Behind the Multiplex Gate The controversy over outside food in movie theaters is often trivialized as a quarrel over popcorn pricing. That framing is shallow. The real issue is whether a privately owned but publicly licensed entertainment venue may lawfully convert entry into a captive-consumer environment and then leverage that captivity to control food choice, impose medical exclusionary conditions, and extract supercompetitive prices for basic consumables. In Indian law as it currently stands, the answer is uncomfortable: the Supreme Court has held that, in the absence of a statutory restraint, a theater owner may prohibit outside food as part of its conditions of entry. But that is only the beginning of the analysis, not the end of it. https://www.boloji.com/articles/55344/behind-the-multiplex-gate