'The End' for popcorn in British cinemas

Sat Aug 9, 9:13 PM ET

The credits are rolling in Britain for the time-honoured cinematic tradition of munching popcorn at the movies -- a newspaper reported Sunday that increasing numbers of cinemas are banning it.

A combination of health-conscious cinemagoers rejecting sugar-coated popcorn and disgust at its distinctive smell is steadily spelling "The End" for the snack in some arthouse cinema chains, the Observer reported.

It quoted Daniel Broch, the owner of the renowned Everyman cinema in London's upmarket Hampstead district, who recently bought 17 more venues.

"I will de-popcorn every new venue I acquire," he said. "It has a disproportionate influence on the space in terms of its overwhelming smell, the cultural idea of it and the operational problems created by the mess it produces.

"I'm not saying no popcorn is better than popcorn," he added. "But I am saying there is no way in which it fits with the culturally sophisticated brand I wish to sell."

The Picturehouse Cinema, a chain of 19 cinemas across Britain, will experiment with popcorn-free screenings in September.

"Popcorn is a contentious issue. Lots of people absolutely hate it and have asked us to ban it, so we're going to do exactly that," the group's head of media, Gabriel Swartland, told the Observer.

"If it's a success, and I've no reason to suspect it won't be, we'll roll it out across all our cinemas and make it a permanent fixture," said Swartland.

But other cinemas which tried to go popcorn-free found customers demanded it.

"Audiences in three venues... began asking for popcorn, so we provided it," said Richard Napper, the marketing director of the Curzon chain.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/a...d3yGShOrgF
[Edited 8/11/08 9:05am]

damn... that is harsh. I know it is hard to find microwave popcorn here.

shanti0608 said:

Okay...I have to admit...I wouldn't care if every package of microwave popcorn in the world suddenly disappeared.

But you have to have popcorn at the movies!

cool, i love it when people do shit like this.

i wish that cinemas had better items than your run of the mill mass produced candy soda etc.

Genesia said:

Back in the states I used to be some good microwave popcorn to snack on while watching movies at home.
It has been ages since I have been to the movie theater.

horatio said:

Agreed. I don't eat at cinemas for this very reason.

shanti0608 said:

sorry but that has to be one of the foulest smelling things a microwave ever produced.

horatio said:

Well I used to buy mine from the health food store with no fake butter on it.
The stuff at the movies always seemed way too buttery for me.

horatio said:

Oh, no - there's one thing more foul than that. A former co-worker of mine used to like burnt microwave popcorn. And she made it every friggin' afternoon.

When I make popcorn at home, I do it in a pan on the stove, with coconut oil. It smells goooood.

Ah, I love popcorn. It was practically a religion in my family. I learned how to make it on the stove at the age of seven (and pretty damn well, if I do say so myself). To save money, we'd sometimes make popcorn at home that we snuck into the movies--at least the people in England can still do that. I love movie popcorn on rare occasions; I like to have it as a treat maybe once or twice a year. But the kids behind the counter don't know how to make it right anymore. It used to be that they'd put some popcorn in the bucket, then some butter, then more popcorn and more butter. Now you often have to put the butter on it yourself, which just doesn't work as well.

I think I've had microwave popcorn about five times in my life. It's awful, and I'd much rather have the real, homemade thing. Sometimes that's my whole dinner (and the leftover cold popcorn is delicious the next morning for breakfast).

Genesia said:

What kind of popcorn are they selling?? "Sugar coated"??

Efan said:

CalhounSq said:

Sounds like kettle corn. Which is "blech" in my book.

Genesia said:

Well hell, they could ban that shit but regular old movie popcorn is such a tradition w/ some people. Weird to ban it, but whatevuh...

CalhounSq said:

A lot of popcorn in Europe is often the sugar coated version. Salted popcorn is available, too but not really as popular as the sugary version. Buttered popcorn is a relatively new phenomenon.
So, tell me, how is the popcorn that you are accustomed to ? Just salted and buttered ? No sugar at all ?
Sugar coated popcorn is pretty difficult to make at home, always a bit messy, so I´m always quite surprised to hear that people make their own popcorn at home. I guess that it´s not the sugar coated version then, right ? The popcorn I make at home with a popcorn machine is plain, not sugar coated.

KoolEaze said:

Yup - regular old American popcorn is just popped in oil of some sort, then either salted or buttered and salted. (Some people air-pop popcorn...but doing it in oil makes it taste better by a factor of approximately a gazillion.)

The popcorn I make at home is not sugary - that'd make a mess of my pans, and we can't have that.

Genesia said:

So...that means...that all those buckets of popcorn at the movies and at basketball games...contain plain old boring SALTED and BUTTERED popcorn ?
If that´s the case , then popcorn is WAY overpriced. I pay for sugary popcorn because it tastes better and because it is too messy to make at home.

KoolEaze said:

WOW, not to make fun but I can see why the whole oral care situation is so out of hand if sugary popcorn is STANDARD out there That's crazy... yea, just salt & butter. It's good, but still fattening (the butter anyway, & I must have butter) so I tend to skip it...

Damn, kettle corn @ the movies

Snooty!

CalhounSq said:

it's not as sweet as kettle corn (almost nothing is as sweet over there compared to here), and it's nasty, too.

violator said:

I agree too.

violator said:

My problem with eating in cinemas is that the noise of myself chewing distracts me from hearing the dialogue sometimes. I would eat popcorn while watching a movie with subtitles. If I'm tired, it helps me stay awake. I should have gotten popcorn when I went to see Mongol last week.

CalhounSq said:

Don´t your fingers get all greasy and buttered up eating that messy stuff ?
Anyway, there´s this thing called the "popcorn diet". The idea is to eat nothing but popcorn after 6 p.m, and that´s it. Nothing else, just plain popcorn without any salt or butter. You are allowed to drink water, though.
Supposed to be THE crash diet.

KoolEaze said:

Although I have travelled all over Europe I don't remember eating popcorn anywhere apart from my home country and here in Austria the standard popcorn is salted and hardly anybody ever eats sugar coated popcorn .

KoolEaze said:

That's because after a couple days eating what basically amounts to packing material, you won't want to eat anything anymore.

KoolEaze said:

Napkins, dude & yea, I bet that diet works too the only thing that makes popcorn bad for you is the butter/salt/sugar. Otherwise it's okay to have

I don't eat at cineams because a coke is $6 and popcorn is $12.....

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

I rarely go to the movies because just getting in costs so much. When I used to go, we would go after an evening meal out to dinner then to the movies so we would not need popcorn & a drink.
I asked the Englishmen of the house what they normally enjoy at the movies, he said ice cream.

shanti0608 said:

Ice cream, wow.

I used to get upset at people that get up in the middle of a movie just to get a snack. I'm very serious about my movie-going experience.