When I was a very young man, I spent about a year managing theaters for ABC Intermountain Theaters in SLC and Twin Falls. I was the manager of the Centre Theater in Salt Lake when The Godfather opened in March, 1972. I had nothing to do with the negotiations, but the deal was that Paramount took 90% of the gross ticket sales for about the first 8 weeks, then the percentage dropped and the theater started making money.

This type of arrangement doesn't happen anymore for several reasons. First, our theater had an exclusive - nobody else in town showed the film. We had 4 showings a day (it was a 3 hour movie), and we sold out every one for several months (the theater held about 1400 with the balcony full). The movie stayed for almost 9 months, and the theater did quite well. Nowadays, this would have opened on multiple screens in multiple cineplexes around the town, and might have lasted 2 months max.

On the other hand, I booked a whole summer of daytime matinee movies for kids at the Orpheum Theater in Twin Falls. We would run 2 different movies a day and parents would dump their kids at our door for a couple of hours away from them, then the theater was prepared for our regular evening movie. Shows like "Cougar Country" and "Old Yeller" could be rented by the theater for as little as $25, and we sold a lot of candy and popcorn showing old family movies.