Movie theater profit calculator

Admissions. Screens × seats per screen × shows per screen per day × operating days gives the seats you put on sale in a year. Average occupancy turns that into admissions. Occupancy is the input that moves the result most, so try it at a few values.

Box office and film rental. Admissions × average ticket price is box office. Film rental is the share of it paid to distributors; what is left is net box office. Use your blended rate across the year, not the opening-week rate. The film rental calculator works out the rental on a single booking.

Concessions. Admissions × spend per head is concession revenue. Cost of goods comes off that to give the concession gross margin.

EBITDA. Total revenue (box office, concessions and other income) less film rental, cost of goods and the five operating cost lines. It is before depreciation, interest, loan repayments and tax.

Break-even occupancy. Each admission contributes its ticket price less film rental, plus its concession spend less cost of goods. Fixed costs less other revenue, divided by that contribution, gives the admissions you need. Divided by seats on sale, that is the occupancy you need. For one screening rather than a whole year, use the screening break-even calculator.

The defaults. The $11.31 ticket price is the 2025 US average from The Numbers [3]. The film rental and cost-of-goods defaults sit near what AMC and Cinemark reported (below). Everything else is an example value. Replace it with your own quotes, lease terms and payroll. National averages run from 108 seats per screen in Denmark to 180 in France, and no authoritative US average exists (see how many movie theaters there are).

The two largest US chains publish their cost ratios every year in their annual reports (Form 10-K). They are the best public benchmark, but they are chains with national advertising deals and buying power, so use them as a sense check, not a target.

A few things stand out.

• Tickets carry the film rental. AMC's US theatres paid 51.2% of admissions revenue in film exhibition costs. Cinemark's US film rentals and advertising came to 58.0%. Roughly half of every ticket goes to the distributor.
• Concessions carry the margin. Product cost was about a fifth of concession revenue at both chains, so around 80 cents of each concession dollar is left before staff and space. More on this in concession pricing.
• Revenue per screen. Cinemark reported $551,719 of revenue per average screen in 2025 [2]. By our arithmetic, Cinemark sold about 34,200 admissions per average screen and AMC about 23,400.
• The rest of the cost base. As a share of Cinemark's total revenue, salaries and wages were 13.2%, facility lease 10.3%, utilities and other 15.6%, and general and administrative 7.6%. Depreciation and amortisation took another 6.5% [2].
• Financing decides the bottom line. AMC's theatres ran close to break-even at the operating level, but interest on corporate borrowings of $459.5m helped produce a net loss of $632.4m [1].

Run the calculator once with your current numbers, then change one input at a time. Most of the levers come down to one of these.

• Spend per head. This is usually the biggest lever, because each concession dollar keeps far more margin than a ticket dollar. Size ladders, combos and faster queues matter more than headline prices. See how to price cinema concessions.
• Film rental terms. A point of film rental on a whole year's box office is real money. Know your terms by title and by week. See film rental and check bookings with the film rental calculator.
• Occupancy on quiet shows. Weekday and early shows fill the fewest seats. Price, programme or cut them, and check each one with the screening break-even calculator before you drop it.
• Other revenue. Screen advertising, private hire, schools and events use seats that would otherwise be empty, and they lower break-even occupancy directly.
• Software and booking fees. Per-ticket fees grow with every admission. Filmgrail's cinema ticketing software is priced at a flat rate per screen, so the cost stays fixed as attendance grows.

If you are planning or buying a cinema, put these numbers into a full plan. Our cinema business plan guide covers the rest of the document, and the cinema business plan spreadsheet is a ready-made template for the numbers. For the one-off costs, see how much it costs to open a movie theater; for due diligence on an existing site, see buying a movie theater.