A more logical conclusion would be that you either didn't sell your thing to them very well (as you haven't sold it to us) or that they, being in the movie business, saw something about it that you, being in the app business, didn't.
Some mainstream movies are good, some are bad. Some alternative movies are good, some are bad. But for overall movies production and profiting process, the movies that make the most money have spin-offs, have predictable sequels, have merchandise, can be sold to middle-class third world people who aspire to American or European lifestyles and so-forth. These make the most profits.
So movie theaters help the industry by putting more movies with this extra profit potential in front of people. How exactly they get compensated for this is I couldn't answer in detail but ownership of the largest chains is very incestuous.
But this model requires a situation people first to go to a movie and later to decide which movie.
So this would give the result. It's bad to movie goers power to decide to see. It's bad even if that means more movie theater revenue.
What theatre owners really want are the blockbuster movies that draw the general public. They love when a family of 5 comes in to watch the Incredibles 2 and spends a small fortune on food to keep the kids happy. This is why movie theatres have sold mostly junk food all these years.
Meanwhile, they are still (for the most part) in business, decades later, while "cool" business models like MoviePass cost shareholders millions and blow out in less than a year.
Who should be learning from whom?
I did a tech startup that tried to bring social/mobile/local tech to the movie theater experience, and the theaters balked. They fear technology. It took a decade of fearmongering for theaters to fork over millions to buy digital projectors. The last thing they want is tech that will empower moviegoers.
What you discover with the "exhibition industry" (what theaters like to call themselves) is that they are in the fast-food business. Popcorn, soda, candy, junk food: this is what the theater sells. The movie is there just to bring you into the building. But what they want you to buy is the concessions. Without the movie nobody in the world would wander into a theater and order a popcorn and a soda for $12 or whatever.
When I spoke with exhibitors, I found them to be like realtors: really paranoid, untrusting of their competition, and particularly untrusting of uppity little tech startups (can't really blame 'em, I mean, if a tech startup ever gets successful they tend to wipe out everything in their wake--witness Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Craigslist, etc.)
Despite the fact that we had built an app that presented a compelling case for a $1 billion or higher bump in annual U.S. box office revenue--we basically came up with ways to get more people to go to more movies more often--the exhibitors would have none of it. They didn't trust it, they wanted nothing to do with it. ESPECIALLY if their competitors in the same city had the same tech. The idea of a mobile app that empowered moviegoers to get alerted to every moving coming, and track upcoming movies after you indicated you liked the trailer, and tracked your favorite stars/directors/etc, and tracked the reviews of your favorite critics, and tracked what your friends were planning to go see, none of that meant diddly to exhibitors.
It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.
The way theaters are trying to survive now is by focusing on what their core competence is: food. Notice how many theaters now sell hamburgers and pizza and sandwiches, and beer and wine, and so on. You go to a movie now, you may be set back for $30 in meal fees per person easily. For an exhibitor, that's nirvana.
Nah, MoviePass was doomed from day one.