“This isn’t organic demand,” one insider told Rob Shuter’s Substack. “It’s about optics. Empty theaters look terrible.”

Sources tell the journalist that clubs are buying out large blocks of seats, or even sometimes entire showings. In some cases, tickets are even offered for free or at a “steep” discount on GOP-affiliated websites.

Still, that does not do the trick either.

“They’re struggling to give the tickets away,” another source told Shuter. “Some screenings barely sell unless the party steps in.”

One more insider said, “It feels less like a movie night and more like a loyalty check.”

What do cinemas do if not a single person buys tickets to a screening

So what do cinemas do when no one is buying tickets for a particular screening? The question has been brought up on the online forum Reddit, where one user asked, “If no one buys a ticket to a movie, do they still run it or just call it off?”

One user replied, “When I worked at a theater they would play any movie that was on in the middle of the day but if it was the end of the night they’d let it go 15 minutes then shut er down. They would sometimes turn the lamp off on the projector to save teh bulb until someoen called up to the projectionist that the show was going on.”

A second added, “i worked at a cinema and what they did was start the movie and let it play for twenty minutes, so if anyone showed up to buy last-minute tickets they would still be able to see it. if no one came, they shut it off. on a related note, those were my favorite auditoriums to clean.”

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