Uncle

Saw Sweeney Todd at the Regal today.

The "medium" soda had to be close to 44 oz. while the large was 54oz. (And they didn't go heavy on the ice.) I've managed to keep pace with serving sizes till now, but Ye Gods.

Of course, the reason they do this is to justify hiking the concession prices, being that the studios gouge them so heavily on ticket returns that they end up making something like half their profit on popcorn and the like.

So what we have is a situation where movie exhibitors don't make money by exhibiting movies but by selling junk food. To put it another way, you're actually buying a $10 ticket for the privilege of paying $7 for popcorn burnt in trans-fats and topped with some sort of the bean-of-soy tortured into a pale imitation of butter. (Shout out to the Laemmle again here, for making decent popcorn and using real butter.)

Movie studios used to own their own theater chains until the government stepped in and stopped it. That might've been a good idea at the time, even, I don't know. Now, though, I can't imagine Hollywood wanting to bother with that mess while they can bleed out the poor saps who show their films.

Hard imagine this ending well, however.