The weird part is that the seats in some of the examples showed that all of the bad seats were bought. This makes me think the theaters were taking orders for tickets say from churches to give out to other people but getting the worst seats in the theater.
I have a hard time believing that an actual theater chain coming out of near bankruptcy can afford to be holier than though and turn away good people from coming in an buying their expensive popcorn.
I don't know but I don't remember ever seeing any movie of substance where there were actively places giving away free tickets.
Well maybe back when Moviepass was still doing business and was effectively giving away money.
So at the end of the move, the main actor comes out and talks about how they had trouble getting funded/support for the film and they don't have the budget for marketing and are relying on word of mouth. They throw a QR code up on the screen and he asks the crowd to donate to buy tickets for others that may not have the funds to watch otherwise. All under the guise that child trafficking is a growing problem and it can't be ignored. A few people actually looked like they did so.
I don't know how these funds are utilized to buy tickets, but I can see them being used to "fill up" theaters. They may be bull shytting about the roadblocks/story they had to bring this movie out, but using it as a marketing angle is genius