The first week can see up to 90% of the gross going straight to the studio. There's no way that the remaining 10% can pay the rent, staff, electricity, etc.
Yeah it’s an issue for them, though remember every week the percentage they keep goes up, of course the revenue of the picture goes down to. But I think there’s more money in reducing the cost of concessions. It’s one of those “would you rather sell 1000 of something at $6 or 10,000 at $2”. Normal businesses you figure they put a lot of work into their pricing to find the break points, but movie theater concessions have been over priced so long I doubt anybody’s really put the work into it anymore. Heck just being able to advertise “we use convenience store pricing” would make them the choice theaters in town. I think they consider themselves amusement parks with a captive audience, forgetting that movies are two hours long, if we can’t smuggle food we can always wait.