Screening break-even calculator

Under a straight percentage deal, every admission contributes the same amount, and break-even is a simple division.

Under a minimum guarantee you owe the distributor a fixed sum until the percentage overtakes it. Below that crossover point your marginal admission contributes its full ticket yield rather than the yield less the hire percentage, because the hire is already paid. Above it, you are back to the percentage.

The practical consequence is that a booking with a guarantee is far more sensitive to attendance than one without. A screening that would merely underperform on a percentage deal can lose real money on a guarantee, and the calculator handles both regimes so you can see where the crossover sits.

There are two different questions here and they deserve different inputs.

Should I play this film at all? Include allocated fixed cost. Rent, rates, insurance and salaried staff have to be carried by the programme as a whole.

Should I add this extra late show? Set allocated fixed cost to zero. The building is already open and already paid for, so the only relevant costs are the marginal ones: staff for the show, power, cleaning and the film hire.

Cinemas routinely drop marginal screenings that were comfortably contributing, because they judged them against a fully allocated cost that the screening never actually caused.