How do movie studios know that cinemas are paying them correctly?

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Movie studios get a percentage of ticket sales. How do they know that cinemas, especially small independent ones, are reporting their ticket sales correctly? Couldn’t a cinema just claim that a screening had 20 paying viewers when in reality they sold 300 and keep the entire extra revenue for themselves? Or do cinemas have to pay per screening regardless of how many people are in the cinema?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Great story here:

Worked at a theater. When at the door position, it was always imparted on us to make sure to do you actual job, take the stubs, put them in the box. At the end of your shift you had to bag up the stubs, add date and position in case we were audited for ticket sales. These were the audits that ensured we were paying studios.

Well at the same time a couple coworkers in the box had this great scheme of charging everyone for a child’s ticket, knowing the correct change for what would have been given for correct tickets, and pocketing the remainder. It was something like a $2.00 difference, so if three of your party were adults, you slid $6.00 into your pocket and gave them the rest. The customer facing screens were flipped pointing into the booth as to not indicate what was happening.

Sure as shit we got audited and the company wanted to know why our auditorium for opening night of 8 Mile was filled with 150 children and no adults.

Many people, including managers who clearly should have caught this, were canned. I think some charges were filed.

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