One of the perks of working at a movie theater for minimum wage is the free or discounted movie tickets. Some theaters will even offer showings of films after their hours for the employees at no cost to them. Well it seems that a theater employee has called out Disney saying that they threaten to not allow theaters to show their films if employees are allowed to have free tickets and cut into their bottom line. Some backed that story up while others said it isn’t true.
The report comes from Newsweek and they have some Twitter conversations that allege the behavior from Disney.
According to @Rasberry on Twitter:
One of the perks of working at the cinema are free movies except for Disney which it threatens to remove its movies from the theater if an employee sees one of their films during opening month for free. We had to wait a month or buy a ticket to see a Disney film. Pure greed.
— Margaret “Molly” Rasberry (she/they) #BLM 🏳️🌈 (@RasberryRazz) May 5, 2022
And the reasoning was spoilers. Yes, including their Disney remakes.
— Margaret “Molly” Rasberry (she/they) #BLM 🏳️🌈 (@RasberryRazz) May 5, 2022
And we almost got into big trouble when one of the ushers got a free ticket to Civil War cause we didn’t realize that was the no free tickets to a Disney film for a month at first. Disney apparently sent us a warning. They are petty as hell.
— Margaret “Molly” Rasberry (she/they) #BLM 🏳️🌈 (@RasberryRazz) May 5, 2022
Others confirmed this:
Omg same here! I worked for a luxury theater for 3 years and all the BIG Disney films they’d either tell us no or would FORCE our managers to take all electronics and then they monitored our social media to make sure we didn’t post spoilers… mostly they told us no to watching
— jacob galicia (@JacobLaurenceG) May 6, 2022
Disney threatened to sue the dinky little theatre in my town that shows movies they check out from the library to people who can’t afford real theaters. They don’t do movies currently in theaters, they’re not losing any money from this theater at all.
— Dizzy (@13silverroses) May 6, 2022
All the major studios do this. Warner bros. Even had a total discount ban on Harry Potter. It’s worth mentioning that it’s likely tied into a deal with your companies booking dept. Disney have also done staff screenings with refreshments at my old place of work.
— Dave Scott (@dave_scott23) May 6, 2022
Some are asking how Disney would even know:
And how is Disney going to know an employee of the movie theater watched a Disney movie on the last showing of the day in mid week we’re there is few people?
— Mr.Vo (@el_mismisimo99) May 6, 2022
Movie theater employees, and this varies by company, get comped tickets to movies, including premiers. It’s registered when you got your ticket and what movie. I assume it’s to keep track that employees aren’t exploiting the system and to still account for box office numbers.
— Manda 🌻 (@MMSlough) May 6, 2022
They also get guest passes. So for example, in the early 2000s when my friends worked at a Cinemark, they got one free ticket a week for themselves and one guest pass. They could use it for any movie and any showing, but the rules were that they had to be off the clock.
— Manda 🌻 (@MMSlough) May 6, 2022
Some are disputing it entirely:
Uhm mine lets us see it the Monday of the weekend of release, follows the pass restriction rules generally. Only spiderman had a two week no pass restriction. Dr strange we can see it free Monday.
— Tuna 【甚好甚好】 (@27CansOfTuna) May 7, 2022
Yes and no. Cast passes generally have a restriction on them. Usually two weeks but Disney has been known to go a month. (Star Wars usually)
— Jeannie Stewart (@vamputee) May 6, 2022
What chain do you work for? Worked at AMC for 5 years & the policy was not to give employee tix for any movie that was near sold out/might sell out bc paying customers had priority. Never heard of this Disney thing or needing to wait a month. Just come when it’s not busy.
— David Wayne (@DavdWayne) May 6, 2022
Is this recent? Cause I worked at AMC from 2016-2018 and they not only let us watch them for free but had employee only screenings for Avengers Endgame, Last Jedi, Coco, and many others.
— Carissa (@carissadraws) May 6, 2022
When working for the Alamo we got a few of these employee screenings at like midnight or 8am but we couldn’t get free tickets to general showtimes. Their reasoning wasn’t spoilers but simply that Disney would shut us down, apparently that happened to a theater nearby.
— Stephen Cox (@Stephen_cx) May 6, 2022
Is it the theater or Disney? Went to a Marcus theatre and saw Shang Chi for free with a couple free passes from a friend that works there. Opening week in Bloomington, IL. No problem.
— RichLove26 (@Richlove26) May 6, 2022
One person was defending Disney (got ratioed hard):
Disney spends tens of millions to make a film and you’re complaining you don’t get to see it for free while calling THEM greedy at the same time? Hell of a tweet
— Myztic Herb (@rocketleaguer85) May 6, 2022
I have no idea if this is true or not. Jury seems to be out on this one or it seems some theaters have different deals that others.
However with spoilers being an issue I would not be surprised if they do ban employees for early screenings before the release date. The NDA story is believable to me too. Media often has to agree to not release anything until the news embargo ends. With “Eternals” the after credits scenes were ruined by the media ahead of the film. So when “Spider-Man: No Way Home” came out the rules were much more strict.
Since they can’t get all employees to sign NDAs they could be threatening the theater chains. We know they keep altering the deal to get larger cuts of tent pole franchise films. Back when ‘The Last Jedi’ came out theaters had to give a larger cut to Disney. They had to give the mouse 65% and they had to guarantee the film run in the biggest auditorium for at least four weeks or they would have to pay Disney 70% of the take. (This was under Bob Iger who everyone keeps making out to be a progressive saint.)
So not allowing employees to see tent pole films would not surprise me. However, the stories are all over the place on Twitter and nothing is concrete. Newsweek has reached out to the major theater chains for comment, but so far I don’t believe they’ve received a response.
EDIT- A Disney spokesperson has denied the report telling Newsweek ” On background, I can tell you that is not accurate and that theaters set their own pricing and employee policies.”
What do you think? Comment and let us know!
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