digital projection is not better because it doesn't get damaged. Hard drives still crash. Computers still malfunction. Lenses and xenon lamps still break and go out of spec. Sound systems still stop working. Kids running the shows still forget to focus the projectors. Light engines inside the digital projectors still fail.
To say that film is inherently less robust than film or is lower quality is a big, fat lie perpetrated by the companies who make and sell digital projectors. It's just the same as the oil companies who say that buying more expensive premium gasoline is better for your car. In a very few cases, premium gas is better but, in the great majority of cases, the only difference is the price.
A conscientious operator can run a film print through a 35mm movie projector hundreds and hundreds of times with virtually ZERO damage. I have worked in movie theaters for almost 15 years. I have run thousands of shows on 35mm film and I have handled enough movie film to go around the world, probably a dozen times or more. I have seen how film gets damaged. I know from personal experience that, 90% of the time, it is because some idiot doesn't do his job right. (Just to keep things straight, I have been "that idiot" on several occasions.) The other 10% of the time it is because of a machine malfunction. But that 10% can happen with equal probability in a digital theater as it can happen in a film theater.
The real reason movie studios are pushing digital is not because digital is better. It's because they want to get their hands on that last 15% of the profits that the theaters are keeping.
It's nothing more than greed.
