With the alcohol comes plenty of eye candy certain to draw the attention of underage moviegoers.
The chain can then point to the lack of police reports at its existing full-liquor theaters to obtain liquor licenses elsewhere. At theaters of one national chain, it is not reported to police when an adult is found to have purchased liquor for an underage patron. Booze in theaters is - and ought to be - controversial, since, according to the Motion Picture Association of America, people ages 12 to 17 and 18 to 24 continue to be overrepresented among frequent moviegoers relative to the total population. They may also be sympathetic to the pleas of regional and independent exhibitors who believe they, too, need to serve liquor to be competitive with the big chain multiplex across town.īut there are social costs to all this. Many local elected officials want to aid struggling local theaters and avoid the prospect of a shuttered multiplex in their district. They've brought in teams of lawyers to city council meetings and, in at least one case in which a big theater chain was denied a license, sued a local government.įor the most part, though, lawsuits have been unnecessary. In recent years, theater owners have succeeded in acquiring hundreds of liquor licenses from coast to coast, sometimes over dogged local resistance. Meanwhile, state legislators are being lobbied to relax laws governing liquor sales in theaters as of this February, 32 had done so over the previous two years, according to The Hollywood Reporter.Īs a result, the nature of movie-going in America is changing before our eyes.
#Eye candy cape girardeau movie
National theater chains, followed by spooked regional and independent movie exhibitors, are turning to liquor to reverse the damage of sagging ticket sales.Įxhibitors are showing up at city council meetings in places as diverse as Cape Girardeau, Mo., Hilo, Hawaii, Lexington Park, Md., and Muncie, Ind., pressing local policymakers to let them serve liquor along with popcorn and candy. It started as a trickle it's now a torrent.
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