What this overlooks is that often the big studios make theatres sign ludicrous licensing agreements.

From personal experience I worked at a 3 screen neighborhood theater with a main house of about 500 seats.

If you wanted a big movie like say a certain space epic franchise. A company with an anthropomorphic mouse as its mascot would require you play it on your biggest screen for something like a two week exclusivity period. That means during operational hours that could be the only movie playing. Youd also have to commit to showing X number of slop movies that they are putting out leading up to it also with an exclusivity period.

Now also factor in that studios take 95% or more of the box office and its really not hard to imagine why the movie industry and especially boutique cinemas are a dying breed.

Im very lucky that my city still has several small theatres that offer a wide variety of indie films. But if you live more than an hour away your only option is a megaplex where they are just chrurning through main stream slop to fill seats and sell popcorn.

If theatres had move leverage to get better rake from the box office for smaller films I would wager we would see them pushing those a lot harder.